# Ai4 2026 Speakers 1151 speakers. Canonical page: https://ai4.com/speakers/. Updated 2026-10-11T12:46:27.736Z. ## Geoffrey Hinton Godfather of AI; 2024 Nobel Prize Winner; Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/geoffrey-hinton/ Track: Keynote Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Geoffrey Hinton is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence. Hinton has been called “the godfather of AI” and is considered one of the most important thought leaders on the emergence of AI and its implications for business and society. It was Hinton, in 2012, who created the technology that would become the foundation for the AI systems that are emerging as potential game-changers for business. But Hinton is not entirely a proponent of the rapid development of AI: Hinton’s view is that the technology offers tremendous potential benefits to humankind, but we are at an important inflection point where society needs to think hard about how to restrict the use of AI to avoid potential pitfalls. Hinton received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. After five years as a faculty member at Carnegie-Mellon he became a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and moved to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto where he is now an emeritus professor. He has also held roles as a VP Engineering fellow at Google and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Vector Institute. Geoffrey Hinton was one of the researchers who introduced the backpropagation algorithm and the first to use backpropagation for learning word embeddings. His other contributions to neural network research include Boltzmann machines, distributed representations, time-delay neural nets, mixtures of experts, variational learning and deep learning. His research group in Toronto made major breakthroughs in deep learning that revolutionized speech recognition and object classification. Geoffrey Hinton is a fellow of the UK Royal Society and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His awards include the Nobel Prize in Physics (2024), the David E. Rumelhart prize, the IJCAI award for research excellence, the Killam prize for Engineering, the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt medal, the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal, the IEEE James Clerk Maxwell Gold medal, the NEC C&C award, the BBVA award, the Honda Prize, and the Turing Award. ## Fei-Fei Li Godmother of AI; Co-Founder & CEO, World Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/fei-fei-li/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Dr. Fei- Fei Li is the godmother of artificial intelligence. As the creator of ImageNet, the database that taught computers to "see," she laid the groundwork for modern Al marvels such as Google Lens, DALL- E, self-driving cars, and facial recognition. In her current role as co-founder and CEO of World Labs, she's building the foundation for Al's next major breakthrough — Large World Models (LWMs) that can understand and interact with the physical world. A champion for Al that is safe and inclusive, Dr. Li is also the founding co- director of Stanford's Human- Centered Al Institute (HAI) and the founder of AI4ALL. Delivering depth and breadth on both the technical and human aspects of the technology, Dr. Li leaves audiences awestruck, informed, and empowered to leverage Al in their unique industries. Alongside mind-blowing presentations on the latest research, she discusses Al's impact on society and the future of work, and offers practical applications in business, healthcare, and more. She is vocal about the risks of developing such powerful technology and the obligation we have to wield it responsibly and ethically. Her critically acclaimed memoir, The Worlds I See, is a coming-of-age story of overcoming adversity, documenting Li's journey from China's middle class to American poverty to her position at the forefront of Al today. The book is at once a deeply moving immigrant tale and an inside look at the rise of Al from one of its most prominent creators. It was named a Financial Times Best Book of 2023 and one of Barack Obama's recommended books on Al. Dr. Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the computer science department at Stanford University and served as director of the Stanford Al Lab for five years. During a sabbatical from the University, she worked as Vice President and Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. The founder of AI4ALL, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to Al education and research to underrepresented groups, Li is also a leading advocate for diversity in STEM seeking to combat the harmful unconscious bias built into Al models developed by homogenous teams. Acknowledging the potential harm of Al in the wrong hands, Dr. Li has lent her expertise to policymakers nationally and locally to inform proper governance. She has testified before Congress, served as a member of the California Future of Work Commissioner under Gavin Newsom, and contributed to White House technology policy as a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force. Dr. Li has published more than 300 scientific papers in industry- leading journals such as Nature, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, New England Journal of Medicine, among others. Work from her lab has been featured in numerous general audience publications including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Science, Wired, Financial Times, and more. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among Dr. Li's many awards are the Intel Lifetime Achievement Award, the Thomas Huang Memorial Prize, the National Geographic Society Further Award, and the NVIDIA Pioneer in Al Award. She was named a TIME100 in Al, one of ELLE's Women in Tech, a Good Housekeeping Awesome Women awardee, a Foreign Policy Global Thinker, and one of the Carnegie Foundation's "Great Immigrants: The Pride of America," an honor previously bestowed to great minds such as Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. ## Andrew Ng Founder; Former Head of Google Brain, DeepLearning.AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-ng/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Andrew Ng is the Founder of DeepLearning.AI, Managing General Partner at AI Fund, Executive Chairman of LandingAI, Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. As a pioneer in machine learning and online education, Dr. Ng has changed countless lives through his work in AI. Over 8 million people have taken an AI class from him. He was the founding lead of the Google Brain team, which helped Google transform into a modern AI company. He served as VP & Chief Scientist at Baidu, where he led a 1,300-person AI team responsible for the company’s AI technology and strategy. He was formerly Director of the Stanford AI Lab, home to 20+ faculty members and research groups. In 2023, he was named to the Time100 AI list of the most influential AI persons in the world. He has authored/co-authored over 200 papers in AI and related fields and holds a B.Sc. from CMU, M.Sc. from MIT, and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Dr. Ng now focuses his time primarily on providing AI training and on his entrepreneurial ventures, looking for the best ways to accelerate responsible AI adoption globally. ## Dmitri Dolgov Co-CEO, Waymo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dmitri-dolgov/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Dmitri Dolgov is the co-CEO of Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to be the world’s most trusted driver. Dmitri is one of the founders of the Google self-driving car project, which began in 2009 and became Waymo in 2016. As co-CEO, Dmitri is responsible for overall company strategy, with his primary focus on the development and deployment of the Waymo Driver, based on a custom, in-house designed, fully autonomous technology stack. Dmitri previously served as Waymo’s CTO. Prior to Waymo, Dmitri worked on autonomous driving efforts at Toyota and at Stanford as part of Stanford's DARPA Urban Challenge team. Dmitri received his B.S. and M.S. in Physics and Math from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. ## Tim O'Reilly Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-o-reilly/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tim O’Reilly is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of O’Reilly Media, the company that has been providing the picks and shovels of learning to the Silicon Valley gold rush for the past 43 years. The company delivers online learning, publishes books, and runs conferences about cutting-edge technology, and has a history of convening conversations that reshape the computer industry. If you’ve heard the term “open source software”, “web 2.0”, or “government as a platform”, he’s had a hand in framing each of those big ideas. He is the author of many technical books published by O’Reilly Media, and most recently WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us (Harper Business, 2017). Tim is also a co-founder and co-director of the nonprofit AI Disclosures Project, which is focused on the role of open standards in an inclusive AI economy. ## Anastasis Germanidis Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Runway Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anastasis-germanidis/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Anastasis Germanidis is a Greek AI researcher, software engineer and artist based in New York City. He is the co-founder & co-CEO of Runway. He previously was a machine learning researcher at IBM and a distributed systems back-end engineer. ## Russell Westbrook Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Russell Westbrook Enterprises Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/russell-westbrook/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Presenter Russell Westbrook is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Russell Westbrook Enterprises, a privately held operating and investment group through which he has founded, owned or helped scale more than 40 companies. He founded the fashion house Honor the Gift and advertising technology company RW Digital, and co-founded Eazewell, an agentic AI company supporting families through aging, illness and death. His investments include BrainAI, USIT Fund and an Oklahoma City development anchored by the new MAPS 4 Multipurpose Stadium. He co-chairs the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator's Road to 2028 and founded the Russell Westbrook Why Not? Foundation and Westbrook Academy. Westbrook is an NBA Most Valuable Player, nine-time All-Star, nine-time All-NBA selection, two-time scoring champion, three-time assists leader, Olympic gold medalist, member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team and the league’s all-time leader in triple-doubles. ## Praveen Neppalli Naga CTO, Uber Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/praveen-neppalli-naga/ Track: Keynote Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Praveen Neppalli Naga is Chief Technology Officer at Uber, where he leads the overall engineering and science strategy and technical execution. Since joining Uber in 2015, his focus has been creating outstanding experiences for customers while building a flexible earning platform for drivers and couriers. Prior to joining Uber, Praveen held engineering leadership roles at LinkedIn. There, he spent seven years building early products and data infrastructure, contributing to the foundation for LinkedIn's rapid growth. Originally from southern India, Praveen moved to the US in 2002, and went on to earn his master’s in computer science from the University of Nebraska. Passionate about community and mentorship, Praveen serves as an executive sponsor for the “Able” US&C Employee Resource Group. He is also committed to supporting other parents of Autistic children, drawing from his firsthand experience with his own son. ## Jeetu Patel President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeetu-patel/ Track: Keynote Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Jeetu Patel is Cisco’s President and Chief Product Officer, leading global product vision and strategy. Under his leadership, Cisco has driven innovation across its broad portfolio of products, establishing the company as the critical infrastructure for the AI era. Jeetu joined Cisco in 2020 as the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration where he reinvigorated organic innovation, championed key inorganic investments, and drove simplification across these multibillion-dollar portfolios with a fanatical focus on design and user experience positioning them for success and growth. He has 20+ years of senior leadership experience driving product design, development, innovation, and business growth. ## Tim Latimer Co-Founder & CEO, Fervo Energy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-latimer/ Track: Energy Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tim Latimer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy (Nasdaq: FRVO), a company pioneering the commercialization of next-generation geothermal power. By adapting proven technologies such as horizontal drilling and fiber optic sensing, Fervo is unlocking geothermal as a reliable source of 24/7 carbon-free energy. Under Tim's leadership, Fervo completed the largest clean energy IPO in history in May 2026, raising $1.9 billion and achieving a market capitalization above $10 billion on its first day of trading. The company is building Cape Station, the world's largest enhanced geothermal project, delivering 100 MW of baseload clean power to the grid in 2027 and expanding to 500 MW by 2028 in Southwest Utah. Fervo has worked with Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, Google, Southern California Edison, Shell Energy, and other leaders in power generation, building a reputation for delivery and leadership in next-generation geothermal. Tim began his career as a drilling engineer at BHP before earning an MBA and an MS in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. He has been named to MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 and the TIME100 Next list for his leadership in advancing climate and energy innovation. Tim also holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tulsa. ## Anton Korinek Head, Transformative AI Economic Studies, Anthropic; Professor of Economics, University of Virginia, Anthropic | University of Virginia Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anton-korinek/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Anton is a Professor at the University of Virginia, Department of Economics and Darden School of Business, and Faculty Director of the Economics of Transformative AI (EconTAI) Initiative. His current research examines the economic and financial implications of artificial intelligence and the transition towards transformative AI. He analyzes how to steer progress in AI to lead to shared prosperity and how to prepare our society for the transformative potential of AI in the future. For his work in the field, he was named to TIME's 2025 TIME100 AI list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence, Vox's 2024 Future Perfect 50, and serves on the Anthropic Economic Advisory Council. His research investigates AI's implications for economic growth, labor markets, inequality, and market concentration. He has served on the G7 Panel of Experts on AI and testified before the US Senate on AI's workforce impacts. His work on preparing for transformative AI has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and TIME Magazine. He edited the Oxford Handbook of AI Governance, teaches "The Economics of AI" on Coursera, and publishes a semi-annual article series "Generative AI for Economic Research" in the Journal of Economic Literature examining how researchers can leverage AI tools. In his past research, he investigated the mechanics of financial crises and developed policy measures to prevent future crises, including an influential framework for capital flow regulation in emerging economies. He is a Research Associate at the NBER, a Research Fellow and Leader of the AI Research Network at the CEPR, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2007 and has held positions at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland as well as visiting appointments at Harvard, the World Bank, IMF, and BIS. ## John Whyte EVP & Chief Executive Officer, American Medical Association Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-whyte/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter John Whyte, MD, MPH serves as the CEO and Executive Vice President of the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician organization. Prior to the AMA, Dr. Whyte served as the Chief Medical Officer at WebMD, leading initiatives that expanded strategic partnerships, created new business opportunities, and positioned WebMD at the forefront of digital health innovation. He was a pivotal force in evolving WebMD’s digital platforms from content delivery engines to powerful tools connecting consumers directly to care, establishing critical new revenue models. He is a recognized leader in healthcare delivery and regulation and is consistently named as one of the Top 20 Health Influencers. Before joining WebMD, Dr. Whyte served as Director of Professional Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. There, he spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives to modernize clinical trial design, expand diversity in research, and advance the regulatory use of real-world evidence — efforts that continue to impact patient-centered drug development today. Earlier, as Chief Medical Expert and Vice President of Health and Medical Education at Discovery Channel, Dr. Whyte launched educational programming that captured both medical and mainstream audiences, successfully aligning mission-driven health education with corporate funding strategies and building new multimedia brand identities. At the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Whyte played a pivotal role in formalizing Medicare’s national coverage decision process, directly shaping payment policies and advancing innovative models to improve healthcare outcomes. His experience at CMS demonstrates a deep understanding of health policy, reimbursement strategies, and the critical intersection of clinical innovation and payment models. A board-certified internist, Dr. Whyte completed his MD at Hahnemann University School of Medicine, his residency at Duke University Medical Center and earned his MPH in Health Policy and Management at Harvard University. He previously served as a health services research fellow at Stanford University. An accomplished author, Dr. Whyte has written extensively for both professional and consumer audiences, including five best-selling books. ## Sachin Katti Head of Compute, OpenAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sachin-katti/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Sachin Katti is VP of Compute Strategy and GPT-Infra at OpenAI, leading the strategy and infrastructure powering frontier AI after executive roles at Intel and a Stanford professorship. ## Pat Gelsinger General Partner; Former CEO of Intel, Playground Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pat-gelsinger/ Track: Keynote Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Pat Gelsinger is a visionary engineer and values-driven leader with more than 45 years of experience shaping Silicon Valley as a CEO, CTO, and technologist. He previously served as CEO of both Intel and VMware, and earlier held senior leadership roles at EMC. Across these roles, Pat has played a defining part in advancing foundational technologies spanning semiconductors, microprocessors, enterprise computing, and global industry standards. Today, Pat is a General Partner at Playground Global, a deep tech venture firm where he invests in companies that drive long-term economic strength and national resilience. Pat serves on the boards of Playground portfolio companies focused on next-generation compute, energy, and infrastructure including Alva Energy, Ayar Labs, PowerLattice, Snowcap, Syenta, and xLight Beyond his work as an investor at Playground, Pat is a speaker, author, inventor, philanthropist, investor, husband, father of four, and grandfather of eight. ## Sebastian Thrun Founder, Waymo, Udacity Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sebastian-thrun/ Track: Keynote Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Sebastian Thrun is an internationally recognized technologist, entrepreneur, and academic leader, best known for founding Google X (now X, the Moonshot Factory) and for serving as the founding CEO of Waymo, the world’s leading autonomous driving company. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in robotics and physical artificial intelligence, with pioneering contributions spanning autonomous systems, machine learning, and large-scale AI deployment in real-world environments. Professor Thrun has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 12 books, reflecting decades of foundational research and sustained influence across robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer science. In addition to his academic achievements, he has founded and scaled multiple high-impact technology ventures, including Kitty Hawk, an advanced aviation company focused on electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, and Udacity, a global online education platform that has transformed technical education for millions of learners worldwide. He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Sage AI Labs, where he is leading the development of nextgeneration, AI-native consumer technologies. Professor Thrun’s contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious academic and industry honors. He was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Engineering at the age of 39, one of the youngest individuals ever to receive this distinction, in recognition of his groundbreaking work in autonomous systems and robotics. Over the course of his career, he has received many additional awards acknowledging his profound impact on both scientific research and the commercialization of artificial intelligence at global scale. ## Chloé Bakalar Senior Research Associate, University College London, Former AI Ethics Lead, OpenAI & Former Chief Ethicist, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chloe-bakalar/ Track: Keynote Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Speaker Chloé Bakalar is the AI Ethics Lead and a Member of the Technical Staff at OpenAI, where she develops and executes an applied approach to AI Ethics across AI research, model behavior, product design, evaluation and deployment. Previously, she served as Chief Ethicist at Meta, leading ethics work across large-scale products and AI systems. Bakalar is also a Senior Research Associate at University College London and co-author of “Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing.” Her work brings moral and political philosophy into direct contact with the technical and product decisions that shape AI systems, translating contested values and ethical tradeoffs into frameworks, measurements and tools that inform what companies build and ship. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. ## Srini Venkatesan EVP and Chief Technology Officer, PayPal Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/srini-venkatesan/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Srini Venkatesan is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of PayPal. In this role, Srini leads the development and implementation of technology across the entire PayPal ecosystem, including analytics and data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, employee and infrastructure operations, information security, and product engineering. Over the past 25 years, Srini has played a pivotal role in building and scaling technology organizations. From early-stage startups to Fortune 1 enterprises, his technology and product leadership has been fundamental to their growth and success. Prior to PayPal, Srini was Executive Vice President of the Walmart U.S. Omni Platforms and Tech organization. Under his leadership, the organization was responsible for building platforms, features, and capabilities to support the retailer globally. Before joining Walmart, he oversaw Yahoo’s display and video ad technology platform. He also successfully led major acquisitions and the integrations into the Yahoo platform. Before Yahoo, Srini was the CTO of Marketo, where he was responsible for running both product strategy and technology and instrumental in taking the company public. Prior to Marketo, Srini was the CTO at StubHub and led product and technology teams at eBay. During his time at StubHub, he was responsible for creating industry-leading electronic delivery and seat map visualization. He started as a developer and grew his career and passion for technology in the FPGA programming domain at Actel. Srini has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Bharathiar University. ## Steve Preston CEO, Goodwill Industries International Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steve-preston/ Track: Executive Summit Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter As president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International (GII), Steven C. Preston leads a network of 150 local Goodwill® organizations in the U.S. and Canada with a combined revenue of $8.6 billion. Goodwill is the leading nonprofit provider of workforce training and development in North America and a leader in the secondhand retail market. The mission of Goodwill is to ensure that every person in our communities has the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential in life. Preston is committed to the belief that by doing so, millions of people who have faced significant barriers and limitations in life will be able to achieve a life of economic livelihood and flourishing. Since joining Goodwill in 2019, Preston has focused on strengthening all aspects of the Goodwill social enterprise, positioning Goodwill at the forefront of workforce development by expanding proven models of success, forging innovative partnerships with organizations focused on emerging sustainable business practices, and elevating models of excellence across the retail network. Preston has served in numerous operational and financial leadership positions in both the public and private sectors. He served as Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and as Administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA); led successful turnarounds as the CEO of two private corporations, Oakleaf Global Holdings and Livingston International; and served as the CFO of two Fortune 500 companies, Waste Management and ServiceMaster. Preston graduated with the highest distinction from Northwestern University and holds an MBA from The University of Chicago. Preston also serves on the board of the National Retail Federation (NRF) and is chair of the NRF Foundation. He also serves on the Wheaton College Board of Trustees and on the Leadership 18 Executive Committee. ## Erik Brynjolfsson Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, a Professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, Co-Founder at Workhelix Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erik-brynjolfsson/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Erik Brynjolfsson is a global expert on the economics of technology and AI. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). A leading voice on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first to quantify IT's impact on productivity and the role of intangibles like organizational capital. At Stanford, he leads research on Transformative AI—systems poised to rapidly reshape productivity, labor markets, and prosperity—developing frameworks to help ensure this shift benefits society. Brynjolfsson is the author of nine books, including the bestsellers The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future. He has published more than 100 academic articles and holds five patents. He is also Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of the Board of Workhelix, an enterprise platform that helps organizations find where AI can have the biggest impact, track adoption, and measure results over time — so they can know and grow the ROI of their AI. ## Jon Kutasov Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jon-kutasov/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist I'm a member of technical staff at Anthropic. My focus is on aligning Claude in scalable and robust ways. I lead a team that aims to develop techniques that will allow us to make sure Claude stays safe and aligned with human values as capabilities continue to rapidly advance. In the past, I have worked on understanding various methods for AI control. ## Tom Gruber Co-Founder, Siri Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tom-gruber/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Tom Gruber led the team that designed Siri, the Apple AI Assistant, and is currently leading Humanistic.ai, which advises companies and organizations on the use of AI to serve human needs. He is a designer, entrepreneur, and AI thought leader who uses technology to augment human intelligence. He was cofounder, CTO and head of design for Siri, which created the first intelligent assistant for everyone. At Apple, Tom led the Advanced Development Group, which developed new capabilities to bring intelligence to the interface for current and future products. Throughout his career, Tom has explored the intersection of AI and the UI between humans and computers. In the 1980’s he built AI models for communication prosthesis systems that gave voices to the speechless, and interfaces for experts to build their own expert systems. At Stanford University he developed the first interactive documents on the web that generated natural language answers in response to questions about how things work. His AI research, particularly ontology engineering, helped lay the groundwork for semantic information sharing and the Semantic Web. He has created several products and companies that support human collaboration and knowledge sharing. He invented HyperMail, the widely used open-source application that turns email conversations into collective memories on the Web. He was founder and CTO of Intraspect Software, which pioneered the space of Collaborative Knowledge Management — software that helps large communities of professionals contribute to and learn from a collective body of knowledge. He designed and built RealTravel, a collective knowledge system where millions of travelers from around the world share their experiences. Tom promotes the philosophy of Humanistic AI, which he presented in a popular TED talk. He was a founding board member of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society and advocates for the Center for Humane Technology. Tom has served as in an advisory role with many companies including LinkedIn, Internet Archive, SocialText, Powerset, Mindjet, Radar Networks, and Goldman Sachs.  He currently advises companies and organizations that use AI to have a positive impact on humanity, including leaders in Assistive Neurotech, Mental Health Care, Intelligent Customer Interaction, and Predictive Assistance. For more information, see https://tomgruber.org/about-tom/ ## Inhi Cho Suh CEO, Niantic Spatial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/inhi-cho-suh/ Track: World Models Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Inhi Cho Suh – Chief Executive Officer, Niantic Spatial Inhi brings two decades of experience scaling enterprise software and digital AI businesses. She is now bridging the gap between digital and physical AI for complex work in the real world. Inhi is the CEO of Niantic Spatial, a physical AI and research frontier company. As a spinout from Niantic Labs which pioneered augmented reality games for people, Niantic Spatial is an early stage startup based in San Francisco pioneering real world models for machines – robots, wearables, agents, autonomous vehicles – and people. Previously, Inhi was President at DocuSign. She led product, engineering, design, security, customer support, channels and partnerships, growing the customer base from 1 million to 1.4 million paying organizations and taking the company from $2B to $3B in revenue, including its first ever full year of profit. She oversaw one of the largest SaaS and data platforms in the world, innovating with genAI early and driving API traffic to represent over 50% of all platform interactions. Before her operating role, she served four years on DocuSign's board, advising the CEO and leadership team during a period of hyper-growth from $250 million to $2 billion in revenue. Before DocuSign, Inhi spent twenty years at IBM. She led Global Strategic Partnerships – a $10B+ responsibility – working with the world's largest technology companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Amazon, as well as the world's leading consulting firms. As GM of Watson Customer Engagement, she ran P&L across enterprise software, eCommerce and supply chain solutions. Earlier she served as GM of Big Data, building IBM's portfolio across Hadoop, stream computing and machine learning at a time when few enterprise companies were taking those technologies seriously. She was also integral to IBM's acquisition of The Weather Company and has been published and quoted widely on the future of big data and AI. Inhi has given a TED Talk on data and healthcare – reflecting her belief that the most important applications of AI are still ahead of us. She serves on the boards of Otter.ai – the first voice AI agent used by over three million people, reaching over $140 million ARR – and AnitaB.org, the largest global nonprofit advancing women in STEM. She holds a law degree from North Carolina Central University School of Law and a degree in Biology and History from Duke. When she's not thinking about all things AI, she's been known to climb mountains, most recently Everest Base Camp and Yosemite Half Dome. ## Franziska Bell CTO, The Home Depot Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/franziska-bell/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Retail Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Franziska Bell is executive vice president and chief technology officer for The Home Depot. In this role, she leads the strategy, development and alignment of technology, product management, data, artificial intelligence, and user experience across the business. Her focus is on accelerating innovation, reducing friction, and creating seamless, data-driven experiences for associates, DIY customers, and Pros. Throughout her career, Fran has been a globally recognized leader in digital transformation. Prior to joining The Home Depot in 2026, she served as the chief data, AI and analytics officer for Ford Motor Company, where she led the organization's AI modernization. Previously, she was senior vice president of digital technology at BP and held leadership roles at Uber and Toyota. In 2025 she was recognized in the Top 5 Data Leaders in North America, Top 100 Women in AI, Top 100 Women in Tech, and Global Data Power Women. ## Keyao An Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/keyao-an/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Software Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Prashant Mehrotra Chief AI Officer, U.S. Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashant-mehrotra/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Prashant Mehrotra is the Chief AI Officer of U.S. Bank, where he leads the strategy and execution of Artificial Intelligence for the organization. He is an accomplished AI executive, patent holder and speaker, with extensive experience creating, building and leading AI/ML initiatives across finance, insurance, and retail sectors. Prior to joining U.S. Bank, he was Head of the AI Center of Excellence at Allstate, where he led intelligent automation, developed innovative AI-driven platforms, and scaled teams to accelerate AI adoption. With a strong background in Technology, Prashant previously held key leadership roles at Capital One and Staples, where he successfully implemented advanced analytics ecosystems and data strategies. He earned his Bachelor of Technology from IIT Delhi. ## Alex Zhavoronkov Founder and CEO, Insilico Medicine Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alex-zhavoronkov/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, is the founder, CEO and CBO of Insilico Medicine, a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation generative artificial intelligence and automation platforms for drug discovery. Since 2014, he has invented critical technologies in the field of generative artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning (RL) for the generation of novel molecular structures with the desired properties and the generation of synthetic biological and patient data. Under his leadership, Insilico raised over $530 million in multiple rounds from expert biotechnology, healthcare, and financial investors, opened R&D centers in 8 countries and regions, and partnered with multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic institutions. Since 2021, the company nominated more than 22 preclinical candidates, 10 reached clinical stage, and 1 program with a novel target and novel molecule completed Phase Iia in IPF with favorable safety, tolerability and encouraging dose-dependent efficacy. Since 2012, he has published over 310 peer-reviewed research papers and 3 books. He serves on the advisory or editorial boards of Trends in Molecular Medicine, Aging Research Reviews, Aging, and Frontiers in Genetics, and founded and co-chairs the Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery Meeting (12th Annual in 2025). He is the adjunct professor of artificial intelligence at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. ## Jaime Mineart CTO, Caterpillar Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jaime-mineart/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jaime Mineart  serves as chief technology officer and senior vice president at Caterpillar Inc., where she leads the company's Cat Technology division. In this role, she is responsible for driving the development and integration of advanced technology solutions across Caterpillar’s global product portfolio. Her team is at the forefront of advancing machine and site autonomy and automation - enhancing productivity, efficiency and safety across customer operations worldwide. Jaime also oversees enterprise-wide initiatives in innovation, research and development, and AI platform acceleration, ensuring Caterpillar continues to lead the industry in technological excellence and engineering innovation. Prior to her current appointment, Mineart was senior vice president of the Electric Power Division. This organization provides global leadership for the electric power generation business, creating energy outcomes for customers through gensets, renewable energy assets, power optimization solutions, and aftermarket services. Mineart graduated from Purdue with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. ## Kristin Stoller Editorial Director, Fortune Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kristin-stoller/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Kristin Stoller is an editorial director at Fortune focused on expanding Fortune's C-suite communities. She is the author of the weekly Fortune Workplace Innovation newsletter (Mondays) and leads the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit and COO Summit. An experienced journalist and expert in careers and leadership, Stoller was most recently a senior editor at Forbes, where she spearheaded the brand's flagship 30 Under 30 lists, global events, features, and newsletters. While at Forbes, she previously served as the deputy editor of the brand’s business and consumer section, reported on all things related to careers and the workplace, and covered world’s richest people as a member of the wealth team. She’s also held roles at the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Register, covering breaking and local news. ## Jim Fowler Chief Technology and Product Officer, Lumen Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jim-fowler/ Track: Telecom & Connectivity Infrastructure Industry: Telecom Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Ohio Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Jim Fowler - Chief Technology & Product Officer Jim Fowler is Chief Technology & Product Officer for Lumen. He is responsible for the company’s global technology and product strategy, including the continued evolution of Lumen’s network, digital platforms, and product portfolio. Fowler has more than 25 years of experience leading large-scale technology transformation at Fortune 100 companies. He previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Nationwide Insurance, leading the modernization of core technology capabilities and driving the digital transformation of enterprise business operations. Prior to Nationwide, Fowler spent nearly two decades at General Electric, holding a series of senior technology leadership roles, including Chief Information Officer. He began his career at AT&T and worked at Accenture before joining GE. He served on Lumen’s Board of Directors from 2023 to 2025, where he helped shape the company’s transformation strategy and long-term technology roadmap. Fowler serves on the boards of Miami University’s Farmer School of Business, Columbus State Community College, and YearUp, a national nonprofit focused on workforce development and professional skill-building for young adults. ## Micky Tripathi Chief Artificial Intelligence Implementation Officer, Mayo Clinic Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/micky-tripathi/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., is Mayo Clinic’s chief artificial intelligence implementation officer. With a focus on oversight and ongoing monitoring of artificial intelligence (AI) across the Mayo Clinic enterprise, Dr. Tripathi drives AI adoption and establishes streamlined pathways to integrate safe and effective AI into the clinical practice. With over three decades of healthcare leadership experience, Dr. Tripathi’s expertise spans public and private sectors in strategy, product development and operations with a proven track record in leading large-scale health information technology (IT) projects and fostering collaborations. He served as a top federal official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he oversaw clinical data standards, health IT policies, interoperability and health AI regulations. His work established nationwide data and interoperability standards across all HHS divisions and more than 500 electronic health record (EHR) products, impacting 97% of hospitals and 78% of physician offices across the nation. As the HHS’s chief AI officer, he developed AI transparency and risk management regulations for more than 900 certified EHR developers. He also vetted and approved all AI applications. Before joining HHS, Dr. Tripathi served as chief alliance officer at Arcadia. In that role, he was responsible for developing and executing inorganic growth strategies ranging from enterprise partnerships to mergers and acquisitions. Further, he served as the president and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, providing health IT and data analytics services to healthcare customers across the U.S. Dr. Tripathi received his undergraduate studies at Vassar College, earned his master’s degree from Harvard University and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recognized for his visionary yet practical leadership, Dr. Tripathi has served on numerous boards, and he excels in managing complex initiatives at the intersection of health, technology, business and regulation. ## Dikshit Khandelwal Member of Technical Staff, Platform and Security, OpenAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dikshit-khandelwal/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dikshit Khandelwal is a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, where he works as a Client Platform Engineer building secure, reliable systems for managing endpoints at scale. His work sits at the intersection of infrastructure, security, and employee experience, with a focus on device trust, fleet management, automation, and making strong security controls feel seamless to users. Before joining OpenAI, Dikshit worked at Coinbase, where he built and operated client-platform infrastructure and security tooling in a fast-moving enterprise environment. He is passionate about transforming complex operational problems into simple, automated platforms and believes security should be designed into infrastructure from the beginning not added afterward. As organizations move toward AI-enabled workflows, Dikshit is especially interested in how secure endpoint foundations can help them innovate quickly without sacrificing reliability, trust, or usability. ## Biswa Sengupta Chief AI Technologist: LLM Suite, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/biswa-sengupta/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Biswa Sengupta is the Managing Director for Generative AI Solutions at J.P. Morgan, where he leads the development of cutting-edge Generative AI products and serves as the chief technologist of the firm’s flagship LLM Suite. With a PhD in dynamical systems, and optimization from the University of Cambridge, complemented by advanced training in Bayesian machine learning and differential geometry from University College London, Dr. Sengupta brings a robust academic foundation to his work. A seasoned senior technical executive, he has a proven track record of spearheading AI initiatives across startups and global enterprises, including AXA XL, Huawei, Zebra, and J.P. Morgan. Renowned for his hands-on leadership style, Dr. Sengupta excels in driving commercially successful innovations leveraging technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and robotics. ## Andrew Yang CEO, Noble Mobile Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-yang/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Telecom Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Andrew Yang (born January 13, 1975, in Schenectady, NY) is an entrepreneur, author, political leader, and philanthropist best known for his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign and his bold advocacy for Universal Basic Income (UBI). The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Yang grew up in Westchester County, NY. After excelling at Phillips Exeter Academy, Yang earned degrees from Brown University (Economics and Political Science) and Columbia Law School. He started his career as a corporate lawyer but quickly shifted to the startup world, finding purpose as CEO of Manhattan Prep, which he grew until its sale to Kaplan in 2009. He then founded Venture for America, a nonprofit that placed young graduates in startups across struggling U.S. cities, aiming to revitalize local economies through entrepreneurship. Yang was recognized as a “Champion of Change” and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship by the Obama White House. In 2017, Yang announced his run for president, captivating younger voters with his “Freedom Dividend” proposal—$1,000 per month for every American adult to counter job loss from automation. His campaign’s slogans—“MATH” and “Not Left, Not Right, but Forward”—sparked a passionate “Yang Gang” and elevated UBI into the national debate. Following his presidential bid, Yang launched Humanity Forward to pilot direct cash relief and advocate for data privacy, mental health, and democracy reform. In 2021, he ran for NYC Mayor and later founded the Forward Party, seeking to break the two-party gridlock through ranked-choice voting and open primaries. His latest venture, Noble Mobile, is a the first wireless carrier that pays you to use your phone less - putting money back in consumer's pockets and getting them off their phones. Yang is the author of Smart People Should Build Things, The War on Normal People, Forward, and The Last Election. His most recent book, "Hey Yang, Where's My Thousand Bucks?" is a collection of stories and reflections from his life in the public eye. He lives in NYC with his wife, Evelyn, and their two sons. A champion of pragmatic solutions and future-focused ideas, Andrew Yang continues to challenge America to rethink work, technology, and the shape of its democracy. ## Stian Kirkeberg Head of AI & ML, Norges Bank Investment Management Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stian-kirkeberg/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Stian Kirkeberg is Head of AI and Machine Learning at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), Norway's $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund. He leads AI transformation across 700+ employees in Oslo, London, New York, and Singapore. Since joining NBIM's leadership team, Stian has driven the organization from experimentation to production deployment. His transformation strategy moved NBIM through democratization, organizational adoption, and strategic execution, achieving 20%+ efficiency gains and several production systems. Under his leadership, NBIM established 71 AI Ambassadors across all business areas, transitioning from hundres pilot projects to standardized production systems serving both administrative and investment operations. Stian led the build of NBIM's AI infrastructure on Anthropic's Claude platform, integrating with AWS, Snowflake, and SharePoint while maintaining security and governance standards required for a sovereign wealth fund. His work has been featured in Anthropic's customer case studies and financial services webinars. Prior to NBIM, he developed expertise in architecture, cloud, machine learning, and quantitative investment strategies. Stian holds a master's degree in computer science and finance. He focuses on practical AI implementation, organizational change management, and measuring ROI in financial services. ## Matt Egan Senior Reporter, CNN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-egan/ Track: World Models Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Matt Egan is an award-winning senior reporter at CNN, covering business, the economy and financial markets across CNN’s television and digital platforms. He is based in the network’s New York bureau and lives in Bergen County, New Jersey with his wife and three boys. Egan has been with CNN since 2014, most recently as a reporter and lead writer for CNN Business. In that role, he provided breaking news coverage and daily analysis, as well as in-depth investigations. Since joining CNN, Egan has conducted exclusive and news-making interviews with business leaders, government officials, investors and lawmakers, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Cisco President Jeetu Patel and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li. He helped lead CNN Business’ coverage of the Iran war impact on energy prices, the 2022 inflation crisis, the Federal Reserve’s emergency response to high prices, turmoil at Ivy League schools, and the Covid recession among other major stories. He spoke with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in his first interview after President Joe Biden stepped down from the 2024 presidential race, and scooped numerous stories on the artificial intelligence boom. Egan wrote a series of articles on turmoil in the overnight lending markets that won the Best in Business award by the Society for Advancing, Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) in 2019. Another series of stories Egan wrote on the dismantling of General Electric won an EPPY in 2018 for best business reporting. Egan’s months-long investigation into the Wells Fargo scandal was widely cited by other media outlets, regulators and lawmakers; and it was honored by SABEW and the Society of Professional Journalists. Before joining CNN, Egan was a senior reporter at Fox Business and a staff writer at the Trenton Times. He graduated from The College of New Jersey with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. ## Vijay Badrinarayanan VP of AI, Wayve.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vijay-badrinarayanan/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Cadmium Role: Presenter Vijay is an expert in deep learning and artificial intelligence, with a focus on research and product development. He previously led R&D teams at Magic Leap to develop groundbreaking deep neural network products for power-constrained mixed reality headsets. As VP of AI at Wayve, Vijay is leading a team of applied researchers focused on exploring representation learning, simulation intelligence and combined vision and language models with a view towards bringing this cutting-edge approach to AVs to market. ## Yun-Hee Kim Deputy Editor, Washington Post Intelligence, The Washington Post Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yun-hee-kim/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Yun-Hee Kim is Deputy Editor of Washington Post Intelligence, where she helps lead and guide reporters, researchers and analysts to deliver sharp and insightful analysis for professional readers across four verticals: global security, tech & AI, energy & climate and healthcare. She also oversees two daily newsletters on AI and health care policy, and shapes content strategy and hosts editorial events. Prior to this role, Yun-Hee was Technology Editor and San Francisco Bureau Chief, where she led award-winning teams of reporters, editors and columnists covering Silicon Valley’s tech giants from Apple to Google and Amazon, and artificial intelligence, personal technology, the future of work and internet culture. Her team’s work has been recognized by SABEW, Online News Association and Gerald Loeb Awards. Before joining The Post in 2021 as personal technology editor, Yun-Hee spent more than two decades at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, where she reported and led business and financial news teams from New York, Hong Kong and Seoul. At the Journal, Yun-Hee also led an expansion into live tech events, serving as editorial director for the flagship WSJ Tech Live conference, and conducted onstage interviews with numerous tech executives and business leaders. Born in Paris and raised in Paris, Seoul, Toronto and New York, Yun-Hee holds a Master of Science degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. ## Jorge Reis-Filho Chief of AI for Science Innovation, AstraZeneca Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jorge-reis-filho/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jorge S. Reis-Filho, MD PhD FRCPath Chief of AI for Science Innovation As Chief of AI for Science Innovation, Dr. Jorge S. Reis-Filho leads a cross-therapeutic team of oncology and biopharma AI across AstraZeneca, primarily focusing on the development and deployment of multimodal foundation models, advanced data science approaches, and agentic AI frameworks to drive innovation throughout AstraZeneca’s pipeline and portfolio. Through the integration of rigorously validated AI-driven approaches across R&D, AstraZeneca aims to accelerate drug discovery and transform the future of healthcare by unlocking the power of what science can do for people, society and the planet. Dr. Reis-Filho earned a joint MD from the University of Porto, Portugal, and the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil; completed histopathology training at the University of Porto; and obtained a PhD in breast cancer molecular pathology from the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, where he rose to Team Leader and subsequently Professor and Chair of Molecular Pathology. In 2012, he joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, becoming Chief of Experimental Pathology and Director of the Experimental Pathology Fellowship Program in 2016. Author of more than 700 peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Reis-Filho has defined molecular taxonomies for rare tumours, created a predictive classification of breast cancer, elucidated the causes and consequences of intra-tumour genetic heterogeneity, and pioneered technologies ranging from single-cell DNA sequencing of archival tissue to FDA-cleared computational pathology diagnostics. His contributions to the field have been recognised by multiple awards, including the USCAP Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award (2010), the CRUK Future Leaders Prize (2010), the Goudie Medal and Lectureship (2023), the BCRF Larry Norton Award (2023), and the MSKCC William Gerald Award (2024). He is also the youngest individual ever elected Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists by published works. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Dr. Reis-Filho consulted for Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking and Bain Capital, in addition to serving on the boards of directors and scientific advisory boards for several biotechnology companies, guiding strategy across precision medicine and artificial intelligence. ## Kristin Milchanowski Chief AI and Quantum Officer, BMO Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kristin-milchanowski/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kristin Milchanowski Chief AI and Quantum Officer, BMO Kristin Milchanowski is BMO Financial Group’s Chief AI & Quantum Officer and the Founding Director of the BMO Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence & Quantum, an enterprise-wide Centre of Excellence focused on the responsible innovation, application and governance of artificial intelligence and the advancement of quantum capabilities. In this role, Kristin leads BMO’s AI and Quantum agenda across the enterprise and is a member of the Technology & Operations (T&O) Executive Committee. She is responsible for shaping and advancing the bank’s AI and quantum strategies and supporting technologies, while strengthening data management, governance and trust. Through the Institute, she brings together expertise across science, policy, ethics and commercialization to translate leading edge technologies into meaningful, well governed value for BMO clients and the broader economy. Kristin is a global AI executive with more than 20 years of experience across financial services and manufacturing, known for transforming organizations by unlocking the full potential of data and advanced technology. Prior to joining BMO, she was a Global Innovation Partner and Principal at EY, where she led the Global Lab focused on AI, high performance computing and quantum technologies. Earlier in her career, she served as Chief Data Scientist at Morgan Stanley and held senior leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase, including Head of Global Financial Crimes Compliance Technology and Model Management. Kristin is an AI Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she completed post doctoral studies in artificial intelligence. She holds a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Colorado, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University. Her current research sits at the intersection of AI and quantum, including pioneering work in Quantum Game Theory. She is the author of Return on Intelligence: A Strategic Enterprise Playbook for Scalable AI Agents, which redefines enterprise transformation in the age of artificial intelligence and outlines a governing framework for deploying AI agents at scale. Kristin has previously served as a foundation board member of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and of Automobili Lamborghini in Bologna, Italy. She is also the author and illustrator of the children’s book Tell Me Henry, created to advocate for greater diversity in children’s literature. Most recently, she was named one of AI Magazine’s Top 100 Leaders in AI and to American Banker’s Most Innovative People in Finance list. ## Will Ellsworth Researcher, OpenAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/will-ellsworth/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Will Ellsworth is a researcher at OpenAI focusing on agents, RL, and posttraining. He currently works on ChatGPT Search and previously served as the lead researcher for browser agents, which has since launched in both ChatGPT Atlas and Codex. ## Claudia Cosoreanu Chief Technology Officer, GE Vernova Grid Automation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/claudia-cosoreanu/ Track: Energy Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Claudia Cosoreanu Chief Technology Officer Grid Automation, Electrification Segment GE Vernova Claudia is the Chief Technology Officer, Grid Automation at GE Vernova, where she leads the vision and strategy for AI/ML empowered grid technologies. In this role, she is focused on advancing innovation across digital substations, grid intelligence, automation services, and cybersecurity— enabling utilities & industries to modernize their infrastructure, increase grid resilience, and accelerate the energy transition. She works closely with global teams and customers to shape technology roadmaps that enable higher renewable penetration, reduced maintenance costs, and improved operational uptime. With over 30 years of experience in the energy industry, Claudia brings deep expertise in product management, advanced technologies, strategic planning, and systems thinking. Prior to becoming CTO, she led the Grid Automation Protection, Automation & Control, including Services & Advanced Automation Applications Product Lines, delivering differentiated solutions through strong customer partnerships and innovation-driven teams. Earlier, Claudia served as a Business Program Manager at GE Vernova’s Advanced Research Center, where she shaped and managed investment portfolios for the Energy Connections and Oil & Gas businesses. She collaborated with product managers and engineering leaders to quantify product differentiation value, design technology roadmaps, and develop innovative business models. Her early career included designing industrial control systems for ArcelorMittal and developing control and automation systems for the Atlantis XV tourist submarine. Claudia holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Automation & Control, as well as an MBA in Marketing. She has been recognized with the 2009 Women in Technology and the 2015 Corporate Technology Staff Leadership Awards within GE Vernova. Claudia is also the holder of three patents in the energy industry. She is a passionate advocate for inclusive, collaborative, and intellectually curious work environments—believing they are essential for fostering innovation and driving meaningful progress. Outside of work, Claudia enjoys reading, spending time with her family, and taking long walks on the beach. ## Sagnik Nandy CTO, Docusign Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sagnik-nandy/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Sagnik Nandy is the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Docusign responsible for engineering, cloud operations, and technology strategy that enables customers globally to run their organizations on Docusign. Most recently, Sagnik served as the President and Chief Development Officer for Workforce Identity at Okta where led engineering development and operations, product management, and design and user research. Earlier, he joined Okta as their CTO, overseeing the engineering and business technology arms of the company. Prior to Okta, Sagnik served as the Vice President of Engineering at Google where he oversaw several critical components of Google’s core advertising business, the backbone of the company’s growth and revenue. During his 15 years at Google, Sagnik also helped build Google’s Measurement and Analytics offerings and took several products from inception to becoming market leaders. Sagnik has a bachelor’s degree from the BITS, Pilani (Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani) and a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from UC San Diego. ## Andrea Gilman Chief Marketing Officer, Early Warning Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrea-gilman/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Andrea Gilman is Chief Marketing Officer at Early Warning®, the company behind Zelle®, Paze℠, and Certos℠. With more than 25 years of experience, she is known for building brands that drive growth and trust. Since joining Early Warning in 2023, Andrea has helped lead the launch of Paze℠, continued to evolve Zelle®, and helped rebrand the company’s identity protection business as Certos℠. Previously, she held senior leadership roles at Mastercard, where she helped shape innovation strategy for B2B real-time payments. Andrea brings deep expertise across marketing, product development, and digital transformation, with a focus on creating meaningful value for consumers and businesses. She is a graduate of Bowdoin College and NYU Stern School of Business. ## Tony Ambrozie SVP, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, CVS Health | Health100 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tony-ambrozie/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tony Ambrozie is the SVP and Chief Digital & Technology Officer for CVS Health. Since joining CVS Health in 2023, he has led the development and innovation of digital consumer and pharmacy team experiences while overseeing the product and engineering teams driving the Open Engagement Platform, as well as application security. He brings more than 30 years of expertise in data, digital transformation, cybersecurity, and technology across healthcare, hospitality, and financial services. Before CVS Health, Tony led digital transformation at Baptist Health South Florida and was a technology leader at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, where he helped create the MagicBand experience and modernized the tech ecosystem at Disneyland Paris. At American Express, he developed the next generation digital platform for members. Tony published his first book, Doing Digital – Lessons Learned on How to Do and Be Digital, in February 2024. He holds dual MBA and MS degrees in Information Management from Arizona State University. ## Janeen Uzzell Chief Executive Officer, National Society of Black Engineers Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/janeen-uzzell/ Track: Diversity in AI Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Janeen Uzzell serves as the CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), where she leverages her experience as a trisector leader in technology, business, and social justice to advance the number of culturally responsible Black engineers. A globally recognized voice in STEM and a newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, Uzzell drives strategic initiatives to increase representation and inclusion across innovative fields and is dedicated to shaping policy and creating opportunities that advance equitable talent development in tech and engineering. Janeen Uzzell’s election to the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest professional honors in the engineering field, recognizing a career that spans global leadership roles across multiple sectors and her work as a trailblazer in advancing organizational diversity and equity in STEM. Prior to NSBE, Uzzell served as the Chief Operating Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she not only oversaw the operations of one of the world’s most visited websites but also launched the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund, a $4.5 million initiative aimed at addressing racial inequities in access to free knowledge. Her extensive career includes almost two decades at General Electric (GE), where she was instrumental in accelerating the representation of women in technology roles and leading high-impact initiatives in healthcare and emerging markets across Africa. Janeen Uzzell has also served as an advisor on the White House Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), where she continued to help shape national policy. Currently, she sits on the boards of Mercy Ships International, the Maryland Aerospace and Technology Commission, and the DFree Global Foundation, further extending her impact in the global health, engineering, and equity spaces. Recognized by ADWEEK as one of the Top Black Women Trailblazers in Tech and honored with the United Nations Global Leadership Award, Janeen Uzzell’s multifaceted career continues to redefine leadership in STEM, social justice, and innovation. ## Andrew Rabinovich Chief Technology Officer, Head of AI & ML, Upwork Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-rabinovich/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Andrew Rabinovich is Chief Technology Officer and head of artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML) at Upwork, where he leads all aspects of the company’s transformation to compete in the age of AI. Andrew has been studying machine learning with an emphasis in computer vision and multimodal AI for over 20 years. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and patents. Andrew worked for years in R&D leadership positions at Google. In 2015, he joined the preeminent AR company Magic Leap as head of AI, focused on perception and human-centered AI for mixed and augmented reality. In 2020, Andrew co-founded Headroom, an AI-powered video conferencing platform. In 2023, Headroom was acquired by Upwork, with Andrew and the Headroom team joining the company. Andrew holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University of California San Diego. ## Ravi Ummadisetti Head of Agentic AI & Product Research, Toyota North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ravi-ummadisetti/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Will Bryk CEO & Co-founder, Exa Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/will-bryk/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Team or company is hiring: Yes Will Bryk is co-founder and CEO of Exa, building the next generation of search. Exa powers search for Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, OpenRouter, and over 400,000 developers, and recently raised a $250M Series C at a $2.2B valuation from a16z, Benchmark, Lightspeed, Nvidia, and Y Combinator. ## Eric Nguyen CEO, Radical Numerics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-nguyen/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Eric Nguyen is co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics, an AI research lab building general biological intelligence. He led the team behind Evo, the first model to enable DNA design with large language models, which made the cover of Science and that Eric presented at TED2025. Eric holds a PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford and previously worked at Meta. He co-founded Radical Numerics to advance biological design for human health while building the biodefenses to protect it. ## Ron Whitworth Chief Privacy Officer, Truist Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ron-whitworth/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Ron Whitworth is Chief Privacy Officer at Truist in Charlotte, N.C., managing the Enterprise Privacy and Technology Office (EPTO) within Compliance Risk Management. The EPTO is responsible for overseeing global privacy, technology and AI compliance for Truist Financial Corporation and all of its affiliates and subsidiaries. Ron is a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP), Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional (AIGP), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) and Certified Information Privacy Professional for the United States, Canada and Europe (CIPP/US, CIPP/C and CIPP/E), as certified by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Ron was also appointed on May 23, 2018 by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee (DPIAC). He served three terms on this federal advisory committee. Prior to joining Truist, Ron served as Chief Privacy Officer and Associate General Counsel at EverBank in Jacksonville, FL. Earlier in his legal career, Ron was an attorney with Sullivan & Worcester, LLP, counseling clients on a wide variety of state, U.S., and international privacy and data security matters. He was also a member of S&W's Telecommunications Group, and worked closely with its Trademarks, Copyright & Licensing Group on matters involving online businesses. Before joining Sullivan & Worcester, Ron was a member of Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein’s staff at the FCC, and was an Associate with Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, P.L.C. Ron also spent six years as editor-in-chief of Inside Wisconsin and Badger Nation Magazine and covered University of Wisconsin athletics for the Associated Press. He has appeared on dozens of local and national radio and television programs, including ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio. Ron is also a former associate producer for "The George Michael Sports Machine" and the NBC-4 Sports Department in Washington, D.C. ## Bruce Smith CEO, Voltava Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bruce-smith/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Bruce Smith is a manufacturing industry executive with more than 30 years of experience building high-performance organizations, driving profitability, and accelerating growth. Throughout his career, he has strengthened enterprise value by developing strong leadership teams, executing strategic transformations, and delivering operational excellence. Smith is Owner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Voltava, formed in December 2025. Voltava was created from Smith’s former company, Detroit Manufacturing Systems (DMS) - a Detroit-based contract manufacturer - through the acquisition of Android Industries and Avancez, leaders in complex module assembly, sequencing, and value-added services. Smith previously served as Chairman and CEO of DMS. Voltava employs approximately 5,500 people across 21 global locations, positioning the company to serve OEM partners worldwide. Smith assumed leadership and partial ownership of DMS in 2018, expanded its capabilities, and scaled the business to more than $1 billion in annual revenue. In 2023, he became sole owner of DMS. His leadership style emphasizes authenticity, collaboration, and empowerment, along with a strong commitment to community engagement through charitable and volunteer efforts. Before Voltava and DMS, Smith held senior executive roles with private equity–backed companies. Most notably, he served as co-owner, President, and CEO of BTM Company, a global leader in precision-engineered tooling and production equipment, growing the business nearly 40 percent in three years. Earlier in his career, Smith served as President and CEO of Elyria & Hodge Foundries and Piston Group, and as President and COO of Guilford Mills and United Plastics Group, driving revenue and profitability gains through innovative strategies and lean manufacturing disciplines. In 2023, Smith was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Michigan and Northwest Ohio. He serves on the boards of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce and MichAuto and is a member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Mechanical Engineering Advocacy Council. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Harvard University. Bruce is married and the father of four. He enjoys time with his family, reading, athletics, music, and travel. ## Alice Park Senior Health Correspondent, TIME Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alice-park/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Alice Park is the senior health correspondent with TIME and author of The Stem Cell Hope, How Stem Cell Medicine Can Change Our Lives. In 2019, she co-chaired the inaugural Time 100 Health Summit. She has written cover stories on stem cells, childhood vaccinations, the health care system, heart disease, HIV, cancer immunotherapy and the gene editing technology CRISPR. She contributed to TIME’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the race to develop effective vaccines. Each year, she contributes to the TIME 100 Health leaders issue that recognizes leaders in the field. Park also contributes to the magazine’s Olympics coverage, covering figure skating, gymnastics and swimming. ## Roberta Schwartz EVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Houston Methodist Hospital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/roberta-schwartz/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Roberta L. Schwartz is the executive vice president of Houston Methodist Hospital — one of the founding institutions of the Texas Medical Center — and the chief innovation officer of Houston Methodist. As executive vice president of Houston Methodist Hospital, Roberta oversees all operations at the 979-bed hospital, which U.S. News & World Report named the No. 1 hospital in Texas for 13 straight years (tied for No. 1 in 2023-2024). The publication also listed Houston Methodist Hospital to its prestigious “Honor Roll” seven times. As chief innovation officer, Roberta is responsible for advancing and expanding Houston Methodist’s digital innovation platforms, including telemedicine, artificial intelligence and big data. Prior to joining Houston Methodist, Roberta worked as the director of business development for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She was also a consultant and project manager for several academic medical centers for APM/Computer Sciences Corp. and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Roberta earned a master’s degree in health science from Johns Hopkins University and an honors undergraduate degree from Barnard College at Columbia University. She has a Ph.D. from UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Roberta is nationally recognized for her professional and nonprofit work. She was recognized by Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Women Leaders as one of its “10 Women to Watch.” She is involved in many nonprofit organizations, such as LifeGift, the Robert M. Beren Academy, the United Orthodox Synagogues and the Young Survival Coalition. ## Gideon Lewis-Kraus Technology Writer, The New Yorker Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gideon-lewis-kraus/ Track: Keynote Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Gideon Lewis-Kraus is a staff writer at The New Yorker. ## Ali Dasdan CTO, Dropbox Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ali-dasdan/ Track: Software: Productivity & Collaboration Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ali Dasdan is serving as our Chief Technology Officer since March 2025. Prior to joining Dropbox, he held various engineering and product management leadership roles at high technology companies in the Silicon Valley, USA and the UK. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. ## Melva Wallace President & CEO, Huston-Tillotson University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/melva-wallace/ Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Dr. Melva K. Wallace President and CEO of Huston-Tillotson University Results, stability, and forward planning define the leadership of Dr. Melva K. Wallace, Seventh President and CEO of Huston-Tillotson University, a nationally ranked private liberal arts historically Black college and university (HBCU) and the third oldest business in the city of Austin, Texas. Her career spans more than 20 years in senior leadership across public and private higher education. Since she took the helm in 2022, Huston-Tillotson University has advanced measurably in national prominence, fundraising, enrollment strategy, and academic innovation, including expanded international, graduate, and online offerings. Most notably, Huston Tillotson secured a historic $150 million philanthropic investment from the Moody Foundation—the largest gift in HBCU history—and the top 30 largest gift to any university in the country. Dr. Wallace is widely regarded for her innovation, advocacy on AI use at our nation’s HBCUS, disciplined financial management and strategic execution. Prior to her presidency, she held senior executive appointments within the Southern University System, the only HBCU system in the nation. Her service as vice chancellor and chief of staff included system-level oversight of multiple campuses and complex operations. Earlier academic leadership roles included service at Centenary College of Louisiana, where she contributed to student retention initiatives and now serves on the Board of Trustees. Nationally, Dr. Wallace is recognized for her perspective on HBCUs and higher education leadership. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, she studied leadership under former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. W. Bush. Her honors include the ATHENA Leadership Award, recognition by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as a leading minority woman in higher education, designation as one of Texas’ Top 100 Influential Texans in Business, and the Austin Chamber’s Top CEO award for 2026. Her academic preparation includes degrees from Grambling State University and a Ph.D. from Jackson State University. She is married to Dr. D. L. Wallace, who is the CEO of an ed tech company and pastor who has been on the cover of Money magazine and Global Millionaire. They reside in the Dallas, Texas area. ## Anthony Moisant CIO, CISO, Indeed Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anthony-moisant/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Anthony Moisant is Chief Information Officer (CIO) & Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Indeed. In his role, Anthony leads the global teams responsible for protecting Indeed’s marketplace, including cybersecurity, privacy, data protection, physical security, and enterprise systems. His work is centered on building trust while ensuring that Indeed’s services are resilient, reliable, and secure. Anthony is also driving Indeed’s evolution into an AI-first company. He focuses on bringing secure and responsible AI into everyday workflows so teams can work smarter, move faster, and deliver better outcomes for job seekers and employers. In addition to his role at Indeed, Anthony serves as an executive officer at Indeed’s parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. In this capacity, he oversees security and information technology functions for Recruit’s HR technology strategic business unit. A U.S. Navy veteran, Anthony has held leadership roles at Glassdoor, Tribune Media, and Sony Gracenote. He serves on the CXO Advisory Board of Sierra Ventures and is a graduate of Boston University’s CIO Executive Program and the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine School. ## Amy Ritualo Chief Data and AI Officer, U.S. Department of State Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amy-ritualo/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Government Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No ## Noland Arbaugh World's First Neuralink Cyborg, Noland Arbaugh LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/noland-arbaugh/ Track: Emerging Parallel Technologies Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Noland Arbaugh is the world’s first human to receive a Neuralink brain computer interface, a device designed to bridge mind and machine. Some call it a brain chip. Others call it an implant. Noland calls her Eve. A 2016 accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. In 2024, Eve reconnected him to the world. Using only his thoughts, Noland can play games, study neuroscience, build a business, and experience a level of independence he once believed was lost. Today, as a keynote speaker, he shares his story with humility and humor, offering audiences a rare perspective on what it means to live as a cyborg in the modern world. Noland does not just inspire. He challenges audiences to rethink the future of human potential. ## Reena Solomon Head of AI Partnerships, Airbus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/reena-solomon/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Reena Solomon is a strategic leader with a proven track record of driving innovation at the intersection of emerging technology and business impact. As Head of AI Partnerships at Acubed, the Airbus Silicon Valley Innovation Center, she guides the development and implementation of AI solutions to transform the aerospace industry. Reena's expertise is built on a foundation of diverse experiences in startups and global multinational companies. She excels at identifying emerging technology trends and developing impactful strategies to leverage AI's transformative power. Her accomplishments include spearheading crucial AI R&D initiatives at Samsung's Innovation Center. Reena holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management. She is passionate about shaping the future of AI and its potential to revolutionize industries and improve lives. ## Saral Jain CIO and SVP of Engineering, Snap Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/saral-jain/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Saral Jain is SVP of Engineering and Chief Information Officer at Snap Inc., where he leads all engineering efforts for Snapchat, including building products that reach our global community of almost a billion Snapchat users. His team builds our product experiences, multi-cloud infrastructure, machine learning and generative AI platforms - that lay the foundation for technical excellence at Snap. His organization spans engineering, research, product, program management, and operations, with teams distributed across the globe. Before joining Snap, Saral spent 12 years in engineering leadership roles at Amazon (AWS and Amazon Go), Microsoft, and Morgan Stanley. He has led teams across consumer, enterprise and research initiatives —bringing deep expertise in scalable systems, AI-driven platforms, and cloud infrastructure. Outside of work, Saral enjoys traveling, reading, hiking, and exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest with his wife and their three-year-old son. ## Christy Borrowman VP of Marketing & Transformation, Colgate-Palmolive Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christy-borrowman/ Track: Marketing & Growth Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Karrie Dixon Chancellor, North Carolina Central University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/karrie-dixon/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Karrie G. Dixon serves as the 13th chancellor of North Carolina Central University, assuming the role on July 1, 2024, following her election by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. A seasoned higher education leader within the UNC System, Dr. Dixon leads NCCU with a vision that continues to inspire and shape the future of higher education. She is recognized for her commitment to student success, academic excellence, and institutional transformation. Prior to joining North Carolina Central University, Dr. Dixon served as the 12th chief executive officer and 7th chancellor of Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), where she first held the role in an interim capacity beginning in 2018. She played a pivotal role in ECSU’s strategic turnaround and growth, building on earlier work as co-lead of the university’s New Directions initiative. Notably, she is the first woman to serve as chancellor at two institutions within the UNC System. Dr. Dixon previously served as Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs for the UNC System, where she provided leadership across all 17 constituent institutions. In this role, she guided academic policy, strengthened student success initiatives, and advanced partnerships with the North Carolina Community College System, independent institutions, and the Department of Public Instruction. Dixon led key statewide initiatives, including CFNC Pathways and the NC State Approving Agency, and championed efforts to enhance transfer pathways, enrollment, campus safety, and support for military-affiliated students. An active and respected leader in higher education, Dr. Dixon serves on the Research Triangle Foundation and the Board of Directors for Project Kitty Hawk and is a charter member of the Black Women Collegiate Presidents and Chancellors. Her previous service includes appointments to the SACSCOC Board of Trustees, the AASCU Board of Directors, and the AGB Council of Presidents, among others. Dr. Dixon’s contributions have been widely recognized through numerous honors, including the Old North State Award, the William C. Friday Lifetime Achievement Award, the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, and recognition as one of the “Power 50 Women of Influence” by the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. She has also been named among the “Ten Most Dominant HBCU Leaders” and recognized by multiple organizations for her leadership, service, and impact. A dedicated educator, Dr. Dixon is a Professor of Higher Education at North Carolina Central University. She holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is also a proud mother of two daughters. ## Thomas Germain Senior Technology Journalist, The BBC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thomas-germain/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Thomas Germain is a senior technology journalist at BBC and co-host of The Interface podcast. His reporting covers AI, privacy, social media, and the hidden systems that shape our world, exploring how we use technology and how technology uses us. Germain's work has shaped public debate around some of the world’s most powerful companies. His investigation of the health-tech company GoodRX sparked an FTC lawsuit that created groundbreaking new protections for online medical data. Under pressure from his reporting, Meta deleted facial recognition data on more than a billion people. ## Lutz Beck CIO, Daimler Truck North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lutz-beck/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Automotive Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Lutz Beck, Chief Information Officer at Daimler Truck North America (DTNA), is shaping the future of IT. By directing cultural change through digital activation, his visionary IT strategy guides digital transformation at DTNA, positioning the organization at the cutting edge of technology. Lutz champions IT Leadership, disruptive ideas and innovation by re-imagining the way business is done. Before becoming the CIO at DTNA, Lutz was the CIO at Daimler Truck Asia (Mitsubishi Fuso in Japan and Bharat Benz in India). As CIO, Lutz was responsible for the overarching IT technology strategy 'Connected X'. Under his leadership, connectivity and big data analytics for DTA were initiated, developed, and successfully established. Before DTA, Lutz held various management positions at Daimler in Germany. ## Tim Martin CTO, Audible Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-martin/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: New Jersey Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Tim Martin is the Chief Technology Officer of Audible, the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling. Tim has been CTO since 2020 and is responsible for all aspects of Audible’s global technology organization. Tim joined Audible as VP of Technology and General Manager of the Cambridge, MA office in 2014, and relocated to Global Headquarters in Newark, NJ in 2016 as SVP, Technology. During his tenure leading Audible’s Consumer Technology team he helped build an organization that has pioneered innovative audio experiences through billions of hours of content offered to millions of listeners worldwide. Under Tim’s stewardship, Audible transformed its audio experience and delighted customers with advancements in Machine Learning, Alexa Voice Technology and achieving 5-star customer ratings on Audible mobile applications, while operating through an AWS tech stack at Amazon retail scale. Tim is the Executive Sponsor of Audible Women in Tech and a champion of Spectrum & Belonging programs across Audible and Amazon. Prior to joining Audible, he led two technology organizations through periods of global growth, most recently as Vice President of Software Development for Vistaprint and prior to that as Director of Technology for Sapient. He has a BA in Computer Science from Harvard University. ## Kartik Sakthivel CIO, John Hancock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kartik-sakthivel/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Insurance Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Kartik Sakthivel, John Hancock Chief Information Officer Kartik Sakthivel, Ph.D., is the Chief Information Officer at John Hancock. A member of the Global Technology and US leadership teams, Kartik is responsible for technology strategy and architecture, as well as supporting product design and delivery, operational excellence, and optimizing transformation and value creation. Prior to joining John Hancock, Kartik served as the Vice President and global Chief Information Officer for LIMRA LOMA and LL Global, a non-profit worldwide trade association for the financial services industry. He has held leadership roles in companies of all sizes, ranging from small and midsize firms to Fortune 100 organizations across multiple industries. Kartik has authored several books on AI and business leadership and speaks frequently on these topics. Kartik holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science (with a focus on information quality and a dissertation on best practices for AI) and a graduate certificate in Information Quality from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He also received a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems/IT and an M.B.A. from Southern New Hampshire University. ## Erin Boyd Chief Digital Strategy & AI Officer, The AES Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erin-boyd/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Erin Boyd serves as Chief Digital Strategy & AI Officer at AES, where she leads enterprise digital strategy, artificial intelligence, and business transformation initiatives to create the world’s first AI-native energy company. A Ph.D. economist and business executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience, Erin has led large-scale initiatives spanning technology, analytics, operations, strategy, and organizational transformation. Her work sits at the intersection of economics, AI, and decision-making, helping organizations move beyond technology adoption to rethink how value is created, decisions are made, and enterprises are designed. Drawing from economics, organizational theory, and real-world transformation experience, she is a frequent speaker on the economics of AI, enterprise transformation, and the future of organizations in a world of abundant intelligence. Erin is also the author of the newly released book Decision Poetry, which explores how economics and decision-making can help people navigate complexity, make better choices, and create more meaningful outcomes. ## Jack McCauley Co-founder Oculus, Board of Trustee at UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jack-mccauley/ Track: Emerging Parallel Technologies Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Publication: One of the Greatest Inventors Alive along with Elon Muck by www.grunge.com · Mar 30, 2022 Jack McCauley is an engineer, hardware designer, inventor, video game developer, and philanthropist. Jack is best known for designing the guitars and drums for the Guitar Hero video game series, and as a co-founder and chief engineer at Oculus VR. Jack holds numerous U.S. patents for inventions in software, audio effects, virtual reality, motion control, computer peripherals, and video game hardware and controllers Jack has worked with companies like Oculus, Atari, RedOctane, Electronic Arts, Activision, and Microsoft. He is a member of the MEMS Industry Group and an expert in the video game peripheral engineering space. Jack co-founded Oculus VR with Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Nate Mitchell, Michael Antonov and Andrew Scott Reisse. Jack produced the DK1, DK2 and DKHD products for Oculus and managed the engineering design and production until the company was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. Previously, Jack was the key developer on Activision's GuitarHero franchise. Jack designed the guitars and drums for GuitarHero , including the XBOX, PS2, PS3 and Nintendo Wii. Jack has numerous awards and patents in the video game space, including a RED-DOT award for product design for bone-conducting headphones. In 1987, Jack invented the scrolling wheel mouse. Jack is also one of the originators of the USB specification. He served on the HID USB device working group whilst developing the USB. He also has publications for artificial intelligence algorithms and is a researcher in this field. ## Michael Giannangeli Head of Product, Agentic AI, Amazon Nova, Amazon Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michael-giannangeli/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Michael leads Agentic AI for Amazon’s state-of-the-art Nova foundation models, focused on building the capabilities for intelligent systems to reason, act, and scale in the real world. Previously, Michael helped grow Alexa from 1M to 100M+ customers, culminating in the launch of Alexa+. Along the way, he led the Echo and Echo Dot product lines to become the #1-selling product on Amazon.com, founded Alexa’s computer vision initiative to make Alexa more personalized and adaptive, and redesigned the Echo Show UI to drive a 54% increase in engagement and accelerate the growth of our advertising business. Before Amazon, he earned an MBA from MIT, worked as an economic consultant, interned on Wall Street and Capitol Hill, and played NCAA basketball. Michael is motivated by building category-defining products, scaling teams, and turning emerging technology into durable businesses. ## Alejandro Merino-Madrid Head of AI, International Olympic Committee (IOC) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alejandro-merino-madrid/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Alejandro Merino Madrid, Head of AI at the International Olympic Committee, is transforming the Olympic Movement with trailblazing Artificial Intelligence. With 15 years of AI expertise, predating the GPT boom, his leadership in AI and business transformation spans Aerospace, Automotive, Electronics, and Sports, delivering tangible impact. As Senior Director at Infineon Technologies, he saved over €3M annually through AI-driven defect classification of semiconductors and pioneered innovative solutions for Edge Language Models (ELM). As Head of R&D at Webasto, Alejandro spearheaded cloud-based, AI-powered solutions, cutting electric vehicle charging costs by 25%. With a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering, an MBA, and fluency in three languages, he blends technical expertise with global vision, setting new global standards. Alejandro’s passion for leveraging AI to unite communities through sport captivates audiences worldwide. Get ready: he is ensuring LA28 will be remembered as the Artificial Intelligence Olympic Games. ## Pam Snively Chief Data & Trust Officer, TELUS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pam-snively/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Telecom Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Pamela Snively is the Chief Data & Trust Officer at TELUS. She leads the teams responsible for AI governance, privacy, data ethics, and data governance. Pam actively participates in a number of national and international think-tanks and governance bodies related to AI, privacy and data governance. She is a sought-after global speaker, known for challenging other organizations to raise the bar on data ethics, AI literacy and governance. She has served as a Canadian delegate to the G7 Business Forum (B7), supporting the development of AI standards, and was a featured speaker at the United Nations’ ITU AI for Good Summit in Geneva. Pam serves as a Board member for the Information Accountability Foundation and on the Privacy and Data Advisory Committee for the Canadian Marketing Association. She is also a founding member and Chair of Canada’s Business Privacy Group, a working group made up of some of Canada’s leading privacy professionals and industry associations focused on building trust in Canada’s digital ecosystem and legislative regime. Pam's leadership has been recognized with prestigious awards including Women in AI's 2025 Executive of the Year, 2025 CDAO AI Leader of the Year, the 2024 WXN Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, and the 2017 Ontario Bar Association’s Karen Spector Memorial Award for Excellence in Privacy Law. Under Pam's leadership, TELUS has emerged as a trailblazer and award-winner in the responsible and ethical use of AI and data. Recognizing that trust is essential for AI adoption, TELUS was the first telecom in Canada to sign the voluntary AI code of conduct introduced by the federal government in September 2023 and received the outstanding organization award from the Responsible AI Institute for the integration of responsible AI practices to foster trust and benefit society. TELUS made history in May 2024 by introducing the first chatbot in the world to be internationally certified in Privacy by Design (ISO 31700-1), substantiating the organization’s commitment to safeguarding privacy and advancing trustworthy data practices - a demonstration of leadership on a global scale. ## Dimitris Bountolos CIIO, Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Ferrovial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dimitris-bountolos/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dimitris Bountolos is the Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Ferrovial, a prominent global infrastructure group. With an extensive background spanning over 20 years, he is an expert in leading comprehensive change management and transformation programs across various industries. As an innovative entrepreneur, Dimitris has founded and partnered in several start-ups in the cutting-edge technology sectors, including ventures in space tourism, satellite micro-launchers, augmented reality, and drones. In the airline industry, his leadership roles have included Vice President of Customer Experience and Madrid Airport Director at Iberia Airlines, and Chief Digital Officer at Latam Airlines. Dimitris is widely recognized for his contributions to innovation, digital transformation, and sustainability within organizations. He has served as an advisor to NASA's Chief Innovation Officer for several years and as a Global Advisor to the strategic consultancy firm McKinsey, specializing in travel, transport, and logistics. Dimitris earned his master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Granada and has graduated from elite senior management programs at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, IESE, and ESADE. He is a member of several advisory boards, bringing a broad, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral perspective to his work, including the Bankinter Foundation, and as President of the Advisory Board of CIONET, and a member of the CIO Council of the Wall Street Journal, among others. Dimitris has a proven track record in developing and implementing high-impact projects, capturing new business opportunities, and introducing new business models across many sectors ## Viren Shah Strategic Advisor and Ex-CDIO(AGCO), Cacti Industries Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/viren-shah/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Agriculture Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Strategic advisor and former Fortune 500 C-suite technology executive with 25+ years of global leadership experience helping organizations navigate hyper-growth, M&A, turnarounds, and AI-enabled business transformation. Throughout his career, Viren has viewed technology not as the objective, but as the vehicle for creating measurable business value, transforming organizations, and enabling people to realize their full potential. He has led enterprise transformations for Walmart, GE Appliances, AGCO, Masco Cabinetry, and Specialty Fashion Group across more than 20 countries spanning the Americas, Europe, Asia, and ANZ. Recognized as a trusted business partner, he helps leadership teams maintain operational excellence while reimagining operating models, accelerating innovation, and creating sustainable competitive advantage. Today, Viren advises organizations, and executive leadership teams on scaling AI from experimentation to enterprise value. He is the creator of the AI Native Operating System, a practical framework that integrates Value Portfolio, AI Delivery, and Organizational Readiness to help organizations become AI Native Enterprises and build Human + AI workforces capable of continuous value creation. Passionate about enabling organizations and people to realize their full potential, Viren believes the future belongs to enterprises that combine technology with leadership, culture, and continuous learning to create lasting impact. Industry Recognition: 2026 National ORBIE Nominee • 2025 Georgia ORBIE Winner • 2025 Constellation AI150 Executive • 2025 HMG Global Leadership Award • 2024 Global CDO ## Ben Goertzel Founder & CEO, Singularity NET and BGI Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-goertzel/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Ben Goertzel is a highly influential figure in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and computational finance. Born in 1966, he was reading his grandfather’s physics books at just two years old and has been a pioneering force in AI, researching its capabilities since the 1980s. Dr Goertzel has dedicated his career to both the theoretical and practical applications of AI, striving to bridge the gap between machine intelligence and human-like cognition. He helped popularize the term “artificial general intelligence” and is considered the ‘founding father of AGI’. Dr. Goertzel leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the enterprise AI firm TrueAGI, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society. Additionally, he is the facilitator of the Artificial General Intelligence conference, held annually for more than fifteen years. He chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Rejuve.ai, Mindplex, Cogito, and Jam Galaxy, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem, and serves as keyboardist and vocalist in the Desdemona’s Dream Band, the first-ever band led by an AI powered humanoid robot. When Dr Goertzel was Chief Scientist of the robotics firm Hanson Robotics, he led the software team behind the creation of Sophia robot; and as Chief AI Scientist of Awakening Health, he is leading the team crafting the mind behind the world's foremost nursing assistant robot, Grace. He introduced the term and concept "AGI" in his 2005 book "Artificial General Intelligence” and his research work encompasses multiple areas including Artificial General Intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics, and more. His recent focus is on the creation of AGI - having developed the OpenCog Hyperon project, a cross-paradigm AGI architecture incorporating logic systems, evolutionary learning, neural nets and other methods, designed for decentralized implementation on SingularityNET and associated blockchain based tools like HyperCycle and NuNet. He has published 25+ scientific books, ~150 technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles, and given talks at a vast number of events of all sorts around the globe. Before entering the software industry, he obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics from Temple University in 1989 and served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science, and cognitive science, in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. ## Carlin Power Global Head of AI and Enterprise Product Engagement, JLL Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/carlin-power/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Carlin Power is the Head of AI and Enterprise Product Engagement for JLL, where she is developing, pressure testing, and continuously improving the vision and strategy for an AI-enabled employee experience. ​In less than a year, her team has supported positioning JLL as the AI leader in commercial real estate, improved AI fluency across 10s of thousands of employees, and driven the proliferation of AI tools and platforms across the enterprise, with 50% of employees using AI every week. 21 thousand employees are using generative AI tools every day at JLL and that number continues to climb month over month. Carlin has been in commercial real estate for over a decade and has held a variety of positions in asset management, debt underwriting, strategic M&A, and technology. She holds degrees in business, economics, GIS and has her M.B.A. ## Zoltan Istvan Transhumanist, futurist, UBI advocate, Zoltan Istvan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/zoltan-istvan/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter With his popular 2016 US Presidential run as a science candidate, bestselling book "The Transhumanist Wager", and speeches at institutions like the World Bank, World Economic Forum, and the UK Parliament, Zoltan Istvan has spearheaded the effort to transform transhumanism into a thriving worldwide phenomenon. He is often cited as a global leader of the radical science movement. He specializes in AI, longevity, robotics, space travel, and Universal Basic Income. Born in California, Zoltan has consulted for the US Navy and the Government of Dubai as a futurist, appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast (and many other shows), and gave many speeches, including at Microsoft, the Global Leaders Forum (Korea), Congreso Futuro at the Chilean Senate, the Financial Times Camp Alphaville, and BMW World. In 2019, an award-winning feature documentary four years in the making called "Immortality or Bust", which covers his historic bus tour across America on the Immortality Bus, came out on Amazon Prime. Zoltan has traveled to over 100 countries, and has a degree in Philosophy and Religion from Columbia University. He has a Masters in Ethics at the University of Oxford. Zoltan frequently writes articles for The New York Times, Newsweek, Vice, Wired, TechCrunch, and other major media. In 2023, he published the "Zoltan Istvan Furturist Collection", a seven-volume box set of his most popular Opinion essays. A biography written by Dr. Ben Murnane titled "Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan’s Hunt for Immortality" by Changemaker Books came out in June 2024. Zoltan is also the original author of the "Transhumanist Bill of Righs", published in full in Wired. For National Geographic, he pioneered the sport of Volcano Boarding while on assignment for them. Zoltan is married to a medical doctor. They live in San Francisco with their two daugters. They own Zoltan Istvan Vineyards, which has wine properties on three continents. You can find out more about Zoltan here: www.zoltanistvan.com ## Stephen Henn Managing Director, AI Technology Services, DLA Piper LLP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stephen-henn/ Track: Legal Industry: Legal Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Stephen Henn is Managing Director of AI Technology Services at DLA Piper, where he leads the firm’s efforts to build and scale AI-driven solutions that deliver legal and business insights at enterprise scale. With over a decade at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence and data analytics in the legal sector, Stephen has partnered with Fortune 100 companies to solve complex challenges and unlock new value through technology. He played a key role in pioneering internal AI capabilities that have extended into external offerings such as PiperAI, driving efficiency, innovation, and revenue growth through generative AI. Stephen is a seasoned speaker on AI, ethics, law, and technology; serves as a panel reviewer for the National Science Foundation on AI applications; and has spoken internationally on responsible AI adoption and organizational transformation. ## Tom Flanagan Chief Digital Information Officer, RE/MAX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tom-flanagan/ Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter TOM FLANAGAN Chief Digital Information Officer Responsibilities Tom Flanagan oversees all information technology and data for RE/MAX Holdings, Inc. and its affiliated companies. He leads the teams that manage the engineering, data, and technology security and compliance. Tom works closely with other members of the Executive Leadership Team to develop technology and data strategy and support company operations. Career Tom joined the RE/MAX Holdings team in September 2025, bringing with him two decades of experience overseeing the deployment and ongoing support of real estate brokerage technology solutions. Deeply attuned to the tech strategy and innovations needed to support real estate professionals, Tom most recently served as Chief Innovation Officer for The Group, Inc. Real Estate and President of Group Financial Partners. A former syndicated technology columnist for Inman News, he also previously oversaw technology for real estate companies including Residential Properties Ltd. and Alain Pinel Realtors. Roots Tom is a graduate of the New England Institute of Technology. His leadership and influence in the real estate industry has earned him numerous awards and recognition, including being named to the Swanepoel Power 200 (2025) and Inman News’ Real Estate Influencers list (2017), as well as earning the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World’s Chairman’s Service Award (2022) and President’s Service Award (2018). Tom also was also named the Overall Winner of Tech Collective’s Tech10 Awards (2013). ## Eric Cruzen SVP, Chief Data & Informatics Officer, Northwell Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-cruzen/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist In 2024, Dr. Cruzen served as a Founding Chairperson for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Lenox Health Greenwich Village. Lenox Health was the first freestanding emergency medicine department in Manhattan, providing advanced care for patients ranging the entire spectrum of age and acuity. Dr. Cruzen’s role involved developing innovative models of emergency care, oversight of quality, and the delivery of clinical services. In 2021, Dr. Cruzen transitioned to a new role as Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO), where he led a multi-disciplinary team of software architects, data scientists, and medical informaticists to create innovative solutions to complex problems in the space where technology and medicine intersect. In 2022, Dr. Cruzen was promoted to Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Emergency Medicine Service Line. He was responsible for the operations of all Northwell Emergency Departments, as well as oversight of 51 urgent care centers and an extensive ambulance fleet. In his most recent role, Dr. Cruzen serves as the Senior Vice President, Chief Data and Informatics Officer, leading a multi-disciplinary team of informaticists, data and software architects and engineers, innovative product developers and strategists to lead Northwell’s data strategy, advanced analytics, and digital transformation initiatives. Dr. Cruzen is a graduate of the integrated 6-year BA/MD program at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. After completing residency in Emergency Medicine in Orlando, Florida, he worked all over the United States as a physician in the Army Reserve before joining Northwell in 2003 as an Associate Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Cruzen is a graduate of the MBA program at Hofstra University. ## Pankaj Jain CIO - International Operations, General Motors Financial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pankaj-jain/ Track: Generative AI: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Pankaj Jain is the CIO of International Operations at GM Financial, where he’s responsible for all technology—including AI—across Mexico, South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific. A passionate technology executive, he has extensive experience in Fortune 500 companies, including Charles Schwab, JPMorgan Chase and Nationwide Insurance. His technology portfolio leadership includes Enterprise Application Development, Cloud, Digital, Data & Analytics, Corporate Systems and AI. He champions continuous learning cultures and inspires teams that excel at innovation and delivering world-class software solutions. Prior to GM Financial, he served as the Divisional CIO, U.S. and India for Silicon Valley Bank, as Vice President of Schwab Digital at Charles Schwab, as Application Development Director, Digital at JPMorgan Chase and other high profile leadership roles at brands like Nationwide Insurance, among others. ## Rob Lee Chief of Research, AI & Emerging Threats & Chief AI Office (CAIO), SANS Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rob-lee/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Rob T. Lee - Chief of Research, AI & Emerging Threats, SANS Institute | "Godfather of Digital Forensics" | CAIO Executive & AI Strategist | Helping C-Suite Leaders Drive AI Transformation Securely | Technical Advisor to US Govt With over 20 years leading cybersecurity and AI initiatives, from founding officer at the 609th Information Warfare Squadron and serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to my current role as Chief of Research at SANS Institute, I've tackled nation-state attacks, digital forensics, offensive operations (OCO), and advanced threat hunting firsthand. Known in the industry as the "Godfather of Digital Forensics," I co-authored the groundbreaking Mandiant M-Trends: The APT report and originated the term "Digital Forensics & Incident Response" (#DFIR). My passion lies in mentoring thousands of cybersecurity professionals, empowering them to turn complexity into actionable strategies. ## Alaa Moussawi Chief Data Scientist, New York City Council Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alaa-moussawi/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Government Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Alaa Moussawi serves as Chief Data Scientist for the New York City Council, where he leads a team of data scientists and a team of software engineers. Under his leadership, the data team helps shape legislative initiatives aimed at addressing the diverse needs of NYC's residents. Utilizing rigorous statistical and technological tools, they analyze a broad spectrum of issues pertinent to the city, ranging from pay equity to rats or school bus delays. The group serves to empower policymakers with insights to facilitate data-driven decision making, while emphasizing transparency and reproducibility in their models and research. On the other side of the aisle, the software engineering team designs and implements technologies aimed at enhancing the efficiency of org staff while reducing cognitive load. By leveraging efficient algorithms and NLP/AI models, they streamline user workflows/interfaces and automate complex tasks. Their solutions, developed exclusively with open-source technologies, are customized to the bespoke needs of the organization They include CRMs, workflow management suites, and various public/private websites for streamlining processes such as paperless hearings, data access through dashboards, voting platforms, and more. ## Brian McClendon CTO, Niantic Spatial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-mcclendon/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Brian "Bam" McClendon is the Chief Technology Officer at Niantic Spatial, where he leads the engineering development of the company’s groundbreaking Large Geospatial Model. Building on a legacy of innovation in mapping technologies, Brian is developing a new generation of geospatial maps to transform the way we understand and interact with the physical world. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Niantic Labs, where he brought AR to life in popular mobile games like Pokémon GO, one of the most popular mobile games of all time with 100 million+ unique players each year.. Under his leadership, Niantic advanced its Visual Positioning System (VPS), built upon a precise and detailed 3D map of the world. These innovations enabled developers to create immersive, cross-platform extended reality (XR) experiences that overlay digital content with the physical environment. Brian brings nearly four decades of experience in computer graphics, mapping, computer vision and machine learning, and has made significant contributions to geospatial technology with 40 patents to his name. He began his career at Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), where he helped build 3D graphics supercomputers. In 2001, he co-founded Keyhole, Inc., where he served as Vice President of Engineering before the company was acquired by Google. At Google, Brian spent the next decade leading the Geo engineering team, where he played a key role in the development and evolution of Google Earth, Google Maps, Street View, Local Search, and GroundTruth. Under his leadership, these tools helped map over 220 countries, capture more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery, and serve over 1 billion monthly users — with Google Earth covering more than 36 million square miles of satellite imagery. After Google, Brian joined Uber as Vice President of Maps and Business Platform, where he continued to advance location-based technologies at global scale. He serves as a research professor at the University of Kansas, his alma mater, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in electrical engineering from the university in 2015. In a fitting tribute to his roots, his childhood home at Meadowbrook Apartments in Lawrence, Kansas was set as the original default center point of Google Earth. ## Sankaet Pathak CEO, Foundation Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sankaet-pathak/ Track: World Models Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sankaet Pathak is a tech entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Foundation Future Industries (Foundation), a robotics company developing and deploying autonomous humanoid robots. He began his career building modern banking software for underserved communities. Today, he focuses on advancing humanoid robotics through artificial intelligence and other technologies, with applications across defense, manufacturing, logistics, and other complex labor environments. ## Onney Crawley Chief Marketing Officer, Goodwill Industries International Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/onney-crawley/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Retail Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Onney Crawley is the Chief Marketing Officer of Goodwill Industries International and a business executive with a track record of brand modernization and growth across consumer-packaged goods, durable goods, and large-scale retail. Over her career, Onney has driven brand transformation for category-leading companies including General Mills (Yoplait, Cheerios), Kellogg's (Special K, Fudge Shoppe), and Sears Holdings (Craftsman Tools), among others. She is known for converting complex business challenges into clear brand strategies that deliver measurable growth and long-term market relevance. At Goodwill Industries International, she leads enterprise-wide marketing and customer experience strategy across a network of local Goodwill organizations. In addition to improving the public’s understanding and support of the workforce mission of Goodwill, she is focused on strengthening the brand equity while advancing its digital footprint, and positioning the organization for sustained relevance and impact in an evolving retail environment Onney's leadership style combines cross-functional discipline with commercial instinct. She brings both strategic and operational depth to her work, making her effective across large, matrixed organizations. She currently serves on the ANA Global CMO Growth Council, is an Executive Advisory Board member for Women We Admire™, and is also as a strategic advisor to the Choputa® Food Company. ## Heather Pringle CEO, Space Foundation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/heather-pringle/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter As CEO of Space Foundation, Heather Pringle leads the world’s premier nonprofit advocate organization for the global space ecosystem. Founded in 1983, Space Foundation is the preeminent gateway for trusted information, lifelong education, and seamless collaboration for all people and organizations inspired by space, engaging in space exploration and advancing space capabilities. Heather’s global leadership, technical expertise and above all, passion for service, advance Space Foundation’s mission to strengthen partnerships across government, industry, academia and international allies while developing the space workforce pipeline with future space leaders. Prior to joining Space Foundation in July 2023, Heather served as the Commander and Technology Executive Officer of the Air Force Research Laboratory, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Her responsibilities included formulating a comprehensive technology portfolio worth $3 billion that anticipated future warfighter needs for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, while promoting risk-taking and problem-solving across a unique and talented team. Four generations of educators in her family paved the way for Heather’s academic pursuits, including a degree in Human Factors from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a Doctorate in Engineering Psychology, from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Outside her professional life, Heather recharges by supporting her youngest son’s passion for soccer, logging miles on the trails with her husband, and playing duets with her dad on a hand-me-down piano. ## Nathan Bomey Reporter, Axios Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nathan-bomey/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Nathan Bomey is a national business reporter for Axios, where he writes Axios Closer, a daily newsletter on the biggest business news of the day. He is also a former reporter for USA Today and the Detroit Free Press. Nathan is the author of three nationally published books, including "Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back." He also served as producer and scriptwriter of "Gradually, Then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit," winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. After growing up in Wisconsin and Michigan, Nathan now lives in Arlington, Virginia. ## Ed Zitron Writer, EZPR Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ed-zitron/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ed Zitron is the CEO and founder of EZ Primary Research, a research and media relations firm. He's also the host of the iHeartRadio podcast Better Offline, and the writer of the 109,000 subscriber tech and finance newsletter Where's Your Ed At (wheresyoured.at). ## Jared Perlo AI Reporter, NBC News Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jared-perlo/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Jared covers AI for NBC News. Before joining NBC, Jared worked on AI policy in the US, UK, and EU. He was a Winter Fellow with the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI), where he studied a variety of AI topics. He focused on US-China AI relations, AI diffusion in lower- and middle-income countries, and embodied AI (robots). Prior to that, Jared worked on the policy team at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. He focused on health and labor economics and helped start J-PAL’s work with AI, which has since grown into the Partnership for AI Evidence (PAIE). Jared holds a Masters from the Barcelona School of Economics and an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge. ## Anuj Mehndiratta Partner, Thrive Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anuj-mehndiratta/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Anuj Mehndiratta is a Partner at Thrive Capital, where he leads the firm’s efforts across product, engineering, data, and AI—building tools that transform the way the firm operates. He also heads the Portfolio Impact team which supports Thrive's portfolio companies with deep functional expertise across research, finance, operations, and go-to-market. In addition, Anuj helped to launch Thrive Holdings, a permanent capital vehicle that partners with businesses that can be transformed by the strategic application of technology to foster enduring growth over a long time horizon. Before joining Thrive, Anuj was at Blackstone, where he helped build and ultimately led the firm’s data science team, working across its various private equity funds. Prior to that, he was a quantitative analyst at Millennium Management. Anuj holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. ## Ryan Struyk Director, AI Innovation, CNN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-struyk/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Member of the Press: Yes Ryan Struyk is an Emmy award-winning journalist leading CNN’s strategic efforts to integrate artificial intelligence in the newsroom as Director of AI Innovation. In this position, he focuses on empowering journalists to tell AI-driven stories, leveraging AI to streamline editorial workflows, and educating journalists to use AI ethically and responsibly. Struyk was previously a television producer for State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Washington, focused on writing interview questions for political guests across Sunday programming, town halls, special events and CNN’s presidential debates. He won three Emmy awards for his coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, the East Palestine train disaster and the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Struyk started at CNN as a data reporter for the CNN Politics digital team and a producer for the CNN Politics mobile app. He also worked on CNN’s public opinion polling and survey methodology analysis. Before coming to CNN, Struyk won an Edward R. Murrow award for Overall Excellence in Television and Radio as a political researcher at ABC News in Washington during the 2016 presidential election. He conducted public opinion polling during the 2014 midterm elections for Langer Research Associates in New York. He also covered the Idaho state legislature for the Associated Press in Boise. Struyk was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He graduated from Calvin University in 2014 with degrees in mathematics and political science. ## Erik Reppel Head of Engineering, Coinbase Developer Platform Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erik-reppel/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Erik leads Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform. He began his career as an intern on the Coinbase Machine Learning team before taking on engineering leadership roles at Clubhouse and Zora. At Zora, he oversaw engineering across protocol, backend, frontend, mobile, and security. After three years, Erik returned to Coinbase to lead the development of next-generation developer tools as the Head of Engineering at CDP and helped create x402, an open protocol for internet-native payments. ## Harry McCracken Global Technology Editor, Fast Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/harry-mccracken/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Harry McCracken is the global technology editor for Fast Company, based in San Francisco. He writes about topics ranging from gadgets and services from tech giants to the startup economy to how artificial intelligence and other breakthroughs are changing life at work, home, and beyond. McCracken has appeared on CNBC, CNN, NPR, The History Channel, and other media outlets, and once conducted an investigation into the PC repair business in collaboration with Dateline NBC. He’s moderated panels at CES, Comic-Con International, SXSW, Web Summit, and many other events, along with the Fast Company Innovation Festival. Before joining Fast Company in 2014, McCracken was editor at large for Time magazine, founder and editor of Technologizer, and editor of PC World. He’s also written for CNET, Discover, Macworld, Slate, USA Today, and many other publications. His work has won awards from American Business Media, the ASBPE, and other organizations. ## Ezra Feilden CTO, Starcloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ezra-feilden/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ezra is the Co-Founder and CTO of Starcloud. Prior to Starcloud, Ezra has a decade of experience with satellite design, specializing in deployable solar arrays and large deployable structures at Airbus Defense & Space Oxford Space Systems, where he worked on missions including NASA's Lunar Pathfinder. Ezra has a PhD in Engineering from Imperial College London. ## Jason Abbruzzese Assistant Managing Editor, NBC News Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-abbruzzese/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes I'm an assistant managing editor for NBC News Digital who oversees a team of editors and reporters covering a broad range of topics including technology, science, climate, health and business. After brief stints in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Shanghai, I came to New York to pursue a career in journalism and was fortunate enough to work at the Financial Times and Mashable before joining NBC News in 2018. I got my start at The Daily Free Press, Boston University's independent student newspaper. ## Ashok Prakash Staff ML Engineer, Apple Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashok-prakash/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Ashok Prakash is a Staff Engineer at Apple, where he leads engineering initiatives for Responsible AI and safety infrastructure. He specializes in designing high-performance cloud platforms that make complex GPU-accelerated workloads reliable and easy to use. His work focuses on turning difficult infrastructure problems into predictable, self-service systems that allow engineering teams to move faster without breaking things. Before joining Apple, Ashok spent six years at Oracle Cloud as a Senior Principal Engineer. There, he led the platform engineering efforts to build a Kubernetes-based GPU platform that abstracted bare-metal clusters behind simple APIs. His work allowed product teams to launch AI workloads in minutes instead of days, providing consistent provisioning, quota controls, and clear cost visibility. He has extensive experience building multi-tenant schedulers, automating cluster lifecycles, and creating developer tools that enforce good defaults for security and observability. Ashok is a regular speaker at engineering and data conferences, including the Airflow Summit, AI Risk Summit and Linux Foundation Workshops, where he shares practical, vendor-neutral patterns for using AI safely in production environments. Ashok holds three published U.S. patent applications and has authored multiple international publications in AI and NLP, which have been cited by both academic researchers and industry practitioners. His core philosophy is simple: pave the path so the right thing is the easy thing to do. Based in Seattle, Ashok also contributes practical guidance on AI adoption for non-specialists. He is the author of Human Reimagined: Thriving in the Age of AI, a guide for professionals looking to use AI as a helpful assistant rather than a source of anxiety. ## Brendan Schulman VP of Policy & Government Relations, Boston Dynamics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brendan-schulman/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Legal Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Brendan Schulman is the Vice President of Policy & Government Relations for Boston Dynamics, the world's leading developer of agile robots that autonomously navigate uneven terrain, stairs, and even doorways using legs and arms. In this role, he collaborates with policymakers and stakeholders on a wide range of policy and ethics issues relating to the integration of beneficial robots into society, and the accelerating convergence of AI and robotics. Previously, Brendan was in charge of global public policy for DJI, the world's leading manufacturer of commercial drones. A technology advocate, thought-leader, and champion of pragmatic solutions to the concerns that are raised by emerging technologies, Brendan has served on federal and state policy advisory committees, testified in the U.S. Congress and U.K. House of Commons, speaks frequently, and is often quoted in the media on technology law and policy. ## Shahid Quraishi Engineering Manager, R&D, 7-Eleven Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shahid-quraishi/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Wendy Forsythe Chief Operating Officer, eXp Realty Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/wendy-forsythe/ Track: Inclusive AI Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Wendy Forsythe Chief Operating Officer, eXp Realty (Nasdaq: AGNT) Wendy Forsythe is the Chief Operating Officer of eXp Realty, one of the most technologically advanced real estate brokerages in the world and the first in the industry to operate as a fully cloud-based, AI-integrated platform at scale. At eXp, Wendy leads the strategy behind how an 80,000+ agent workforce adopts, applies, and operationalizes AI tools across operations, marketing, client engagement, and business growth — making her one of the few COO's working at the intersection of AI adoption and large-scale independent contractor behavior change. A sought-after keynote speaker, podcast host, and author of Leverage Your X-Factor, Wendy brings a practitioner's lens to the conversation around AI, leadership, and the future of work. Her sessions challenge audiences to move past experimentation and build systems that actually scale — and to do so with the boldness the current moment demands. At AI4 2026, Wendy will address one of the industry's most pressing blind spots: the continued underrepresentation of women in AI leadership — and what it will actually take to change that. ## Ben Bergman Senior Correspondent, Business Insider Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-bergman/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Ben Bergman is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, where he investigates the tech industry with a focus on venture capital and startups. Ben also frequently analyzes business and the economy on CNN and appears at tech conferences around the world. ## Blake Rooney AI Business Executive - Managing Director, Wells Fargo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/blake-rooney/ Track: Legal Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Blake Rooney is the AI Business Solutions Executive for Legal, Public Affairs, and Internal Audit at Wells Fargo, where he is accountable for identifying and implementing high-value AI use cases across three of the firm's most complex enterprise functions. Based in New York City, he brings deep expertise in the intersection of AI strategy and legal operations, having previously served as CIO/CTO at Husch Blackwell, an Am Law 200 firm, where he built an industry-leading AI program and data science capabilities, including a first-of-its-kind client-facing AI Advisory Services practice. He holds an MBA from Rockhurst University. ## Sriram Ganapathy CFO, tarte cosmetics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sriram-ganapathy/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Retail Job Function: Finance Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sri Ganapathy is an operationally focused Chief Financial Officer with two decades of experience across finance, operations, and enterprise transformation. As CFO of tarte cosmetics, he leads the company’s global financial and operational strategy across an international distribution footprint and a rapidly evolving multi-channel environment. He brings a systems-driven approach to automation and advanced analytics that improves the speed, accuracy, and quality of decision-making in complex consumer businesses. He guides a multi-year AI-enabled modernization spanning forecasting, supply chain planning, ERP processes, and retail and marketing analytics. This includes designing a unified operating stack that integrates commerce, marketing, supply chain, data, ERP, and financial systems, while in parallel implementing an AI-driven decision layer that synthesizes signals from fragmented enterprise systems to surface context, identify patterns, and accelerate enterprise action. His work focuses on building the long-term infrastructure for real-time forecasting and cohesive, data-driven operations, creating the foundation for faster and more integrated financial and operational execution. Before joining tarte, Sri held finance leadership roles at Toys “R” Us, overseeing capital structure, treasury, and major financing and restructuring initiatives. Earlier in his career, he worked at General Motors and Plug Power in engineering and systems integration roles. This experience informs his operator mindset and cross-functional approach as a modern CFO. Outside of his corporate work, Sri serves as Treasurer and Board Member of a nonprofit school in New York City. He holds an MBA from Cornell University and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University. ## Bishoy Sawiris Chief Data Officer, GB Corp Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bishoy-sawiris/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Bishoy Sawiris is a results-oriented Chief Data Officer with over 16 years of experience in leading transformative data initiatives across technology, artificial intelligence, and business strategy. Holding both a PhD and a Doctorate in Business Administration, he specializes in Big Data and AI, integrating strategic leadership with technical expertise to drive innovation and deliver measurable business outcomes. At GB Corp, Dr. Sawiris has successfully guided organizations in harnessing advanced data and AI technologies to optimize operations, enhance business models, and promote sustainable growth. He emphasizes aligning data and AI strategies with overall business objectives, facilitating change, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. A passionate leader, Dr. Sawiris is dedicated to cultivating high-performance teams that leverage data as a strategic asset to address complex challenges. He advocates for the development of scalable solutions that fulfill current needs while strategically positioning organizations for long-term success and competitive advantage. Dr. Sawiris has received numerous accolades, including the 2024 & 2025 CX Asia Data & AI Golden Awards, the 2025 British Data Award, the 2025 Global CDO 100 Winner, and the 2025 IDC Excellence Award for Best CDO of Egypt. In addition to his leadership role, he contributes to academia by teaching at esteemed institutions such as ESLSCA Business School in Paris and the American University in Cairo, mentoring the next generation of data professionals and demonstrating how AI can revolutionize various industries. ## Marshall Cohen Senior Reporter, CNN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marshall-cohen/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Member of the Press: Yes Marshall Cohen is a CNN senior reporter based in Washington, DC. Since joining the network in 2015, he has covered major Justice Department investigations, Congressional inquiries and other legal affairs. This includes the Trump-Russia probe, the fallout from the January 6 insurrection, Donald Trump’s legal cases, Hunter Biden’s legal cases, and voting rights during the 2020 and 2024 elections. Cohen appears on-air for CNN and in original videos across CNN’s digital platforms. Over the years, he has published more than 1,000 articles, fact-checks, analysis pieces and interactive projects. In 2019, Cohen won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Trump-Russia probe, and has received three additional Emmy nominations. Cohen was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Northwestern University with degrees in journalism and political science. ## Max Gokhman Head of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Asset Solutions, Franklin Templeton Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/max-gokhman/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Max Gokhman is head of artificial intelligence and digital asset solutions for Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions (FTIS). In this role, Max is responsible for developing AI-powered capabilities, including agentic teams, investment models, and workflow augmentations that efficiently improve investment outcomes and support increasingly sophisticated solutions at scale. He also leads the buildout of digital asset allocation capabilities, covering tokenized real-world assets, crypto-native strategies, and the integration of digital assets with traditional multi-asset portfolios. Most recently, Max was the deputy chief investment officer for FTIS, and was responsible for leading global investment research, including quantitative, fundamental, and manager research teams. He was also responsible for driving the digital transformation of investment processes for FTIS through the MosaiQ platform, a proprietary multi-asset operating system unifying portfolio construction, research, and analysis. Previously, he was president and chief investment officer of the start-up asset manager AlphaTrAI, where he harnessed artificial intelligence to build objective-oriented investment strategies. Before that, he was head of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors, the asset management arm of Pacific Life Insurance Company, for seven years. Prior to Pacific Life, Max was a portfolio manager with Mellon Capital's multi-asset group and a founding member of Coefficient Global, a quantitative macro hedge fund. Outside of work, Max is an amateur racecar driver with over a decade of motorsport experience across GT and spec racing series. ## Apostol Vassilev Research Team Supervisor, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/apostol-vassilev/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Government Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Apostol Vassilev is a leading expert in Trustworthy and Responsible AI and Cybersecurity at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). His research focuses on Adversarial Machine Learning (AML) and Robust AI for Autonomous Vehicles. Through collaborations with industry, government agencies, and academia, Apostol drives the development and adoption of standards in AI and cybersecurity, contributing to national and international standards initiatives. Apostol is actively engaged with the AI security community, serving on the Distinguished Expert Review Board of the OWASP GenAI Security Project and as a founding member of the OWASP AI Vulnerability Scoring System project. With a Ph.D. in mathematics from Texas A&M University, he has authored over 60 scientific papers and holds five U.S. patents. His work has garnered recognition for demonstrated exceptional leadership, dedication, professionalism in standards development, and excellence in public service. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a medal from the U.S. Commerce Department and has been featured in prominent publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Forbes. As a frequent conference speaker and guest editor for scientific journals, Apostol is a respected authority in his field. ## Robert Brunner Founder and Creative Director, Ammunition Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-brunner/ Track: Product Design Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Robert Brunner is an industrial designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Ammunition, one of the world’s leading design studios. Previously, he served as Director of Industrial Design at Apple, where he founded the Apple Industrial Design Studio and helped establish the company’s modern design culture. Over a career spanning more than 40 years, Brunner has contributed to some of the most influential products and brands in technology, including the Apple PowerBook, Amazon Kindle, Square Reader and Stand, and Beats by Dr. Dre, where he has served as lead designer since the company’s founding. Named on more than 150 U.S. patents and recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award for Product Design, Brunner speaks globally on innovation, leadership, creativity, and the future of AI and design. ## Eoin Higgins Senior IT Reporter, Morning Brew Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eoin-higgins/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes ## Jennifer Conrad Senior Writer, Inc. Magazine Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jennifer-conrad/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Jennifer Conrad is a senior writer at Inc., covering fast-growing American companies and their founders, family businesses, and firms that are revolutionizing the products we use every day. She has written for Wired, Vogue, Time Out Beijing, and Newsweek.com. She has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and spent three years working as a writer and editor in Beijing. ## Federico Casalegno Executive Vice President of Design, Samsung Electronics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/federico-casalegno/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Federico is Executive Vice President of Design at Samsung Electronics. Based in San Francisco, he leads the Samsung Design Innovation Center and the Samsung Design Global Studios. He also manages the Next-Generation Experience Planning teams in Seoul and created the Computational Design function within Samsung. Throughout his career, he has focused on driving meaningful innovation for people, with an emphasis on creating designs guided by a strong ethical compass — bending AI, technologies, and products to serve humanity. He applies computational design and advanced computing to product development and leads multidisciplinary teams to imagine the next wave of human-centered AI, with the goal of designing meaningful experiences that enhance everyday life. As a designer, innovator, and humanist, Federico blends technology, culture, and creativity to shape the next generation of products and experiences across Samsung's business divisions. Prior to joining Samsung, Federico was an Associate Professor of the Practice at MIT, teaching at MIT and the MIT Media Lab, where he founded and directed the MIT Design Lab and the MIT Mobile Experience Lab (2000–2020). Earlier in his career, he worked at Motorola and Philips Design, creating pioneering products and experiences. He received honorary professorships from the Glasgow School of Art at the University of Glasgow and from Jiangnan University's School of Design in Wuxi, China. His contributions include numerous peer-reviewed papers, books, and articles, along with multiple awards for design and innovation. Federico earned a PhD in Sociology of Culture and Communication from the Sorbonne in Paris. ## Patrick Murphy CIO, Coastal Construction Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/patrick-murphy/ Track: Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Congressman Patrick Erin Murphy is currently the Chief Investment Officer of Coastal Construction, overseeing their diversification and growth. Patrick is currently overseeing a new estimating technology, Togal.AI, that is using artificial intelligence to help automate the takeoff process, along with CodeComply.Ai, a new technology solution leveraging artificial intelligence to automate fire, life safety and ADA compliance. Additionally, he is assisting in the growth of a fully approved new composite building system, RENCO. Patrick first started in the company as a day laborer, then project engineer, estimating assistant and accounting manager. After graduating from the University of Miami, Patrick worked at Deloitte where he earned his CPA license that he maintains today. Patrick served in U.S. Congress, representing Palm Beach and Treasure Coast in the House of Representatives for four years (2013-2017) and was the nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2016. After leaving office in 2017, he was named chair of the Future Forum Foundation, a nonprofit organization that researches key issues impacting millennials, such as automation, artificial intelligence and the sharing economy. Additionally, Patrick conducted a bi-partisan nationwide tour of college campuses titled: “Why Gridlock Rules Washington and How We Can Solve the Crisis” that visited 40 campuses nationwide. Inspired by these townhalls, Patrick co-authored a textbook discussing today’s polarization titled: “A Divided Union.” In 2023, Patrick was appointed to serve on the President’s Export Council under President Joe Biden, where he advised the president on strategies to promote American exports and support job creation through trade. Patrick was proud to be the only appointee from the construction industry. Murphy proudly co-chairs Coastal Construction’s philanthropic arm, Coastal Cares. ## Adam Mendler Creator & Host, Thirty Minute Mentors Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/adam-mendler/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Adam Mendler is a nationally recognized authority on leadership and the creator and host of Thirty Minute Mentors, where he interviews America’s top CEOs, founders, athletes, celebrities, and political and military leaders. He has interviewed more than 500 of America’s most successful leaders and, through those conversations, has identified the patterns that consistently drive high-impact leadership and elite performance. He translates these insights into perspective-shifting keynotes for businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations, equipping individuals to lead more effectively and teams to perform at a higher level. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA, serves on the board of UCLA’s Master of Applied Statistics & Data Science program, has created corporate learning content used by executives around the world, and advises companies and leaders. He has built and led businesses across a variety of industries and has written extensively on business and leadership, with more than 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc., and HuffPost. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player. ## Jana Brown Chief Human Resources Officer, eHealth Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jana-brown/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: Healthcare Job Function: HR Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Executive Biography: Dr. Jana Brown, Chief Human Resources Officer, eHealth, Inc. Dr. Jana Brown is a Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) who integrates business strategy, digital innovation, and human performance. With experience in sales, workforce, and organizational enablement, and backed by doctoral research on HR's role in digital transformation, she helps leaders and teams excel in times of transformation. As CHRO of eHealth, Jana drove cultural and workforce changes that helped restore profitability and secure two Great Place to Work® certifications. She developed a three-year Human Capital Strategy, enhanced leadership governance and succession planning, and created a digital HR model to boost alignment, accountability, and AI readiness. Her leadership track record spans Fortune 100, Fortune 500, and mission-driven organizations, including Centurion Health, CareSource, TIAA, Aramark, Cigna, and The Hartford. She has led enterprise workforce strategies, M&A integrations, organizational transformations, and analytics-driven HR models that accelerate capability and performance. Dr. Brown holds an EdD in Learning and Organizational Change from Baylor University, along with graduate and undergraduate degrees from Boston University and Stephen F. Austin State University. She also completed executive certifications through the Cornell Modern CHRO Program, Deloitte CHRO Academy, and Six Sigma. She serves as the Governance and Nominating Chair on the National Board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, is a long-standing member of the Executive Leadership Council, a former board member of NAAAHR, and an active member of the SHRM Executive Network. ## Elizabeth Rhodes Research Director, OpenResearch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/elizabeth-rhodes/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Other Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Elizabeth Rhodes, MSW, PhD, is Research Director at OpenResearch, where she leads research on economic security, work, and technology in the lives of low-income individuals and communities. Trained in social work and political science, she directed the most comprehensive study of unconditional cash transfers in the United States — a three-year, 3,000-person randomized controlled trial examining how direct income support affects well-being, health, financial security, and employment. Her work increasingly focuses on how technology intersects with economic inequality, including how people encounter AI in workplaces, public systems, and everyday decision-making. She works across research, policy, and technology communities to better understand how emerging tools shape opportunity, risk, and access in a rapidly changing society. ## Eric Seiberling VP of Sales and Marketing, MXD Process Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-seiberling/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Sales Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Eric Seiberling, MBA, is VP of Sales & Marketing at MXD Process, where he leads AI-powered initiatives that are transforming how industrial equipment solutions are marketed, sold, and delivered. With 25-year career spannig Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Dassault Systemes and startups , Eric combines deep strategic insight with a savagely pragmatic bias for execution. At AI4, he’ll reveal show how SMB companies can cut through the AI hype to shorten sales cycles, improve forecasting, and drive predictable growth—turning emerging tech into immediate results. ## Nataliya Kosmyna Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nataliya-kosmyna/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Kosmyna is a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group and a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google. She has over 16 years of experience in developing and designing end-to-end brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Coming from a background in artificial intelligence, neuroscience and human-computer interaction (HCI), she is passionate about the idea of creating a partnership between AI and human intelligence, a fusion of the machine with the human brain. Nataliya obtained her Ph.D in 2015 in the domain of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) from Université Grenoble-Alpes, France. Most of her projects are focused around BCIs in the context of consumer grade applications. BCI applications Dr. Kosmyna is working on include but are not limited to: recreating mental images (a process known as brain-to-image decoding), measuring engagement, fatigue or confusion of a person. Dr. Kosmyna’s projects explore ways of helping people with ALS, mvASD and other health challenges, to communicate with their families, caregivers, and to control their homes or robots. Several projects of Dr. Kosmyna are focused on fostering growth mindset in children. Finally, Dr. Kosmyna is interested in understanding further the true cost of using tools around us (her work on cognitive debt when using LLM chatbots), as well ways of shaping a future that benefits all of Humanity. Dr. Kosmyna’s solutions and art projects are successfully deployed in the classrooms, hospitals, workspaces, aerospace, Lower Earth Orbit, and on the Moon. These projects are also presented to general public and were tested by more than 15000 people in 2015-2024. Nataliya won multiple awards for her work, among which is L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science award she received in 2016. Nataliya was also named as one of 10 Top French Talent 2017 from MIT Innovators Under 35. Dr. Kosmyna has served as one of 24 international experts (Ad Hoc Expert Group - AHEG) for UNESCO to help prepare a first draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology. The final text of the Recommendation was adopted in November 2025 at the 43rd session of the General Conference. Dr. Kosmyna has also served on the Expert Advisory Group on Neurotechnology and Children for UNICEF. At Fluid Interfaces group @MIT Media Lab, Nataliya works on designing and testing novel hardware solutions and paradigms for different applications (such as learning, driving) and user groups. Her work was covered in more than 400 TV appearances, radio and other news outlets all around the world including but not limited to: New York Times, The New Yorker, CNN, Washington Post, Time, Nature, CBS News, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Les Echos, The Economist, MIT Tech Review and more. ## Sameer Sethi SVP, Chief AI & Insights Officer, Hackensack Meridian Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sameer-sethi/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Sameer Sethi | SVP, Chief AI & Insights Officer | Hackensack Meridian Health Mr. Sethi is a seasoned leader and expert in healthcare data and analytics with a proven track record of enabling use of data and analytical techniques to drive distinctiveness and deliver transformative impact. He has focused his career on data, technology, and innovation for healthcare providers. Starting his healthcare career in EMR implementations motivated Mr. Sethi to find ways to use digitized medical data to improve patient care, influence clinical workflow and provider network operations. He has since operated at the cross-section of healthcare and technology to improve quality, access and cost-of-care delivery. Mr. Sethi previously worked at Mount Sinai Health System, McKinsey, Bon Secours Mercy Health and now serves as Chief AI & Insights Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health. His experiences in data and analytics roles across consulting and health systems gives him diverse perspectives on the challenges facing providers in data and insights enablement and technology adoption. Mr. Sethi and his team are currently focused on accelerating the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to deliver high quality, affordable, more accessible, and more efficient healthcare. Recently, Mr. Sethi was named by Becker’s Hospital Review among leading hospital and health system chief data and analytics officers making an impact. ## Joseph Lee CEO, Hazelden Betty Ford Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joseph-lee/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Joseph Lee, President & CEO, of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and is one of the most sought-after thought leaders on addiction treatment and mental health care in the world. With extensive expertise and experience providing quality, comprehensive care to youth and families from across the country and abroad, Dr. Lee has developed an unparalleled perspective on emerging drug trends, co-occurring mental health conditions, innovation and the ever-changing culture of addiction. He is known widely for his love-inspired, science-powered approach to care and impassioned advocacy for all people who are affected by substance use and mental health conditions. A triple-board certified physician, Dr. Lee completed his fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry from John Hopkins Hospital, his adult psychiatry residency at Duke University Hospital and his medical degree at the University of Oklahoma. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine and a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. He also serves on the board of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers and is chair of the board at the St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Given his unique degree of specialization and powerful messaging, Dr. Lee is frequently interviewed by national media and has spoken on Capitol Hill, at the White House and at academic conferences and events across the United States. He is the author of Recovering My Kid: Parenting Young Adults in Treatment and Beyond, a practical guide for parental leadership in times of crisis. ## Esin Cooper VP, Organization Design & Talent Supply Chain, Pearson Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/esin-cooper/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: Education Job Function: HR Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Olcay Bulgun Gardner SVP, Revenue Operations, Sodexo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/olcay-bulgun-gardner/ Track: Sales & Revenue Operations Industry: Other Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Jens Paul Berndt Group Head of Tech, Data & AI, Ringier AG Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jens-paul-berndt/ Track: Sales & Revenue Operations Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jens Paul Berndt is Global Head of Tech, Data and AI at Ringier AG, the Zurich-based international media and digital marketplace group, where he leads the company's group-wide technology, data, and artificial intelligence strategy. In this role, he drives Ringier's AI transformation across its media, marketplaces, and sports verticals — including one of Europe's most ambitious enterprise deployments of Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform, turning data into operational intelligence across dozens of brands in more than 15 countries. Before joining Ringier, Jens served as CTO of the SMG Swiss Marketplace Group and Ifolor Group, and as both CTO and CEO of Homegate, Switzerland's leading real estate platform, following earlier leadership roles at ImmobilienScout in Germany. With more than two decades at the intersection of digital marketplaces, media, and applied AI, he brings a rare perspective: that of an operator who has built, scaled, and monetized AI systems that actually ship. ## Narayanan Nair SVP & Chief Data Officer, Farm Credit Services of America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/narayanan-nair/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Narayanan Nair is Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Farm Credit Services of America, also serving AgCountry Farm Credit Services and Frontier Farm Credit, where he leads the enterprise data and artificial intelligence teams for a $70‑billion agricultural financial services organization. In this role, Narayanan is accountable for establishing data and AI as strategic enterprise capabilities that enable growth, operational efficiency, and superior customer experience. He leads a broad portfolio encompassing data architecture, engineering, integration, business intelligence, governance, and operations, and heads the organization’s artificial intelligence strategy and execution. His focus is on scaling AI responsibly—embedding it into business processes, decision‑making, and products while ensuring strong governance, security, and ethical use. Narayanan brings deep experience at the intersection of technology, business, and operations, with a career spanning financial services, transportation, and digital banking. He has led multiple large‑scale data transformations, modernized analytics platforms, strengthened enterprise data governance, and built high‑performing teams that consistently translate data and AI investments into measurable business outcomes. His leadership is distinguished by an ability to bridge executive strategy with practical execution, aligning modern data platforms and AI capabilities to real business needs. He is widely recognized for fostering a strong data culture, developing future‑ready talent, and partnering closely with executive leadership to position data and artificial intelligence as durable competitive advantages for the organization and the customers it serves. ## Samantha Lomow Former EVP, Chief Commercial Officer, Tupperware Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/samantha-lomow/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Retail Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Samantha Lomow is a globally recognized transformation executive, board director, and most recently EVP & Chief Commercial Officer at Tupperware, with more than 25 years of experience reinventing some of the world's most iconic consumer brands. She is known for helping iconic legacy brands navigate periods of profound change by turning bold ideas into measurable business results, with expertise spanning consumer products, entertainment, retail, e-commerce, and direct sales. At Tupperware, Samantha was recruited as EVP & Chief Commercial Officer to help stabilize the business, lead its commercial transformation, and guide the company through restructuring and a change in ownership. She led the evolution of the iconic brand from a legacy direct-selling model to a modern, digital-first, omni-channel business. Previously, Samantha served as President of Global Brands and Chief Customer Officer at Foot Locker, where she drove customer-centric innovation and enterprise transformation during a pivotal shift in the global sneaker industry. During her two decades at Hasbro, she held executive leadership roles including President of Hasbro Brands and President of Branded Entertainment, helping transform the company from a traditional toy manufacturer into an IP-led, multi-platform entertainment company. She led the reinvention of major franchises such as Transformers and helped forge strategic partnerships with Disney that expanded Hasbro's global entertainment business. Samantha also served on the board of Claire's Inc. following its restructuring and ownership transition, where she chaired the Nominating, Governance & ESG Committee and served on the Audit Committee. Today, Samantha works with leaders and organizations navigating transformation, helping them unlock the imagination of their teams, challenge long-held assumptions, and create lasting business value in an era of constant change. ## Jose Martinez Chief Data Officer, Coca Cola FEMSA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jose-martinez/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Jose De Jesus Martinez Camara, MS, PMP, is an innovative executive currently serving as the Global Chief Data Officer at Coca-Cola FEMSA. Previously, he served as the Americas Head of Data & Analytics at Nissan North America for Finance, with a dual track record as well as Chief Information Officer. With over 20 years of experience driving organizational excellence, Jose specializes in managing complex IT portfolios and commercializing technology products across the consumer goods, automotive, finance, entertainment, and consultancy sectors. He is a visionary professional known for aligning technology initiatives with long-term business objectives and fostering Agile and DevOps cultures. In his current global role at Coca-Cola FEMSA, he leads the enterprise data strategy, governance, and advanced analytics capabilities to drive digital transformation and value creation at scale. Prior to this, as Americas Head of Data & Analytics for Nissan Finance, Jose oversaw the data landscape across Mexico, Canada, and the United States, ensuring strategic alignment with corporate needs. During his tenure, he championed the creation of the Nissan Finance Data Factory and implemented a Product Oriented Delivery (POD) mindset to democratize data access. This initiative, along with his "Zero Cost" strategy utilizing internal engineering teams, generated over $6 million USD in revenue and established a citizen development approach that reduced vendor reliance. He also defined regional data architecture using state-of-the-art platforms such as Snowflake, Cortex, and Bedrock to uphold standardization and innovation. Previously, as Chief Information Officer for Nissan Renault Financial Services (2020–2025), Jose managed a $40 million USD portfolio focused on modernizing core systems, including Salesforce implementations and AI tools for client profiling. He directed digital transformations for loan origination and portfolio systems that yielded combined benefits of $80 million USD. His earlier experience includes significant tenure at Softtek as a Global Financial Technical Architect and Global Sr Service Manager, where he designed financial crime prevention solutions for major global clients like BBVA, Santander, and HSBC. Jose holds a Master in Computer Science and Technology (Summa Cum Laude) and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Data Science & Software Engineering at the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes. His robust technical skillset spans AWS, Python, MLOps, and Enterprise Architecture, and he maintains professional certifications including PMP, ITIL V4, and AWS Cloud Practitioner. He is recognized for his expertise in data science and for establishing robust information security systems to safeguard critical assets. ## Youssef Idelcaid Head of AI Research Center (ARC), Gilead Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/youssef-idelcaid/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Youssef Idelcaid is the Head of the AI Research Center at Gilead Sciences, where he leads enterprise AI strategy and the deployment of transformative technologies across the drug development lifecycle. His career spans multiple industries—including biotech (Genentech), cosmetics (L’Oréal), fashion (Levi’s), and the food industry (Danone)—giving him a unique cross-sector perspective on the power of AI to drive innovation in complex, regulated environments. Youssef holds an engineering degree in computational and applied mathematics from École Polytechnique Universitaire de Lyon. He is passionate about designing systems that combine science, technology, and strategy to improve outcomes for patients and society. ## Elise Neel SVP, Global Strategy & Strategic Partnerships, Panasonic Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/elise-neel/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Elise Neel, Global Head of Strategy & Strategic Partnerships, Panasonic Go LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliseneel/ Elise Neel is the Global Head of Strategy & Strategic Partnerships for Panasonic Go, a global corporate growth initiative to drive business transformation through AI. Leveraging the knowledge, technology and hardware Panasonic has cultivated over the past 100+ years, Elise aims to fundamentally transform how Panasonic operates, delivers customer value and generates revenue. The goal of Panasonic Go is to expand AI-enabled software, hardware and solutions businesses to 30% of the Group’s total sales by 2035. Elise was previously the SVP of New Business Innovation for Verizon, where she spent nearly a decade building a portfolio of nine audacious investment ventures and ushering in the advent of the 5G era. Elise managed the strategy, end-to-end execution, and P&L responsibilities. The portfolio spanned location technology, drone and aviation services, terrestrial robotics, adaptive manufacturing, sensor fusion and intelligence, and energy transformation. Before joining Verizon, Elise served as the CEO of MapQuest (a Verizon Company that later sold to System 1) after spending time as both the Chief Revenue Officer and GM of MapQuest Enterprise. She’s also held leadership roles at companies including PlaceIQ, comScore, and InsightExpress. Elise grew up in Southern California and received her bachelor’s degree in advertising and business from Pepperdine University. ## Jim Siders CEO, Shield Technology Partners Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jim-siders/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jim Siders is the CEO of Shield. Jim joined Shield after nearly 13 years at Palantir Technologies, where he began his tenure as a tech support contractor, worked in many facets of the company's global IT organization, and ended with a four year stint as CIO. Prior to Palantir, Jim worked at arts nonprofits in the Pittsburgh, PA region and as a Genius Bar technician at Apple. A native of Champaign, IL, Jim holds degrees from the University of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon University. ## Kenny Vargas Managing Director, Head of Software and Data Engineering, Piper Sandler Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kenny-vargas/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Minnesota Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $1B-$5B Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker ## Yash Chaturvedi Head of Product, Amazon Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yash-chaturvedi/ Track: Product Management Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Yash Chaturvedi is a Principal Technical Product Manager at Amazon who transforms AI innovations into market-leading products. With over 11 years of product experience, he led the development of Amazon's patented AI-powered Virtual Product Placement technology, creating new opportunities for brands in digital content. Prior to Amazon, Yash built innovative visual search and recommendation systems at The Home Depot that enhanced how millions shop online. He excels at identifying promising AI applications by guiding them from concept to commercial success and brings valuable expertise in bridging technical innovation with business strategy. ## Kate Park Editorial Contributor, TechCrunch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kate-park/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Kate Park is an editorial contributor at TechCrunch, covering startups, venture capital, and emerging technology trends across Asia-Pacific. She is also the founder of Signals Ventures, a media and intelligence platform delivering weekly analysis on tech, business, and policy in the region, reaching founders, investors, and policymakers through its newsletter and podcast. ## Garvita Kapur Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering, New York Public Library Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/garvita-kapur/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Government Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Garvita Kapur is the Senior Director of Software Engineering and AI at The New York Public Library, where she aligns complex technology with the institution's organizational mission. With nearly two decades of experience and an Masters from Columbia University, Garvita has a proven track record of building resilient digital ecosystems across education, media, and healthcare. From winning a Webby for social activism to leading the NYPL’s AI Initiative, she combines deep technical expertise with a commitment to equity and collaborative leadership. Garvita is a dedicated bridge-builder who pairs human empathy with technical excellence to drive organizational success. ## Elaine Reyes News Anchor, CGTN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/elaine-reyes/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Elaine Reyes is a news anchor and podcast host for CGTN based in Washington, DC. She is also the Host of “Americas Now” the network’s hour-long magazine program that focuses on social, economic and political issues in the Americas, as well as "UN Insider", a show based at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Elaine has conducted one-on-one interviews with dozens of Presidents, Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors from Latin America to Asia. She also interviewed numerous United Nations officials, Tech CEOs, even Jazz great, Wynton Marsalis. Her overseas assignments include anchoring from the G-20 Summit, APEC, BRICS, Summit of the Americas and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as moderating technology panels at Web Summit Rio and Collision Toronto. Elaine was also a reporter and anchor at NBC in Washington, DC, Atlanta,Georgia and several other US television stations…covering major news events for American networks including MSNBC, FOX News, CBS, CNN and the Weather Channel. ## Eric Tan Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Goodwin Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-tan/ Track: Legal Industry: Legal Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Eric Tan is the Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Goodwin, a $2.7B AmLaw 20 firm, where he spearheads global digital strategy and AI development. An expert in scaling technology within highly regulated industries, Eric previously served as CIO & CSO at Flock Safety. There, he built the technology and security organizations from the ground up and chaired the Responsible AI & Risk Committee, helping the company reach a $8.4B valuation. Prior to that, as CIO & SVP at Coupa Software, he scaled the platform from $80M to $1B ARR, navigating its IPO and over a dozen acquisitions. Eric began his career at PwC, where he founded the Cloud Computing practice. Recognized by The Wall Street Journal as a “Technology Decision Maker,” he is a member of CNBC’s Technology Executive Council and is an advisor to Headline, a ~$1B AUM Growth fund. Based in Silicon Valley, Eric is a leading authority on the intersection of AI, security, and professional services. ## Lucas Atkins CTO, Arcee Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lucas-atkins/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Lucas Atkins serves as CTO and Head of Research at Arcee AI, where he spearheaded the proprietary training stack behind Trinity, Arcee’s family of open-weight foundation models. A veteran in machine learning, Lucas engineered next-generation text-to-speech systems for leading automotive giants such as Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, and Hyundai starting well before the current generative AI surge. He has also led training of specialized language translation systems for the UAE and partnered with AMD in 2023 and 2024 to optimize enterprise GPUs for large-scale model training. He now uses that end-to-end experience to shape Arcee’s in-house models, aiming for efficient, open source & open-weight models that set the standard for American made open intelligence. ## Ameen Kazerouni CTO, Purpose Brands Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ameen-kazerouni/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ameen Kazerouni is the Chief Technology Officer at Purpose Brands, the world's largest fitness franchisor and parent company of Anytime Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, The Bar Method, and Waxing the City. He leads technology strategy and AI transformation across 6,000+ locations in 24 countries. Ameen has spent over a decade building data and AI organizations from the ground up. Before stepping into the CTO role, he served as Chief Analytics Officer at Orangetheory Fitness, where he built the data and analytics organization and later merged it with the technology function to accelerate how the brand uses data and AI at scale. Prior to Orangetheory, he was Head of ML/AI Research and Platforms at Zappos, where he stood up the machine learning organization and built the AI systems behind personalized search, sizing prediction, and customer experience optimization. His operating philosophy: build experiences, not algorithms. ## Shanshan Bi Director of Commercial AI Acceleration - AIML, Pfizer Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shanshan-bi/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Shanshan Bi is the Director of Commercial AI Acceleration at Pfizer, and a leading expert in deploying advanced machine learning and Agentic-AI solutions to solve complex business challenges within the Pharmaceutical and industrial sectors. She is recognized for a strategic approach that transforms raw data into actionable commercial products, focusing on high-impact areas like optimizing customer engagement and streamlining scientific research workflows. ## Shashank Kadetotad Global Sr. Director Enterprise Data Science and AI, Mars Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shashank-kadetotad/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Retail Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Shashank Kadetotad, a Ross School of Business alumnus and Senior Director of Enterprise Data Science & AI Delivery at Mars, Incorporated, is a leader in scaling high-impact AI solutions for the modern enterprise. With over 18 years of experience spanning AI in Marketing, Supply Chain, and Finance, he currently spearheads the delivery of proprietary AI frameworks like Mars GPT and Brahma.ai. His professional background includes: * Leadership Excellence: Before joining Mars, he served as a Data Science Leader at Walmart eCommerce and held similar roles at Amazon. * Technical Innovation: He is a prolific innovator with five provisional patents and an electrical engineering background. * Industry Contribution: An active member of INFORMS, he frequently contributes to the broader data science community as a judge for prestigious industry honors like the DataIQ Awards. Shashank’s work is defined by a commitment to bridging the gap between complex data science and tangible, large-scale business outcomes. ## Amit Patel Partner, Plug and Play Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amit-patel/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Amit is a Partner at Plug and Play Ventures where he co-leads the firm's Fintech & AI fund and supports the firm’s early stage investment efforts across Fintech, Enterprise & AI. With a background that includes a role at GE Venture’s New Business Creations Group, Amit has experience creating and spinning out new companies across healthcare, oil & gas, and enterprise software. ## Nicolas Bievre Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicolas-bievre/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Nicolas Bievre is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Meta, where he plays a critical role in the design and deployment of large-scale, AI-based recommender systems for ads ranking. He is also a primary architect of innovative AI solutions designed to enhance both the user and advertiser experience. After graduating from Stanford University and CentraleSupélec, he developed extensive industry and research experience in Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning, recommender systems, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Generative AI, with specialized applications in digital advertising, personalization, and bioinformatics. He has a proven track record of architecting and implementing recommender systems that personalize the user experience for billions of people globally. Mr. Bievre has applied his expertise in machine learning at premier AI-driven companies, including Meta, PayPal, Google, and Amazon, where he has made several original contributions to the field. At Meta, he has been a key contributor to the “Background AI” solution, which leverages Generative AI to automatically enhance ad creatives, improving performance while significantly reducing marketing costs. He has also developed novel AI architectures, such as a novel conversion-attribution framework recognized with the Best Paper Award at the 2025 AdKDD conference. Previously, at PayPal, Mr. Bievre pioneered the introduction of AI into the PayPal app to automatically personalize content and the user experience, leading to measurable gains in global engagement. As an internationally recognized expert, Mr. Bievre serves as a reviewer for leading AI journals and conferences, including NeurIPS and AAAI, and acts as an AI Consultant for the French government. ## David Scott Krueger CEO | Assistant Professor, Evitable | University of Montreal, Mila Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-scott-krueger/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Other Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter David Krueger CEO & Founder | Evitable Assistant Professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI | University of Montreal, Mila David Krueger is an Assistant Professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal and Mila. He was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge, a research director at the UK AI Task Force, and an intern on DeepMind's Technical AGI Safety team. David works on reducing societal-scale risks of AI such as gradual disempowerment and human extinction. His work includes technical research as well as education, outreach, governance, and advocacy. His research spans many areas of Deep Learning and AI Safety, including alignment failure modes, algorithmic manipulation, interpretability, robustness, and understanding how AI systems learn and generalize. He has been featured in media outlets including ITV's Good Morning Britain, Al Jazeera's Inside Story, France 24, New Scientist, and the Associated Press. In 2025, David founded Evitable, a nonprofit. Evitable's mission is to inform and organize the public to confront societal-scale risks of AI, and put an end to the reckless race to develop superintelligence. ## Tarun Sood Chief Data Officer, American Century Investments Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tarun-sood/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Tarun Sood is the Chief Data and AI Officer for American Century Investments and oversees all aspects of data and analytics, Artificial Intelligence, enterprise data and analytics strategy, data management, data engineering, machine learning, business intelligence, data governance, and data operations. Before joining ACI, Tarun was with Vanguard as the CDAO of the Institutional businesses, overseeing the data transformation and managing an extensive data and analytics organization portfolio. In addition, he managed business intelligence and analytics, data science, data and ML engineering, data governance, and data operations teams. Before joining Vanguard, he held leadership positions in various consulting firms, most recently with Deloitte Consulting. Both at Vanguard and in consulting, Tarun was integral in developing and succeeding in large-scale data and analytics transformations that directly impacted the development of solutions for clients. Throughout his career, Tarun has been passionate about data and analytics, AIML, and enabling data and cloud transformations. During his consulting days, Tarun advised senior leaders about their data and analytics and AIML strategies, and he now frequently presents at conferences about these emerging complex topics. In addition, Tarun is an active member of several boards and data and analytics communities. ## Jodi Blomberg VP AI & ML, Cox Automotive Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jodi-blomberg/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Jodi Blomberg is the Vice President of AI and Machine Learning (ML) at Cox Automotive. With decades of experience in data science and machine learning, Jodi has a track record of creating products that embed data and AI/ML to increase automation, revenue, and growth. Jodi oversees a team of product managers, engineers, and data scientists working to shape the future of automotive technology. Her teams manage initiatives spanning early-stage research, proofs of concept, and full product delivery, applying AI models: machine learning, GenAI, Agentic AI, computer vision, statistics, and optimization. She holds a BA in Economics and an MS in Mathematics. ## Aidan Nevin VP Commercialization and Business Operations, Fidelity Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aidan-nevin/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Aidan Nevin is the Head of Commercialization and Business Operations for Fidelity Investments' innovation incubator. Our teams build new software businesses and leading capabilities to enter new markets and better serve customers. ## Lin Yuan Chief AI Officer and EVP of Engineering, Newfront Insurance (now part of WTW) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lin-yuan/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Lin Yuan is a seasoned technology executive and AI leader currently serving as Chief AI Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Newfront, a technology-powered insurance brokerage transforming how businesses manage insurance and total rewards. Lin oversees a diverse organization encompassing product engineering, infrastructure, data, and AI. She shapes Newfront’s AI strategy and leads the development of next-generation platforms that modernize insurance operations, elevate client experiences, and deliver transformative value across the insurance ecosystem. Throughout her career, Lin has been at the forefront of leveraging advanced technologies to solve complex, real-world challenges. Her work combines deep technical expertise with a sharp focus on driving innovation and achieving measurable business outcomes across industries such as education, transportation, and insurance. Before joining Newfront, Lin held leadership roles at Meta, Coursera, and Lyft. At Meta, she contributed to search products utilized by billions of users globally. At Coursera, Lin scaled global learning platforms and pioneered Coursera for Enterprise, expanding into workforce development and personalized learning through machine learning. At Lyft, she led engineering efforts in safety and insurance, developing tools and models that improved rider and driver safety, reduced accident rates, and streamlined claims processes. Lin is particularly passionate about operationalizing AI in enterprise settings, ensuring technical robustness, responsible AI practices, and alignment with human decision-making. At Newfront, she has spearheaded the launch of AI-driven products that transform risk management, streamline compliance, and deliver tailored risk insights through intuitive, real-time experiences. She views AI not merely as technology, but as a catalyst for meaningful, lasting change, especially in traditional sectors like insurance. Lin holds a Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an Executive MBA from The Wharton School. She frequently speaks and advises on enterprise AI, digital transformation, and practical applications of emerging technologies. ## Robert Greisemer Sr. SRE, Core AI Infrastructure, Coinbase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-greisemer/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Robert Greisemer is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Coinbase, where he works at the intersection of enterprise AI, platform engineering, security, and operational reliability. With more than 15 years of experience guiding Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and startups through cloud adoption and modernization, Robert brings a practical, systems-oriented perspective to helping organizations adopt new technologies safely and at scale. At Coinbase, Robert helps teams turn AI-assisted ideas and prototypes into secure, enterprise-ready applications. His work spans AI infrastructure, internal developer enablement, observability, security reviews, deployment patterns, and paved-road architectures that make it easier for builders across the company to move quickly without bypassing the controls required in a highly regulated environment. He is passionate about making AI adoption practical for enterprise teams: giving domain experts the ability to build, while ensuring security, reliability, data protection, and accountability remain built in from the start rather than added after the fact. ## Tammy Dugan Chief Data Scientist, Cummins Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tammy-dugan/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Tammy Dugan is Director of AI Innovation and Cyber Risk Mitigation at Cummins Inc., the global power and industrial technology leader. In this role, she drives innovation across AI, cybersecurity, and agentic AI governance within the Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AAI) organization. Tammy brings over 20 years of experience spanning medical informatics, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing, with deep expertise in software development, analytics, and AI. She has authored 17 publications across medical informatics, computer science, and mathematics. Tammy holds a Master's in Computer and Information Science from Purdue University and is pursuing a second Master's in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Texas at Austin. ## Keenan Moukarzel Head of Consumer AI & Data, KeyBank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/keenan-moukarzel/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Keenan Moukarzel serves as Head of AI & Data for the Consumer Bank at KeyBank, responsible for shaping and executing the AI roadmap across consumer lines of business. With a background spanning analytics, technology, and operations, he focuses on identifying high-impact AI use cases, enabling scalable platforms, and ensuring responsible adoption that delivers measurable business value. Keenan frequently collaborates with senior leaders and cross‑functional teams to embed AI into day‑to‑day decisioning and customer journeys. Prior to this role, Keenan was Head of Analytics Services & Tools at Keybank for 3 years, responsible for maintaining and procuring new analytics tools (such as Tableau, Power BI, GCP suite, SAS, etc), along with delivering high impact analytics projects across the Enterprise. He joined KeyBank from Freddie Mac in 2021, where he was a leader in the AI and analytics space for the Single Family Home Purchase division. ## Ralph Valdes Chief Technology Officer, Zumba Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ralph-valdes/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ralph Valdes is the Chief Technology Officer at Zumba, with more than 15 years of experience leading product, engineering, data, and QA organizations through large-scale change. He works at the intersection of agentic AI, organizational design, and execution, with a focus on ensuring AI delivers durable, real-world impact rather than isolated experimentation. Ralph has led Zumba through a broad, organization-wide adoption of AI. Within product and engineering, his teams apply AI across the entire software development lifecycle, from synthesizing customer feedback and generating product requirements to rapid prototyping, code generation, code review, and quality assurance. These efforts enable Zumba to ship AI-powered capabilities directly into customer-facing products that serve its global network of fitness instructors and the 15 million students who take their classes each week. Across the broader organization, Ralph has introduced autonomous agents in customer service that now resolve more than half of all customer inquiries with high CSAT scores, launched AI-powered self-service data applications that democratize access to insights across the company, and driven the deployment of agentic workflows that reduced translation costs by 80 percent. Known for bridging executive strategy with hands-on delivery, Ralph helps organizations redesign how work actually gets done, confront the change management challenges AI exposes, and move beyond pilots toward sustained, production-grade impact. ## Pradeep Karuturi Machine Learning Engineer, Instacart Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pradeep-karuturi/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Pradeep Karuturi is a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Instacart. He leads various personalization and generative AI initiatives at Instacart. ## Alberto Silveira Chief Technology Officer (CTO), HireVue Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alberto-silveira/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Alberto Silveira is the Chief Technology Officer at Hirevue, where he oversees engineering, architecture, information security, IT and cloud operations teams. With over 20 years of experience, Alberto is a passionate, hands-on and people-centric leader. He authored the seminal book “Building and Managing High-Performance Distributed Teams,” which focuses on steering software teams toward delivering value to organizations leveraging empowerment and full collaboration. He is also the creator of the Carpaccio Methodology for measuring the productivity of Software Teams. Before joining Hirevue, Alberto was the head of engineering at LawnStarter and PowerSchool Group LLC. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Universidade do Vale do Itajaí. ## Chris Morrow Product Manager, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-morrow/ Track: Product Management Industry: Other Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Chris Morrow is a Product Manager at Meta, building next-generation AI experiences. He was most recently a Principal Technical Product Manager at Amazon, where he led key product initiatives for the generative AI shopping assistant, Amazon Rufus. He owned the strategy and launch of core conversational features, shaping how millions of customers start and continue shopping conversations. Before Rufus, his work on Alexa's capabilities included managing the Books shopping category and building the interactive audio adventure category for Alexa Games. An active member of the AI community, Chris has served as an ambassador for deeplearning.ai, advising on curriculum for courses like AI for Everyone. This is his fourth year speaking at AI4 and he frequently speaks on the practical application of AI in product development. ## Mohamed Battisha VP of Engineering, Wex Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mohamed-battisha/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Mohamed Battisha is the Vice President of Engineering for Data as a Service (DaaS) at WEX, where he leads the company’s enterprise data, AI, and platform transformation. With deep experience building large-scale data platforms, semantic architectures, and AI-native systems, Mohamed oversees WEX’s global ingestion, data modeling, and AI enablement strategy across the company’s Payments, Mobility, and Benefits businesses. Prior to WEX, Mohamed spent more than two decades leading data and AI engineering organizations across Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and other global enterprises, where he drove the adoption of modern data platforms, multi-agent AI systems, and real-time analytics at massive scale. At WEX, Mohamed is responsible for defining the Data & AI architecture that powers the company’s next generation of intelligent products—spanning agentic frameworks, vector and embedding platforms, unified ingestion systems, and production-grade semantic models. Mohamed is a frequent speaker on AI-native data architectures, multi-agent systems, and the future of enterprise AI. He is passionate about the intersection of data engineering, AI, and product innovation—helping organizations transform their data into trusted, intelligent, and actionable systems. ## Mallika Rao Senior Engineering Manager, Zocdoc (ex-Netflix, Walmart, Twitter) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mallika-rao/ Track: Recommendation & Ranking Systems [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Mallika Rao is a seasoned engineering leader with deep expertise in designing, scaling, and operating distributed systems that serve millions of users. Her experience spans high-throughput search infrastructure, data platforms, and large-scale migrations across complex production ecosystems. A former staff engineer turned leader, Mallika brings a systems-thinking mindset to both code and culture—she views teams, technologies, and feedback loops as interconnected architectures that can be tuned for resilience and speed. She’s passionate about building transparent platforms that accelerate innovation without trading off stability, and about leading teams through technical and organizational transformation, especially in AI-driven and data-intensive environments. Outside of work, Mallika finds parallels between the precision of mathematics and the improvisation of Indian classical music—two disciplines that shape her perspective on engineering as both structure and art. She also mentors senior engineers and emerging leaders navigating the inflection points of technical growth and scale. ## Shafik Quoraishee Senior Games/ML Engineer, The New York Times Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shafik-quoraishee/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Shafik Quoraishee is Senior Games Engineer at the New York Times, who works on the Mobile games platform that includes titles such as Wordle, Connections, Strands, and the New York Times Crossword. He has also worked on the New York Times Mobile Subscription Platform as well. Shafik possess multiple years of Mobile development experience and a background in AI/ML Computer Vision research, which from which he applies his skills in various capacities at the Times. He also teaches AI/ML fundmentals in various educational programs such as Brainstation. Prior to the New York Times, Shafik had worked and the NBA (National Basketball Association) on the NBA's NextGen Streaming platform, and helped build and Architect the Android TV and FireTV platform applications to bring live platback to NBA fans accross the world. Prior to the NBA, Shafik worked in large scale commercial institutions such Business Insider where he not only developed Data Infrastructure and Pipelining to support the ingestion, sanitization, storage ,and analytics of huge amounts of commerce and revenue data, but he also worked on anomaly detection and the integration Time Series and forecasting to help isolate peculiar traffic and trends, and predict new seasonal trends in the data. Shafik started his career at ARDEC (Armaments Research and Development Center), a research division of the DoD, working on signal processing algorithms and techniques to help isolate physical phenomena and events in complex noise environments. From there his Academic and research skills were honed into helping him build some of the tools and techniques he works on in the current day. ## Kushal Pasari Director - AI Engineering, United Airlines Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kushal-pasari/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Andrew Zarkowsky Head of AI Underwriting, The Hartford Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-zarkowsky/ Track: Insurance Industry: Insurance Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Andrew Zarkowsky is the head of AI underwriting at The Hartford. His responsibilities include building responsible AI enhanced underwriting tools to improve efficiencies and effectiveness. In addition, he is responsible for assessing the insurance risk and risk management controls for creators and users of AI. He has worked within the insurance industry, mostly as an underwriter and an underwriting officer, for over 20 years. He holds a batchlers degree from Boston University and an MBA from DePaul University. He lives in the Greater Chicago Area. ## Eytan Eshel Executive VP Chief Technology and R&D Officer, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eytan-eshel/ Track: Aerospace & Defense Industry: Other Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist BG (res.) Eytan Eshel borne in 1961, He graduated from Tel Aviv University with BSc in Electronic Engineering in 1983 and MBA Business Management in excellence, Tel Aviv University 1994. Since 2021, BG (res.) Eshel Is EVP R&D, technology and innovation – CTO of IAI - Israel Aerospace Industries. In this position he has full responsibility over IAI R&D investment, emerging technology, the collaboration with the academic and research institutes. Responsibility over IAI innovation center and Space incubator. In 2015, Mr. ESHEL joint ELBIT Systems – ELISRA as Vice President. In this position, he was responsible for business line of SIGINT, Ground and Naval EW and C4I and serves at the corporate management level, and as director in the ELBIT's Australian company -ELSA. 1983 -2014 BG Eytan Eshel served in the IDF at the Air Force and MOD – DDR&D (Directorate of Defense Research & Development) as an officer and retired after having served in several key positions including Head of Military R&D in Brigadier General Rank. During his military career, he served in a variety of command professional and staff positions in both Air Force and MOD. Throughout his military career, he initiated, set up and led many major programs. As the Head of Military R&D (DDR&D - Directorate of Defense Research & Development in IDF and MOD), his responsibility was for the R&D and full-scale development programs of the entire IDF. He served at senior IDF team to define the force buildup. BG Eytan initiated and managed international programs and cooperation with other countries in a grand scale. ## Krista Arndt ACISO, St. Luke's University Health Network Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/krista-arndt/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Krista Arndt is the Associate CISO SLUHN. As the Associate CISO, Krista is responsible for managing the security program's day to day operational effectiveness. In her previous roles, Krista assisted with developing and leading security programs in crypto, finance, and the Department of Defense. Krista earned her Bachelors Degree in Biology from Felician College in NJ where she was a scholarship athlete, serving as the women’s basketball team captain. She also holds her CISM and CRISC certifications and NHRA competition drivers license. Krista is an active member of ISACA, serves as InfraGard Philadelphia Chapter’s Healthcare Sector Chief, serves on Neumann University's Business Advisory Council and is Marketing Committee chair for Women in Cybersecurity-Delaware Valley Affiliate. Krista is also a published author, detailing her journey to embracing her unique authenticity in her book, “Permission to be Real; How to Lead, Influence, and Thrive Without Fitting the Mold". Through this service and her writing, Krista's mission is to give back to her community by providing mentorship and support for aspiring cybersecurity professionals, especially for women who wish to enter the field. When off the clock, Krista takes her affinity for overcoming challenges to the garage and the race track, where she enjoys building and improving her own race car, competing as a driver in national drag racing events with her family, and using her racing as a forum to advocate for neurodiversity awareness and inclusion. ## Bhaskar Borah SVP, Head of Marketing Data Science & Technology, Dow Jones Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bhaskar-borah/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Bhaskar Borah serves as SVP, Head of Marketing Data Science & Technology for Dow Jones. He is charged with standing up a best-in-class data science function focusing on subscriptions and other lines of revenue across the company and using this capability as a growth engine. Bhaskar oversees a team focused on transformational data science and AI tools and capabilities. His team is responsible for enhancing the organization’s data and science-based granular decision-making across pricing, media planning, monetization, product design, personalization, acquisition, engagement & retention strategies across both B2C and B2B lines of business. Bhaskar also serves on the AI Steering Committee for Dow Jones, where he is shaping enterprise wide AI policies and governance frameworks. Bhaskar has over two decades of deep data science experience, developing and deploying data-driven strategies and capabilities at scale. Prior to joining Dow Jones, he led global data science teams at Citi across different US Consumer businesses and channels. He is passionate about deploying data science tools and technologies as growth engines to solve real business problems. ## Patrick Loerch Senior Vice President, Clinical Data Science, Gilead Sciences Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/patrick-loerch/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Patrick Loerch, Senior Vice President, Clinical Data Science, Gilead Sciences Patrick Loerch joined Gilead in 2020 as the Senior Vice President of Clinical Data Science where he is responsible for bringing together the data science and technology functions across Development to build an industry-leading, integrated evidence and insights generation function spanning Biostatistics, Statistical Programming, Real World Evidence, Artificial Intelligence, Clinical Bioinformatics, Clinical Pharmacology and Development Systems. He has over 20 years of experience in data sciences, real-world evidence and genomics research spanning all phases of R&D within the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to Gilead, he held leadership positions at Johnson & Johnson, Celgene, and Merck. Patrick earned his PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University and his BS in Biochemistry from Washington State University. ## Valeh Nabiyev Chief Data & AI Officer, Bir Ecosystem Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/valeh-nabiyev/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Valeh Nabiyev is the Chief Data Officer at PASHA Holding, a leading financial and technology group in Azerbaijan. He is responsible for driving enterprise-wide data transformation across a diverse ecosystem of banks, fintechs, insurers, and digital platforms. Valeh leads the design of federated data governance, shared platforms for data collaboration, and capability-building programs within business units. While PASHA Holding is in the early stages of AI adoption, his focus is on building the right foundations — from governance and architecture to future-ready operating models — to support responsible and scalable AI use across the group. A strategic yet hands-on leader, Valeh is passionate about enabling value-driven transformation and fostering data and AI maturity across emerging markets. ## Aalpen Patel Former Chief Clinical and Innovation Officer, Former MedQuest Imaging Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aalpen-patel/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Aalpen Patel, MD, MBA, is Founder and CEO of Kaspyan Group, a stealth-mode technology company building AI-driven tools at the intersection of healthcare and family caregiving. He is the former Chief Clinical and Innovation Officer at MedQuest Imaging (MedQuest), one of the nation's leading outpatient imaging providers, where he oversaw all clinical practices, including innovation in product development and care delivery. Before MedQuest, Aalpen held roles at Geisinger, including Chair of the Department of Radiology, Medical Director for Artificial Intelligence, and Medical Director for the 3D Imaging and Printing Laboratory. He also led radiology informatics efforts at the institution. Before Geisinger, he was on the faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and served as Specialty Director for the Penn Medicine Simulation Center. Aalpen received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology and worked at IBM before pivoting to healthcare and earning a Doctor of Medicine degree from Rutgers University's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. His postgraduate work includes training at renowned institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Temple University Hospital, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is triple board-certified in diagnostic radiology, vascular and interventional radiology, and clinical informatics. A respected voice in the integration of technology and healthcare, Aalpen is a fellow of the Society of Interventional Radiology and a sought-after speaker with more than 100 publications. He serves as Associate Editor of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Pattern Recognition). ## Pouya Shahbazian CEO & Founder, Staircase Studios AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pouya-shahbazian/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Pouya Shahbazian is the Founder & CEO of Staircase Studios AI and a BAFTA-nominated film and television producer known for his expertise in book-to-film adaptation and rights management. He was previously named to The Hollywood Reporter's Next Gen “35 Under 35” list and honored by Publishers Weekly as a Star Watch recipient, recognizing top emerging talent in publishing. His producing credits include the global box-office hit Divergent franchise, the BAFTA-nominated indie drama American Honey, the groundbreaking LGBTQ+ studio film Love, Simon (Fox 2000), and the Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone. At Staircase Studios AI, he is building a next-generation movie studio that merges traditional Hollywood storytelling with cutting-edge AI production techniques. ## Rennu Varghese Global Chief Information Officer, The Friedkin Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rennu-varghese/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Other Job Function: IT Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Rennu Varghese, Global Chief Information Officer for The Friedkin Group, is an award-winning, commercially minded technology leader boldly exploring the frontiers of technology and accelerating growth through tech-fueled innovation. In his role, Rennu provides strategic oversight for digital transformation, AI & IT across Friedkin’s portfolio of brands. He is a key leader behind envisioning and launching Trailblazer, their flagship AI initiative. ## Manoj Mathew CTO, LendingUSA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/manoj-mathew/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 101-250 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Manoj Mathew serves as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Risk Officer, and Head of Servicing & Collections at LendingUSA, a leading consumer lending fintech. Manoj operates at the intersection of high-velocity engineering and prudential risk management, serving as the architect of LendingUSA's API-first lending platform infrastructure that has processed over $10 billion in loan applications and $1.5 billion in originations. His work bridges fintech innovation with the regulatory discipline required of bank-partner compliance, ensuring that technology serves both borrower experience and lender risk management. A practitioner of applied AI in financial services, Manoj is leading LendingUSA's evolution into an AI-native enterprise. Moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept, he has deployed AI to address complex, high-stakes challenges in consumer lending and debt resolution. His recent implementations include conversational AI agents that autonomously handle sensitive servicing negotiations across SMS and chat; voice AI and real-time agent assist workflows providing 24/7 collections coverage with live transcription, sentiment scoring, and compliance guidance at scale; next-generation credit modeling using gradient-boosted decision trees with explainable AI frameworks to maintain transparency under SR 11-7 model governance standards; and cashflow-based underwriting integrating real-time bank data with predictive scoring for over 10,000 financial institutions. He is currently spearheading LendingUSA's entry into crypto-backed lending, designing AI-driven pricing intelligence, liquidation monitoring, and fraud detection systems for digital asset collateral. Throughout this transformation, LendingUSA has maintained a strong compliance posture achieving PCI-DSS v4.0.1 certification, SOC 1 Type 2 renewal, and top marks in annual bank partner audits demonstrating that responsible AI deployment and regulatory discipline can coexist. Prior to LendingUSA, Manoj co-founded LendFoundry, a lending-as-a-service platform, and held senior engineering leadership roles at Canon and Infosys. He holds nine U.S. patents spanning machine learning, computer vision, and distributed architecture. Manoj believes that in the age of AI, the most critical technology remains the human team and that true innovation happens when engineers are empowered to take ownership, assess risk fearlessly, and build with purpose. ## Karthikeyan Ilangovan Vice President - Data Analytics and AI/ML, MODE Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/karthikeyan-ilangovan/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Karthikeyan Ilangovan is an award-winning data analytics leader recognized as a DataIQ 100 and an OnCon Top 100 Data Analytics Professional. A champion of organizational data and AI maturity, he helps businesses unlock the full potential of their data assets while actively mentoring the next generation of data analytics professionals. Karthikeyan serves on the Data and AI Advisory Board at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas and the University of Wisconsin's Computer Science Program, and is a strong advocate for STEM education. He also serves as an Enterprise Big Data Framework Ambassador, a member of the Dallas Innovation Advisory Council, and Technology & Research Director at ESAL. As a Perplexity AI Business Fellow 2025, he continues to drive the innovation and adoption of applied Data & AI products. A sought-after keynote speaker at leading CDAO and CDAIO conferences, Karthikeyan is widely recognized for his impact on the data and AI industry. He is the Co-Founder of Chief Data Concierge — an organization that connects small and medium-sized businesses with the expertise of industry-leading Chief Data and Analytics Officers from Fortune 500 companies — and is a member of CDO Magazine's Global Board, an elite network of executives shaping the future of data, analytics, AI, and security. ## Saima Shafiq SVP, Head of Enterprise AI Enablement, US Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/saima-shafiq/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Saima Shafiq Senior Vice President | Head of AI Enablement | Enterprise AI Strategy Leader Saima Shafiq is a distinguished technology executive and thought leader in artificial intelligence strategy, delivery and enablement. Currently serving as SVP and Head of AI Enablement at U.S. Bank, Saima leads scaling of AI from within the company’s AI Center of Excellence, driving enterprise-wide AI initiatives that balance innovation with strong governance and responsible AI practices. With over two decades of experience in financial services and technology transformation, Saima has pioneered programs that integrate advanced AI capabilities into business operations while ensuring ethical oversight. Prior to U.S. Bank, Saima was Head of Applied AI Transformation at PNC Bank, where she spearheaded large-scale AI adoption across corporate and institutional banking. Her academic credentials include a Master of Business Administration, a Bachelor of Computer Sciences, and executive education in AI & Business Strategy from Carnegie Mellon University, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Harvard Business School. Saima’s leadership philosophy emphasizes human-centered AI enablement, ensuring that autonomous systems operate under strong human oversight and governance. Saima has been widely recognized for her contributions to technology and community service, including two Iqra International Educator Excellence Awards, Grace Hopper Abie Awards for Technology Leadership and Social Impact, and Working Mother of the Year from AnitaB. Saima also serves as an Advisor to the Responsible AI Institute (RAII), contributing to global standards for ethical AI practices. She is a sought-after keynote speaker and panelist at international conferences, where she shares insights on topics such as AI Governance and Risk Management, Leadership Principles for AI Enablement, The Future of Autonomous Agents with Human Oversight, and Enterprise AI Strategy and Transformation. ## Senthil Kumaran CIO, MNGI Digestive Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/senthil-kumaran/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Senthil S. Kumaran is a distinguished technology executive and educator with over 30 years of experience in software engineering and strategic leadership. Currently serving as the Chief Information Officer for MNGI Digestive Health, the nation’s premier independent gastroenterology organization, he spearheads digital transformation and innovation to optimize healthcare delivery. His technical mastery spans cloud-native architecture, applied AI, and machine learning, focusing on developing scalable solutions that bridge the gap between technical excellence and business objectives. A recognized thought leader in DevOps and agile methodologies, Senthil is committed to driving high-impact results through modern engineering practices. As an Adjunct Professor at Concordia University, Senthil teaches graduate-level courses in software engineering and data management. His dedication to mentorship is reflected in his record as a global speaker, having delivered over 100 presentations at international technical and healthcare conferences. Previously, as the technical co-founder of Virtuwell, Senthil architected a pioneering, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform that served over one million patients with a 98% satisfaction rating. His leadership in AI and Enterprise Architecture drove over $100 million in savings and growth. Senthil holds a Master’s in Electronics Engineering and an MBA, continuing to influence the global technology landscape through executive leadership and nonprofit contributions. ## Frankie Cancino Senior Data Scientist, Mercedes-Benz Research & Development Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/frankie-cancino/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Frankie is a Senior Data Scientist at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development, where he designs and deploys AI solutions and machine learning systems. With deep expertise in machine learning and predictive analytics, Frankie previously led major tech initiatives and built enterprise-scale ML systems at a large retail company. Outside of Mercedes he organizes a Meetup group, writes about machine learning concepts, and serves as an AI advisor for a venture capital firm. ## Dor Skuler Founder and CEO, Intuition Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dor-skuler/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Across Industry Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes A serial entrepreneur, Dor Skuler has co-founded five successful ventures, the most recent being Intuition Robotics, which created ElliQ, an artificial intelligence robot that addresses loneliness and empowers older adults to remain independent, healthy, and engaged. Having trained in Israel’s elite military intelligence unit 8200, Dor made a mark on interactive broadcast technology with Zing Interactive Media (acquired by Invesco, NASDAQ: IVZ) and security software through Safend (acquired by Wave Systems Corp, NASDAQ: WAVX). Dor then joined Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) to create and lead innovative ventures, most notably as Founder and GM of Cloudband, the world’s first platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), cited by Nokia as a major motive in purchasing the French-American telecoms giant. Dor was named one of PhillyTech Magazine's "30 under 30" Tech Executives to Watch in 2001, and went on to be included in Global Telecom Business ’40 under 40’ list in 2009, 2011 and 2013. He holds an MBA and Master’s of Science in Marketing from Temple University, has co-authored ‘Cloud Computing: Business Trends and Technologies’ published by Wiley in 2016 and holds board level advisory and director roles for several telecoms, cyber security and tech-led social impact ventures. ## Jasleen Singh Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Google Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jasleen-singh/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter I am a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer at Google and a prolific inventor with 15 granted patents in AI and machine learning. With over 13 years of industry experience, I specialize in designing multi-agent architectures and enterprise GenAI solutions using Gemini and Vertex AI, particularly focusing on secure workflows like Gmail OAuth integrations and advanced RAG patterns. Before Google, I led high-impact AI initiatives at Dell Technologies, including developing an on-premises Digital Human and deploying highly efficient Graph RAG systems. I hold an M.S. in Data Science and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and am a frequent speaker on applied enterprise AI. ## Aditya Gautam Machine Learning Technical Lead, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aditya-gautam/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Aditya Gautam is an AI engineer and leader working at the intersection of large language models, multi-agent systems, and their application to recommendation and content understanding. At Meta, he has led several initiatives applying LLMs at scale across recommendation and ranking, delivering multiple user engagement wins. He architected a novel multimodal LLM for Reels understanding and owned its full training stack — continued pre-training on in-domain video and multimodal signals, mid-training for task and policy adaptation, and post-training through distillation, DPO, and adaptive retrieval — then extended it to the hardest adversarial problems in short-form video, including modality manipulation and content originality attribution. Alongside this, he has been a central contributor to Meta's multi-agent system design and to optimizing large-scale training and serving workflows for cost and throughput. Prior to Meta, Aditya spent more than three years at Google working in computer vision. His research covers multimodal understanding with LLMs, multi-agent systems, and LLM evaluation, with publications at top-tier venues including ICWSM and WSDM. His leadership in the field has been featured in interviews with Nasdaq and technical publications such as Marktechpost and Uniquely Wired. A highly active voice in the generative AI community, he frequently presents at major industry events like the Databricks Data + AI Summit and serves as a peer reviewer and ethics reviewer for top-tier academic conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, and AAAI. ## Marjorie McCarthy Chief Marketing Officer, ISS North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marjorie-mccarthy/ Track: Marketing & Growth Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Named a 2023 Globe Street “Woman of Influence,” Marjorie McCarthy is a globally-experienced marketing, communications and executive leader with a passion for collaboration and proven success building transformational, integrated marketing programs that drive growth. Marjorie joined ISS in 2024 as Chief Marketing Officer for North America. ISS is a leading, global provider of curated facility management, workplace, and food service offerings that make everyday experiences extraordinary for clients across financial and professional services, technology, aviation, life sciences, manufacturing and healthcare. ## Sutanay Choudhury Chief Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sutanay-choudhury/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Government Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Sutanay Choudhury is Chief Scientist for Data Sciences and Deputy Director of the Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Institute at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). His research sits at the intersection of agentic AI systems and the physical sciences — building multi-agent reasoning architectures that integrate large language models, deep learning, and knowledge bases to accelerate scientific discovery. Current work includes autonomous AI-driven experimentation, bio-chemical conversion process design through human-AI collaborative workflows, and explainable decision support. His research has been supported by the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, and recognized with a Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research award and an R&D 100 Award. ## Denis Gudovskiy Distinguished AI Engineer, Panasonic North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/denis-gudovskiy/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Denis Gudovskiy is a Distinguished AI Engineer at Panasonic North America where he conducts R&D activities of various core AI methods, including multimodal and hardware-efficient agents, supervised and RL training pipelines, and robustness to out-of-distribution scenarios. He has over 10 years of algorithm development experience in machine learning and computer vision. Denis has an MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. In one of such projects he proposed and implemented a method of hardware-efficient neural network quantization and compression techniques for autonomous vehicles with stringent power and performance requirements. In the most recent work, Denis has demonstrated how data annotation costs could be significantly reduced with a use of advanced algorithms. His papers and demos are presented and published in top-tier machine learning and computer vision conferences such as NeurIPS, AAAI, CVPR, ECCV, ICLR and ICASSP. Denis sees corporate research as an important layer between moonshot academia projects and clearly-defined product development roadmaps in business units. His goal is to find and promote viable academia-grade opportunities at Panasonic within the exponentially growing landscape of AI applications. ## Nathan Walker Founder, AI Ethics Lab, Rutgers University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nathan-walker/ Track: Inclusive AI Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1-10 employees State: Pennsylvania Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Dr. Nathan C. Walker is an award-winning First Amendment and human rights educator and founder of the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University. He has held research appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and earned a doctorate in First Amendment law from Columbia University. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a Bellagio Residency to advance his research on AI ethics and human rights. Dr. Walker has worked with industry as an Expert AI Trainer for OpenAI and Handshake AI, provided ethics training to Adobe employees, and facilitated a working group at Google’s ethics-to-industry summit. He has published five books on law, education, and religion, and presented his research at the UN Human Rights Council, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the U.S. Senate. ## Bhanu Prakash Reddy Rella Senior Data Engineer, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bhanu-prakash-reddy-rella/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Bhanu Prakash Reddy Rella is an internationally recognized expert in Energy-Efficient AI, Green Data Engineering, and Sustainable Computing, with over a decade of experience architecting large-scale AI and data platforms across finance, retail, insurance, and global technology ecosystems. He has made significant contributions to sustainable AI engineering, building end-to-end data and machine learning systems that optimize resource usage, reduce carbon impact, and improve the overall efficiency of modern AI workloads. His work spans distributed computing, large-volume analytics, federated systems, sparse neural networks, and carbon-aware data architectures. Bhanu is a Senior Data Engineer at Meta, where he designs high-performance pipelines and contributes to next-generation AI efficiency frameworks. Beyond industry, Bhanu is the founder of the Green AI Initiative, a global community of 5,000+ researchers and practitioners promoting low-energy algorithms, efficient data ecosystems, and sustainable AI adoption. His influence extends across academia and engineering forums through invited talks, committee roles, and knowledge-sharing engagements. He is the author of the internationally distributed book “Energy-Efficient Computing for Modern AI Applications”, widely referenced for its practical frameworks that help organizations reduce the environmental footprint of AI systems. His research work also spans federated learning, structured pruning, and sustainable data infrastructures—contributing to global discussions on responsible AI. Bhanu is an IEEE Senior Member, conference contributor, reviewer, and advisor to multiple technical communities. With a unique combination of technical depth, sustainability-driven innovation, and cross-domain experience, he continues to advance the mission of building AI systems that are efficient, responsible, and ready for a greener future. ## Serg Masis Principal AI Scientist, Syngenta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/serg-masis/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Agriculture Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Serg Masís has been at the confluence of the internet, application development, and analytics for the last two decades. Currently, he's a Principal AI Scientist at Syngenta, a leading agribusiness company with a mission to improve global food security. Before that role, he co-founded a search engine startup, incubated by Harvard Innovation Labs, that combined the power of cloud computing and machine learning with principles in decision-making science to expose users to new places and events efficiently. Whether it pertains to leisure activities, plant diseases, or customer lifetime value, Serg is passionate about providing the often-missing link between data and decision-making. He wrote the bestselling book "Interpretable Machine Learning with Python" and is currently working on a new book titled "DIY AI" for Addison-Wesley for a broader audience of curious developers, makers, and hackers. ## Arsh Arora Cyber Incident Response & AI Integration, Lead, McKesson Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arsh-arora/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Arsh Arora is a cybersecurity expert with over a decade of experience in threat intelligence, incident response, and digital forensics. He holds a Ph.D. in Cyber Security and has led investigations with the FBI, dismantled major botnets, and driven security innovation at companies like McKesson, Visa, and Neustar. Arsh is passionate about educating others and advancing cyber resilience through research, teaching, and public engagement. ## Paul Marsolan Chief Software Officer, Battle Motors Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-marsolan/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Automotive Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter PAUL MARSOLAN, CHIEF SOFTWARE OFFICER - Battle Motors As the Chief Software Officer at Battle Motors, Paul Marsolan brings over 25 years of experience in cybersecurity and software engineering to lead the company’s advanced technology initiatives. A graduate of The Ohio State University, Paul’s journey in technology began with a passion for innovation and a commitment to safeguarding digital assets in an increasingly interconnected world. At Battle Motors, Paul’s strategic vision and hands-on leadership have been instrumental in integrating state-of-the-art software solutions into Battle Motors vehicle platforms. He created the proprietary technology behind the RevolutionOS™ Smart Dashboard and is the principal architect of Fortris™ AI, Battle Motors’ next-generation fleet intelligence and telematics platform. Under his direction, Fortris AI delivers real-time vehicle health monitoring, predictive maintenance, safety and camera intelligence, and AI-driven operational insights that help fleets improve uptime, reduce costs, and operate more safely and efficiently. With extensive expertise in the development of mobile security and wireless technologies, Paul has been a catalyst for technology innovation throughout his career. In 2002, he co-founded S-Mobile Systems, a pioneering venture in the mobile security space that delivered cutting-edge solutions to address the evolving cybersecurity landscape. Building on that success, he co-founded InAuth in 2011, serving as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and leading the development of advanced authentication and fraud detection technologies that empowered organizations to secure their digital transactions at scale. Outside of his professional endeavors, Paul is an avid supporter of STEM education and enjoys mentoring aspiring technologists, continuing to inspire the next generation of innovators in cybersecurity, AI, and software development. ## Siva Balu Chief Information & Digital Officer, Senior Vice President, Quartz Health Solutions Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/siva-balu/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Siva Balu is a seasoned executive in business, digital technology, and healthcare. During this extensive experience, Siva led various transformational strategic initiatives including the founding of various high growth businesses based in healthcare, technology, products, platforms, AI, and data. Siva is currently the Chief Information & Digital Officer, Senior Vice President at Quartz Health Solutions where he spearheads innovative ways to empower members and communities to create a life well-lived. Previously, Siva led digital technology as the Global CIO for UnitedHealth Group (Fortune 3, $400B annual revenue, 450k employees) that included M&As, Commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, Specialty and Individual products. Siva led Growth, Cost and Experience through the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Tech Forward, Talent Transformation, Platforms, and end-to-end Technologies. Prior to that Siva led the Digital Transformation as the Global CIO & CISO for YMCA OF THE USA ($9B Brand) building the Y Cloud platform to offer products and services for the global YMCAs, launching universal mobile apps, virtual content, virtual health, CRM, big data analytics and business intelligence. Siva spent over 20 years at Blue Cross Blue Shield, enabling over 110 million members, 1 in 3 Americans, to receive high quality healthcare. At the Blues, Siva founded and built successful platform businesses to enhance consumer experience, reduce operational cost, tackle social determinants of health and more. He also led transformation strategies including AI/ML, Big Data Analytics, Cloud, Blockchain and SaaS. Siva is a renowned international keynote speaker at industry conferences and events. Siva is a board director/mentor/advisor/investor in various startups and non-profits. Siva is a mentor to various aspiring professionals, leaders, start-ups and venture funds. During his free time, Siva likes to run long distance ultra-marathons, write, read, cook and follow Formula 1. ## Eric Feng SVP & GM, Yahoo Research, Yahoo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-feng/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Eric Feng is the SVP and GM of Yahoo Research Group, leading Yahoo’s work in evolving search products and building next-generation, AI-driven experiences across Yahoo’s portfolio. He is the creator of Yahoo Scout, Yahoo’s new AI answer engine and Intelligence Platform. Prior to joining Yahoo, Eric was the founder and CEO of Cymbal, an AI startup acquired by Yahoo in 2025. Earlier in his career, Eric was the founding CTO of Hulu, a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins, and worked on the Microsoft Research team that developed Microsoft’s Bing. He has spent his career at the intersection of search, media, and artificial intelligence, building products that help people find trusted information and get meaningful answers, not just links. Throughout his work, Eric has focused on advancing conversational search, large-scale information systems, and responsible AI. ## Christopher Lundy Principal Enterprise Architect, Oura Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christopher-lundy/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Christopher Lundy Oura, Founder & Chief AI and Innovation Officer, FindInfinite Labs, InkShield.ai Christopher Lundy is the Founder and Chief AI and Innovation Officer at FindInfinite Labs, a research and technology think tank dedicated to accelerating enterprise transformation through AI, quantum computing, and advanced simulation. With over 25 years of experience in enterprise architecture, artificial intelligence, and strategic innovation, Christopher helps organizations—from biopharma to aerospace and academia—navigate the complex journey from AI ideation to implementation. At FindInfinite Labs, Christopher leads initiatives that empower teams to design and deploy scalable AI solutions, develop ethical and responsible AI strategies, and create enterprise frameworks for AI adoption. He works hands-on with business and technical leaders to uncover high-value use cases, design future-ready architectures, and build sustainable AI-driven ecosystems that deliver real-world impact. Christopher has developed cutting-edge solutions including autonomous lab environments, large language models for research, quantum simulation platforms, and digital twins for R&D acceleration. His work has enabled Fortune 500 companies and emerging innovators to unlock the potential of AI in domains ranging from life sciences and precision medicine to manufacturing, retail, and space systems. A recognized thought leader, Christopher is also a frequent speaker at global conferences on AI, enterprise modernization, and responsible innovation. He has trained thousands of professionals and academic learners in AI product strategy, quantum computing, and intelligent systems design. ## Joe Dormani Partner, Thomson Reuters Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joe-dormani/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Finance Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Joe Dormani is currently a Partner at Thomson Reuters Ventures, a $250M corporate venture fund where he leads a team of global investors. As an investor, Joe specializes in machine learning, enterprise automation, and vertical SaaS startups. He has led over a dozen startup investments and M&A deals valued in the hundreds of millions, driven strategy for multi-billion-dollar organizations, and helped scale high-growth software products. Joe’s passion for promising technology sees him as an active member of the New York tech environment, where he serves as an advisor to several incubators and early-stage startups. ## Alaa Abdulridha Engineering Director and Cybersecurity Researcher, SerpApi, LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alaa-abdulridha/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Alaa Abdulridha is an Engineering Director and Cybersecurity Researcher at SerpApi, where he leads security initiatives for large-scale, real-time data infrastructure used by developers and enterprises worldwide. With a background in offensive security and bug bounty research, Alaa has discovered and reported complex vulnerabilities across a wide range of platforms, shaping his practical, adversarial approach to building resilient systems. At SerpApi, he focuses on securing high-throughput data pipelines and ensuring that public-facing search data can be accessed reliably and responsibly at scale. His work bridges deep technical security expertise with real-world engineering, emphasizing compliance, system integrity, and production-ready safeguards. Originally from southern Iraq and now based in Austin, Texas, Alaa brings a global perspective to engineering leadership, combining hands-on security experience with a strong focus on building trustworthy, scalable systems in the age of AI. ## Ali Abedini Chief AI Officer, Metropolitan Commercial Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ali-abedini/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Ali Abedini is the inaugural Chief AI Officer at Metropolitan Commercial Bank, building the bank’s Office of Artificial Intelligence from the ground up and leading its shift from AI-ready to AI-native. He came to MCB from TD Bank, where as SVP and Head of Advanced Analytics & AI he built one of the largest AI organizations in banking — delivering 160+ AI/ML solutions and more than $157 million in measurable business value — co-led the bank’s OCC AI/ML examination, and served as Principal Investigator to the NIST AI Safety Institute Consortium. Ali is known for cutting through hype to make AI actually work in one of the world’s most regulated industries. He holds a PhD in Public Policy focused on quantitative risk modeling. His mantra: governance first, innovation always. ## Mark Abramowitz Chief Marketing Officer, Dataiku Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-abramowitz/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Mark Abramowitz is Chief Marketing Officer at Dataiku, The Platform for AI Success. In his role, he oversees global brand and demand strategy, and is responsible for building awareness of Dataiku as the platform that unifies people, governance, and AI systems to deliver real results at scale. Mark brings extensive experience scaling enterprise platform businesses. Prior to Dataiku, he served as SVP of Product and Solutions Marketing at ServiceNow, leading product marketing as the company scaled from $6 billion to nearly $11 billion in revenue and spearheading the launch of Now Assist—the fastest-selling product in ServiceNow history. Before ServiceNow, Mark spent 15 years at Salesforce and 5 years as SVP of Product Marketing for Service Cloud. ## Darien Acosta CEO and cofounder, Clanker Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/darien-acosta/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Insurance Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Darien Acosta is the former Chief AI Officer at Cover Whale, a leading commercial trucking insurance provider and rapidly growing insurtech. With more than a decade of experience under his belt previously leading analytics efforts with the likes of Reddit, Yahoo!, INSIDER and REEF, Darien leads a new AI Transformation organization within Cover Whale and is dedicated to leveraging data and AI to enhance driver safety, reduce accidents and improve pricing for customers. Prior to becoming CAIO, Darien was Head of Data Analytics at Cover Whale, where he played a pivotal role in utilizing data and advanced technology to serve as a co-pilot to drivers, contributing to safer roads and saving lives. Darien's educational background includes a solid foundation in programming and network administration, with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College and is currently an Executive MBA student at the University of Oxford. ## Emily Acosta Lewis Professor of Communication & Media Studies, Sonoma State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emily-acosta-lewis/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Emily Acosta Lewis, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Sonoma State University, is an AI leader on campus whose work focuses on generative AI, career readiness, experiential learning, and student success. She earned her PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaches courses in public relations, with a growing emphasis on how AI is reshaping professional communication, workplace preparation, and higher education. Dr. Acosta Lewis helps faculty, staff, and students think critically and creatively about the role of generative AI in teaching, learning, communication, and career preparation. Her work emphasizes practical, ethical, and equity-minded uses of AI that prepare students for a rapidly changing professional landscape. A first-generation college graduate, Dr. Acosta Lewis is committed to helping students build practical career skills through high-impact educational practices, including service-learning, collaborative projects, undergraduate research and real-world public relations work. ## Kate Adam Director, Customer Trust & Employee Awareness, Autodesk Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kate-adam/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kate Adam leads the Customer Trust & Employee Awareness team within Autodesk’s Trust Org, reporting into the Chief Trust Officer. She owns the strategy that turns trust into a competitive advantage—helping Autodesk earn, maintain, and deepen customer confidence through transparent engagement, technical credibility, and executive partnership. Her role involves communicating to customers Autodesk's security and privacy policies and controls, governance standards, and reliability/recovery processes; and leading internal initiatives that strengthen customer confidence in Autodesk by aligning product, legal, security, privacy, and customer-facing teams. Her mission is to ensure customers have the transparency and assurance they need to trust Autodesk with their data. Kate has been in the cybersecurity industry for 15 years, starting her career by learning on the job at a web application security startup after crashing and burning as a journalist, and adventuring into network security, malware analysis, and behavior analytics. Kate is deeply passionate about ethical AI, protecting data and privacy, and inviting of users and makers technology to become interested in its trustworthiness. In her free time, Kate enjoys soccer, puzzles, parenting her (crazy) kids, and binging podcasts while making friendship bracelets to unwind after work. ## Samuel Addington Professor & AI Researcher, California State University Long Beach Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/samuel-addington/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Samuel Addington is a computer science and cybersecurity professor in Southern California with teaching appointments across community college and university programs. His work focuses on secure AI adoption in real-world operations, with emphasis on agentic systems, world models/digital twins, and practical governance patterns that reduce risk while enabling measurable productivity gains. He designs hands-on labs and applied curricula that bridge software engineering, cybersecurity, and emerging AI capabilities for diverse learners, and he consults on translating AI research into deployable, auditable workflows for resource-constrained teams. ## Matt Adell Co-Founder and COO, Musical AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-adell/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Matt Adell is a distinguished music executive with a career deeply intertwined with some of the most iconic names in the industry. Starting at age 13, Adell embarked on his music journey working at a record store in suburban Chicago. His early career saw him rise to Vice President of Wax Trax!, an influential record label and store renowned for its pioneering role in the industrial and electronic music scenes. During this period, he signed and collaborated with groundbreaking acts such as The KLF, Derrick Carter, KMFDM, Dubtribe, Thrill Kill Kult, and Psychic TV, placing numerous releases atop the Billboard Dance Charts. Adell's entrepreneurial spirit led him to found Organico Recordings and Little Green Management, releasing music at the very beginnings of Chicago’s House Music scene. Recognizing the potential of the internet early on, Adell was quick to innovate and adapt, leading to senior positions at Radiowave, MusicNow, and Amazon. His forward-thinking approach continued as Vice President of Music Services at Napster, where he led music programming and product initiatives. Subsequently, he was recruited to be Chief Operating Officer and ultimately Chief Executive Officer at Beatport, the world’s largest digital music store for DJs. Adell orchestrated the sale of the company in 2013, delivering substantial shareholder value. Under his leadership, he has built companies for rapid growth and positioned them for acquisition by larger corporations. In 2016, Adell co-founded MetaPop, a platform for remixers, and in 2017 sold MetaPop to Native Instruments, home of Traktor DJ hardware and software, Maschine Production hardware and software, and over 100 other leading products for music creators. At Native Instruments, Adell launched NI’s first web service for musicians, Sounds.com. Matt Adell is currently the Co-Founder and COO of Musical AI, a rights management platform for artists and AI companies. Throughout his career, Adell has consistently pushed boundaries, embraced technological advancements, and nurtured the creative spirit of artists, making a profound impact on the ever-evolving music industry landscape. ## Sahil Agarwal CEO and Co-Founder, Enkrypt AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sahil-agarwal/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Sahil Agarwal is the co-founder and CEO of Enkrypt AI, a leading platform for AI security and compliance that enables enterprises to manage AI risks without sacrificing innovation. His mission is to make the world a safer place by ensuring the responsible and secure use of AI technology, empowering everyone to harness its potential for the greater good. Prior to founding Enkrypt AI in 2022, Sahil served as Chief AI Officer at Accrete AI, where he led the design and deployment of cutting-edge AI systems for high-stakes clients—including the U.S. Department of Defense. His work centered on building AI solutions that met rigorous standards for security, reliability, and performance. Mr. Agarwal holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Yale University and brings deep expertise in AI model development, deployment, and risk mitigation. ## Shub Agarwal Professor of AI, USC | Founder, AI Trust Lab | VP of AI, GoodRx, University of Southern California & GoodRx Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shub-agarwal/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Shub Agarwal is Professor of AI & Product Management at the University of Southern California, Founder of the AI Trust Lab, and author of Successful AI Product Creation (Wiley, 2025). An inventor on 10+ AI/ML patents, he brings more than two decades of experience building and deploying production AI at enterprise scale. He previously served as SVP, Head of AI Products at U.S. Bank — where he led a 40-person organization and authored the bank's first generative AI patent — and held senior AI leadership roles at FINRA, Amazon, and Conversica. At USC, he teaches graduate product management and runs project-based capstones where students ship real AI applications. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA Anderson. ## Pavan Agarwal Creator of AngelAi, CEO of Celligence and Sun West Mortgage Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pavan-agarwal/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Pavan Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of Celligence and President and CEO of Sun West Mortgage Company, one of the nation’s leading mortgage lenders and servicers. A pioneer in applied artificial intelligence, he is the creator of AngelAi, an empathetic AI platform designed to transform financial services by delivering personalized, transparent, and equitable experiences for consumers. For more than four decades, Pavan has led the development of innovative technologies that have reshaped mortgage origination, underwriting, servicing, and capital markets. Under his leadership, Sun West has become one of the largest privately held mortgage companies in the United States, while Celligence has focused on advancing AI systems that combine human values with cutting-edge automation. Pavan is widely recognized for his work at the intersection of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and financial inclusion. He has spoken at leading technology and industry forums, including Stanford University’s Science of Blockchain Conference, the Texas Blockchain Summit, and numerous AI and fintech events. His work emphasizes how AI can expand access to homeownership, reduce inefficiencies, and create fairer outcomes for consumers. At AI4 – America’s Largest AI Conference, Pavan will share insights from deploying AI at scale in highly regulated industries and discuss how empathetic AI can drive innovation while preserving trust, transparency, and human-centered decision-making. ## Kristen Agee Founder/CEO, 411 Music Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kristen-agee/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Kristen Agee is the Founder and CEO of 411 Music Group, a global, woman-owned music licensing and creative infrastructure company representing 5,000+ artists and 120 labels worldwide. With 450,000+ tracks, active AI training-data licensing deals, and 11,000+ sync placements across film, TV, sports, gaming, and advertising, 411 sits at the intersection of music rights and emerging AI. Agee is a classically trained violinist turned entrepreneur who has spent 14 years building ethical licensing frameworks, and is now focused on how attribution technology can ensure creators get paid in the generative AI era. She is also a part owner in Glass Music Denmark and operates across the US, Europe, Brazil, and Asia. ## Akhila Aiyer Principal Solutions Architect, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/akhila-aiyer/ Track: Workshop Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Akhila Aiyer is a Private Cloud AI Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), specializing in designing enterprise-grade AI solutions and hybrid cloud architectures. With a background spanning data science and management, she focuses on scaling AI for business impact. ## Aniket Tushar Ajagaonkar Staff Software Engineer - Trust, Airbnb Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aniket-tushar-ajagaonkar/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist With over a decade of experience in big tech - and a majority of that time dedicated to Trust and Safety - Aniket represents a small but passionate community of engineers committed to making the internet a safer place. Currently, Aniket contributes to Airbnb’s mission of creating safer holiday and experience platforms for users worldwide. Over the course of his career, he has made significant contributions to products and platforms at leading technology companies including Meta, Google, and Yahoo. At Meta, Aniket led engineering efforts for responsible recommendation across the Facebook app, focusing on groups, pages, and creators. He played a pivotal role in handling global initiatives such as the COVID-19 misinformation mitigation, and crisis response strategies for global events on Facebook platforms. This work was recognized by the Head of the Facebook app and resulted in more than a 10x improvement in recommendation quality on the platform. At Instagram, he spearheaded a ground-up initiative to build a sustainable revenue-sharing program for creators, launching a successful pilot in South Korea that became the model for expansion to the U.S. and Japan. Earlier in his career at Google, Aniket was one of the early engineers on YouTube TV, developing the backend infrastructure for recommendations and growth features that helped scale the product from a few hundred users to hundreds of thousands. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from New York University’s Courant Institute and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai. Aniket is passionate about building responsible, large-scale technology systems that promote trust, safety, and equity. ## Lilian Ajayi Ore AI Lead Faculty, Columbia University SPS Bestselling Author, The Power of Learning Mindset, Columbia University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lilian-ajayi-ore/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Education Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator National Top 10 Bestselling Author of The Power of the Learning Mindset, Global Keynote Speaker, UN Eminent Peace Ambassador, Data Scientist, AI Leader, and Marketing Executive, MG100 Executive Coach, AI Lead Faculty and Research Scholar at Columbia University SPS, and Founder & CEO of the award-winning Global Connections for Women Foundation (GC4W). Dr. Lilian Ajayi Ore is a globally recognized thought leader and influential voice in modern leadership, impacting over 1.5 million professionals worldwide. Her debut book, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, became an instant National USA Today Top 10 bestseller, and her work continues to rank #1 among leadership books shaping today’s technology-driven world. Board Leader at several academic institutions both domestic and international. She holds a EdD and Masters from the University of Pennsylvania’s GSE receiving Double Distinctions on her dissertation research. With more than 17 years of industry experience as a leader in Fortune 100 and 500 companies, where she developed deep expertise in learning, marketing, research, business, and digital innovation. She has also designed and led various academic and executive programs, including Masters and Doctorate degrees, entrepreneurship initiatives, faculty development workshops, and global corporate partnerships, impacting learners and executives across sectors and continents. A member of Marshall Goldsmith’s Top 100 Executive Coaches, Dr. Ore has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Publishing, Inc. Magazine and Fast Company, and Entrepreneur.com to name a few. Dr. Ore has keynote in over 54 cities worldwide including The World Bank, United Nations, Ford Foundation, to name a few. Dr. Ore is a recipient of several prestigious awards and recognition including Top 50 Learning and Development Professional, Top 100 Women list, Inspiring Voice in Academia by Harvard Business Impact, and President’s Gold Volunteer Service Award, Leadership Ambassador by Toronto World Leadership Forum, and more. Dr. Ore was appointed UN Eminent Peace Ambassador by the IAWPA UN Peace Volunteers. More recently, Columbia University Dean Eggers’ Research Award. Dr. Ore is an internationally recognized Data Scientist, Research Scholar, and Thought Leader in Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Leadership Development, and Executive Coaching. Her research and practice center on the cognitive and organizational processes that enable leaders and teams to develop adaptive capabilities, foster curiosity and translate continuous learning into measurable organizational performance. ## Alex Akesson Director, Product Management, Crusoe Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alex-akesson/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Alex Akesson is a product leader specializing in AI infrastructure, with experience scaling cloud and edge platforms at Crusoe and Microsoft. At Crusoe, his focus is making GPU clusters faster to deploy, more reliable to operate, and validated for peak performance, from hyperscale campuses to modular data centers. He works closely with AI-native customers and industry partners, and contributes to open source efforts. ## Patrick Akil Podcaster & Software Engineer, Xebia Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/patrick-akil/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Member of the Press: Yes Software engineer at Xebia and Host of the Beyond Coding Podcast (70K+ subs, 250+ episodes). ## Ayelet Akselrod-Ballin Head and CTO of AI Center, ARC Innovation, Sheba Tel Hashomer City of Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ayelet-akselrod-ballin-zi3odi/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Ayelet Akselrod-Ballin, Head and CTO of Sheba Arc AI Center Ayelet Akselrod-Ballin brings over two decades of experience at the intersection of academia and industry, specializing in cutting-edge technologies in computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing, with a strong focus on healthcare applications. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Computational Radiology Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Ayelet previously served as VP of R&D at Zebra Medical Vision, where under her leadership the company achieved its 11th FDA clearances for AI-based medical imaging solutions. Before that, she led medical imaging research at IBM Research. Most recently, she was a senior director of algorithms at Mobileye and Adjunct lecturer at Reichman university. In her current position, Ayelet is the head and CTO of the AI Center at the ARC and the Sheba Medical Center. ## Ayelet Akselrod-Ballin Head and CTO of AI Center, ARC Innovation, Sheba Tel Hashomer City of Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ayelet-akselrod-ballin/ Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Team or company is hiring: No ## Bryan Albrecht Director, Smart Manufacturing Digital Thread & Incubation and Validation Deployment (SMDT & IVD), Siemens Digital Industries Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bryan-albrecht/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Bryan Albrecht serves as Director of SMDT & IVD at Siemens XD, where he drives innovation strategies that help bridge the gap between emerging technologies and real-world business impact. He works closely with leaders, customers, and cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for growth, transformation, and operational excellence. With deep experience in digital innovation, product leadership, and organizational transformation, Bryan is passionate about leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and automation to create scalable solutions. He is known for combining strategic vision with pragmatic execution, helping organizations embrace change while delivering meaningful outcomes for customers and stakeholders. ## Yaya Ali Founder & CEO, DrunR Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yaya-ali/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Yaya is the Founder & CEO of DrunR, an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform helping providers, health plans, and employers extend care beyond the clinic through personalized, explainable AI. His journey began with a personal experience navigating metabolic health, which led him to a simple question: What if AI could help people make better health decisions before they happen, instead of only analyzing them afterward? That question became the foundation for DrunR. Today, Yaya is building AI that combines wearable signals, nutrition intelligence, behavioral patterns, and environmental context to guide patients between clinic visits while giving providers greater visibility into adherence and behavioral change. His work focuses on translating multimodal AI into practical healthcare solutions that improve outcomes in the real world. At AI4 Healthcare, Yaya looks forward to connecting with healthcare leaders, researchers, innovators, and investors who share a vision of making personalized AI guidance part of everyday care. ## Ulfan Aliyev Chief Commercial Officer, National Artificial Intelligence Center of Republic of Azerbaijan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ulfan-aliyev/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Government Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Ulfan Aliyev is the Chief Commercial Officer of the National Artificial Intelligence Center of Azerbaijan, the country’s central institution for advancing artificial intelligence, established in line with the Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2025–2028. Appointed to this role in July 2026, he leads the Center’s commercial strategy, overseeing the commercialization of national AI products, revenue development, and strategic partnerships across the private sector, the public sector, and government-to-government (G2G) cooperation. Prior to his current appointment, Mr. Aliyev served as Senior Product Owner at the Center, where he led the first large language model project in Azerbaijan — the e-qanun.ai legal search engine tailored to the Azerbaijani language — driving legal technology innovation in the country. He also managed DataRace, Azerbaijan’s first machine learning and artificial intelligence competition platform, designed to solve real-life problems and foster local AI talent, and contributed to the creation and formulation of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2025–2028, helping lay the foundational roadmap for national AI policy and technological advancement. Before joining the Center, Mr. Aliyev held product and business development roles in the financial sector. At fintech company Simbrella, his machine-learning-driven credit optimization and scoring initiatives delivered record revenue growth, while at Kapital Bank he developed churn-prediction and customer-segmentation models that materially improved retention and personalization. He holds a Master of Business Administration and a BSc in Finance from the Azerbaijan State University of Economics, including an Erasmus exchange at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and is a certified Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO II) with a FinTech certificate from Harvard University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. ## Liam Allan Software Architect, Speaker & Advocate, IBM Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/liam-allan/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Brian Allen Executive Director, Center for AI Oversight Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-allen/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Brian Allen is a recognized leader in artificial intelligence governance, technology risk, and operational resilience. He serves as Executive Director of the AI RegRisk® Think Tank, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing programmatic AI governance in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare. He is a member of the NIST AI Safety Institute Consortium, contributing to the federal government’s effort to develop standards and safeguards for responsible AI deployment. He also serves as Chief Trust Advisor to Ampliwork, an enterprise AI agent company. Under his leadership, the Think Tank develops governance frameworks and educational programs, including the AI RegRisk Governance Program, that equip boards and executives to govern AI as a managed enterprise discipline rather than reacting to individual technology risks in isolation. Most recently, Brian was Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology Risk Management at the Bank Policy Institute’s BITS division, where he represented the nation’s largest banks before Congress, regulators, and the intelligence community on AI, cybersecurity, fraud, and emerging technology risk. Prior to that, he served as Chief Security Officer at Time Warner Cable, a Fortune 100 critical infrastructure company, where he oversaw enterprise-wide security and operational risk strategy for over a decade. Earlier, at EY, he led cyber risk management programs, advising Fortune 50 executives and boards on regulatory obligations and strategic security initiatives. Brian has represented industry in national security and regulatory forums, including serving on the executive committees of the Financial Services and Communications ISACs and Sector Coordinating Councils, and being appointed by the FCC to collaborate with NIST on the Cybersecurity Framework. He is the author of three books on risk management, including Building a Cyber Risk Management Program (O’Reilly), and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Connecticut’s MBA Financial Risk Management program. His career spans board-level advisory, public-private partnerships, and C-suite leadership, with a consistent focus: helping organizations govern disruptive technologies through structured, enterprise-wide programs. ## Amjad Almonzer Knowledge Management Specialist, Saudi Aramco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amjad-almonzer/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Amjad Almonzer is a Knowledge Management & AI specialist with 25 years of experience in Saudi Aramco, focused on transforming organizational knowledge into measurable business value. His current work centers on establishing a value-driven knowledge management program through a new methodology for assessing, improving, and maximizing the value of knowledge assets. With a background in Electrical Engineering, he combines deep technical understanding, enterprise knowledge management expertise, and practical AI implementation to help organizations improve knowledge flow, reuse, and impact. Amjad focuses on using AI to boost knowledge value through AI-powered virtual assistants, intelligent knowledge solutions, natural language processing, and AI-assisted coding. Amjad also the named inventor of a filed U.S. patent application for a privacy-preserving AI chatbot system designed to enable secure enterprise use of large language models while protecting sensitive information. Through his work, Amjad advocates for practical, secure, and value-focused AI solutions that empower professionals, improve decision-making, and transform organizational knowledge into tangible business impact. ## Amir Alpert Head of US Business Development, Dognosis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amir-alpert/ Track: Secret Content Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Amir is a biotech operator and scientist with deep experience helping innovative cancer companies establish and scale U.S. operations. Across his career, he has worked at the intersection of science, operations, and company building. He leads business development at Dognoisis, launching a new cancer screening platform using canine olfaction plus AI to make cancer screening not feel like a chore. ## Semih Altinay VP AI Solutions, Phrase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/semih-altinay/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Naman Ambavi CEO, Oximy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/naman-ambavi/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Naman Ambavi is the founder and CEO of Oximy, the system of record for enterprise AI usage. Over the past several years, Naman has worked with top AI labs at the forefront of Silicon Valley, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, backed his last startup. Now he’s focused on the other side of the AI equation: helping enterprises govern it. Oximy gives security teams visibility into AI adoption across browsers and desktop applications, turning shadow AI into governed AI. Naman helps CISOs move from gatekeeper to enabler by saying yes to AI without losing control. ## Rares Ambrus Co-Founder & Head of AI, Walden Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rares-ambrus/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Rares Ambrus is Co-Founder and Head of AI at Walden Robotics, and leads ML research, engineering, and strategy. Dr. Ambrus has 13 years of industry R&D experience, including overseeing ML research, model training, evaluation, and deployment. Most recently, he was head of computer vision and machine learning at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). Prior to TRI, he worked on state-of-the-art systems in robotics, automated driving, and virtual and augmented reality, building and managing world-class technical teams across Asia, Europe and the United States. Dr Ambrus holds a PhD in robotics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, has published over 70 papers in peer reviewed conferences and journals, and holds more than 50 granted patents. ## Shreya Amin AI Advisor / Investor, Minsphere Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shreya-amin/ Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Shreya Amin is the Founder of Minsphere Advisory, AI advisor to public agencies and healthcare organizations, and New York State's inaugural Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. She founded Jersey City's first data science function and launched its first open-data platform; a decade later, she built New York State's first enterprise AI framework. Across 19 years Shreya has led data and AI from nearly every chair: quant at hedge funds, Chief AI Scientist at a healthtech company whose platform reached hundreds of hospitals and was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative, product leader shipping machine learning systems into 100+ schools including Chicago Public Schools and Miami-Dade, advisor and investor in AI startups, and the executive accountable for AI across state government. Her work has always been close to the people who actually have to use the system: nurses, patient navigators, social workers, teachers, superintendents, caseworkers, legal teams, security leaders, executives, and frontline program staff. That has shaped her view of applied AI: the hard part is not just the model. It is learning how experts make decisions, turning that judgment into software, and making the system safe, useful, and trusted in daily work. Today, through Minsphere, Shreya advises state agencies, healthcare organizations, startups, and investors on AI strategy, standards, product, adoption, and deployment. She helps leaders decide which problems are worth solving with AI, what has to be proven before it scales, and how each deployment can make the next one faster, safer, and more valuable. Her thesis is simple: AI reaches people at the speed institutions learn to trust it - and that trust can be engineered. ## Rohit Anabheri CEO, Lotus Petal Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohit-anabheri/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Rohit Anabheri is the Founder and CEO of LotusPetal AI, an AI-native platform transforming how federal contractors respond to RFPs, manage bids, and navigate procurement intelligence. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Intelligence Dividend: Transforming AI from a Cost Center to a Growth Fund, which reframes enterprise AI adoption around measurable returns rather than experimentation budgets. Over more than two decades as an entrepreneur, Rohit has built and led six ventures across generative AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, deeptech, biotech, and clean energy. His technical work spans applied generative AI systems, autonomous cyber threat detection, and the design of AI systems optimized for robustness and fairness — with production deployments in high-stakes environments including federal contracting and critical infrastructure. Beyond building companies, Rohit advises governments and policy bodies on the responsible deployment of AI, contributing to conversations on data privacy, algorithmic transparency, and safeguards against AI misuse. He is a consistent advocate for inclusive, multi-stakeholder policy processes that keep pace with the technology itself. At AI4 2026, Rohit will draw on his LotusPetal AI case study and the frameworks in The Intelligence Dividend to challenge the prevailing enterprise view of AI as an efficiency lever — and offer a practical model for treating AI as a compounding growth asset. ## Chika Anajemba Former Senior Vice President, IT Project Group Manager, Citi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chika-anajemba/ Track: Product Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Chika Anajemba is Senior Vice President, IT Project Group Manager at Citi. She holds an MSc in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has more than 16 years of experience leading large-scale technology transformation initiatives across the financial services industry. Her work spans AI-enabled platforms, enterprise modernization, product delivery, data transformation, and complex regulatory and operational programs within global banking environments. Most recently, she led the rollout of a new AI-powered search platform, replacing the incumbent vendor solution and serving both internal and customer-facing use cases across a large user base, with a focus on scalability, adoption, and enterprise integration. Chika’s experience centers on bridging business strategy, technology execution, and operational delivery at scale. She is particularly interested in the practical adoption of AI within large enterprises and the organizational and governance considerations required to operationalize emerging technologies responsibly. ## Mrinal Anand Head of AI Security, Sofi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mrinal-anand/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Cybersecurity leader and hands-on architect with a track record of building and scaling security programs at the intersection of AI, enterprise technology, and business risk. I lead AI Security & Assurance and M&A Security initiatives, partnering with CISOs, CTOs, and engineering leaders to develop security strategies that enable innovation while maintaining strong risk governance. My focus is on the challenges where security, emerging technology, and business velocity converge: securing AI and agentic systems, establishing model assurance and governance frameworks, building resilient security architectures, and integrating acquisitions without inheriting unacceptable risk. I specialize in translating ambiguity into scalable security programs, actionable architecture, and measurable outcomes. My experience spans AI Security & Assurance, Agentic AI and MCP Security, Enterprise Security Architecture, Cloud and Application Security, Secure SDLC, DevSecOps, Threat Modeling, and Cybersecurity Due Diligence. Across each domain, my goal remains consistent: connecting executive strategy with engineering execution and transforming security objectives into capabilities teams can successfully operate and scale. Author, speaker, and researcher working at the frontier of AI and emerging security challenges the threats that surface as new technology outpaces existing defenses. ## Thomasina Anane Associate Vice President, Enterprise Analytics, Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thomasina-anane/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 11-50 employees State: District of Columbia Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Thomasina Anane, Associate Vice President of Enterprise Analytics at the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) leads the organization’s analytics portfolio to equip provider-aligned, non-profit health plans with actionable evidence-based insights that drive strong advocacy and improved market positioning. Operating at the intersection of health policy, data analytics and strategic decision-making, she oversees initiatives that translate complex data into compelling intelligence supporting member plan competitiveness and key policy priorities. Before joining ACHP, Thomasina was a consultant with Manatt Health where she delivered quantitative and qualitative policy analysis, market research and strategic advisory services to state Medicaid agencies, payers and health care delivery systems across the nation. She also previously served at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMMI) as a health insurance specialist contributing to the design of innovative care delivery and payment models and leading special initiatives such as the Geospatial Medicare Analysis Project, drawing upon Medicare claims data integration and design thinking. Thomasina is deeply committed to advancing data-driven transformation across the U.S. health care system ensuring that mission-oriented health plans and providers have the analytics capabilities and insights required to sustainably improve health outcomes and equity for the communities they serve. ## Oscar Anaya Co-founder, CTO, Lucien Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/oscar-anaya/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Cybersecurity architect specializing in ethical hacking, threat emulation, and secure system design for mission-critical environments. Oscar has expertise in red-team methodologies and adversarial testing. ## Deepak Anchala Co-founder & CEO, Adopt AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/deepak-anchala/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Deepak Anchala is the Co-Founder and CEO of Adopt.AI. Previously, he founded Slintel, a leading sales intelligence platform acquired by 6sense in 2021 after scaling to 300+ customers and raising $26M in funding. At 6sense, he drove product and growth strategies across key portfolios. Today, Deepak is a recognized voice in Agentic AI, sharing insights through the Adopted podcast and industry platforms. ## Jugal Anchalia CEO & Co-Founder, Refold Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jugal-anchalia/ Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Jugal Anchalia, CEO & Co-Founder at Refold AI ## Steve Ancheta Founder and CEO, Zig AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steve-ancheta/ Track: Sales & Revenue Operations Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Kwasi Ankomah Director, AI Solutions Engineering, SambaNova Systems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kwasi-ankomah/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Kwasi Ankomah leads AI Solutions Engineering at SambaNova, where he works with enterprises to design and deploy AI infrastructure for production-scale inference. He specializes in agentic AI, large language model infrastructure, and heterogeneous computing architectures that help organizations deliver faster, more efficient AI at scale. ## Sreekanth Annapureddy CTO, Netradyne Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sreekanth-annapureddy/ Track: World Models Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Sreekanth Annapureddy Chief Technology Officer at Netradyne Sreekanth Annapureddy is Chief Technology Officer of Netradyne, where he leads one of the largest real-world data and AI operations in the physical world. Through a global fleet of intelligent dashcams, Netradyne's systems have observed and analyzed more than 27 billion miles of real driving — continuously capturing how vehicles, people, and environments behave and interact, across millions of miles every day. A founding engineer who joined in 2015, Sreekanth built the core of the Driver.i platform: the machine learning, computer vision, and edge-AI systems that turn raw multimodal sensor data into structured understanding of dynamic physical environments, running on-device and in real time at global scale. That same infrastructure now represents one of the richest sources of grounded, real-world physical data in existence — a foundation for training world models not on simulation, but on reality observed at scale. Before Netradyne, Sreekanth worked on deep learning and computer vision at Qualcomm, where his research on compressing neural networks for embedded devices helped make heavy models practical to run at the edge — the constraint that determines whether physical-world AI can deploy at scale. He holds a PhD in Information Theory from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras. He completed the Stanford Executive Program in 2025. ## George Antoniou Full Professor Cybersecurity, Lynn University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/george-antoniou/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees State: New York Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Dr. George Antoniou is a Full Professor of Cybersecurity Management and Cybersecurity Program Coordinator at Lynn University's College of Business and Management. A Fulbright U.S. Scholar, Fulbright Specialist, and Fulbright Alumni Ambassador, he brings more than 30 years of experience spanning industry and academia. He has held senior leadership roles in security operations, risk management, compliance, and digital transformation while teaching and conducting research in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, governance, and digital forensics. During his 2025 Fulbright residency at the University of Tirana, Albania, he designed an AI and Ethics course, contributed to the development of a Bologna-aligned Master of Science in Cybersecurity curriculum that has since received formal program approval, and helped establish an ongoing Memorandum of Understanding between Lynn University and the University of Tirana. His broader Fulbright work also includes a Fulbright Specialist award in Paraguay. His international work includes faculty development, curriculum design, and collaboration with academic, government, and industry partners to strengthen cybersecurity and AI education. His research focuses on AI governance, institutional AI readiness, cybersecurity education, workforce preparedness, and the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence. By combining executive leadership experience with academic research, he develops practical frameworks that help organizations move beyond AI experimentation toward sustainable, secure, and well-governed AI adoption. As Co-Founder and CEO of Cyber Aliens LLC, Dr. Antoniou is an inventor on multiple U.S. patents, including U.S. Patent No. 10,673,617 B1. He also develops and deploys AI-assisted educational technologies, including an AI-powered tutoring agent and interactive cybersecurity learning environments that enhance student engagement while promoting responsible and ethical AI use. An IEEE Senior Member, Dr. Antoniou has authored peer-reviewed publications, presented at national and international conferences, and advanced cybersecurity and AI education through research, curriculum development, professional service, and cross-border collaboration. His work bridges academia, industry, and government to address emerging challenges in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, governance, and workforce development. His work has contributed to approved cybersecurity curricula, institutional AI governance initiatives, and international academic partnerships that help prepare organizations and the future workforce for the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence. At the AI4 Applied AI Research Conference, Dr. Antoniou presents "From AI Adoption to AI Readiness: A Fulbright-Informed Framework for Governance, Ethics, and Workforce Preparedness." Drawing on his Fulbright experience and international collaborations, he demonstrates how organizations can assess AI readiness, strengthen governance and ethical decision-making, develop workforce capabilities, and build practical strategies for implementing AI responsibly, securely, and effectively. ## Tristan Arbus Senior Data Scientist, Devon Energy Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tristan-arbus/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Tristan Arbus is an independent AI and data science leader with more than a decade of experience building production analytics, machine learning, and AI capabilities in complex operational environments. Most recently, he led enterprise data science capability-building in the energy sector, spanning technical strategy, platform and architecture decisions, cross-functional delivery, and the standards and workflows needed to move models from experimentation into reliable use. His work focuses on the systems around the model: evaluation, observability, feedback loops, governance, and human-in-the-loop processes that help teams detect failures, earn user trust, and connect technical performance to business outcomes. A patent holder with an earlier background in engineering and field operations, Tristan brings a pragmatic perspective to scaling AI—favoring measurable impact, operational reliability, and thoughtful execution over hype. ## Abhinav Asthana Chief Technology Officer, Redwood Trust, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/abhinav-asthana/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees State: California Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader As the CTO of RWT, Abhinav leads Redwood’s efforts to enhance the comapny's product offerings through an expansion of its digital capabilities and artificial intelligence (“AI”) footprint. His team is responsible for overseeing all technology-related aspects of the company, including application development, infrastructure, and IT operations. His team also leads Redwood’s initiatives to use AI to develop safe and common-sense solutions that enhance functionality, efficiency, and user experience for customers and employees. Abhinav is also an active angel investor and advisor, supporting early stage startups and entrepreneurs. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at industry events and publications, sharing his insights and expertise on emerging technologies and trends in fintech. ## Mark Atalla Deputy National Coordinator for Health IT, Policy Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-atalla/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Government Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Mark Atalla serves as the Deputy National Coordinator for Health IT at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He leads efforts to advance technology-driven health policy, focusing on ways digital tools and intelligent systems can enhance behavior change, lower healthcare spending, and strengthen delegated financial risk models. Dr. Atalla brings extensive experience from a large, distributed healthcare organization with more than 2,000 clinics nationwide, as well as leadership roles across pharmacy benefit management, community pharmacy, and hospital pharmacy operations. Prior to his current role, Dr. Atalla served as a Senior Advisor at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for Innovation, where he led key Medicare Advantage and Part D initiatives at the CMS Innovation Center—including the Part D Senior Savings Model, Part D Payment Modernization Model, and Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) Model. Dr. Atalla has also held operational roles at Medco/Express Scripts and Fresenius. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree from the University of Florida and an MBA from Yale University. ## John Austin Director of Translational AI, Gilead Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-austin/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Subba Bachina AI Product Security Leader, Lenovo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/subba-bachina/ Track: Edge AI & Tiny ML [Technical] Industry: Consumer Electronics Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Subba Bachina is an AI Security Architect and Penetration Testing Team Lead at Lenovo. His research focuses on identifying design-level and implementation-level vulnerabilities in cloud software and hardware systems, with a particular emphasis on the security risks introduced by integrating AI with IoT and edge devices. His work spans adversarial AI, model exploitation, and real-world attack surfaces in distributed and embedded systems. ## Allen Badeau CAIO, DigitalNet.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/allen-badeau/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Allen Badeau Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO), DigitalNet.ai Dr. Allen Badeau serves as Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at DigitalNet.ai, where he leads the company’s AI vision, strategy, and platform innovation. A recognized leader in advanced computing and enterprise AI, Dr. Badeau is the driving force behind JanusAI, DigitalNet.ai’s next-generation agentic AI platform designed to transform how humans and intelligent systems collaborate. With more than two decades of experience spanning artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, and advanced analytics, Dr. Badeau is known for transforming emerging technologies into scalable, mission-critical solutions. His work sits at the intersection of innovation and execution, enabling organizations to operationalize complex AI capabilities with speed, precision, and measurable impact. At DigitalNet.ai, Dr. Badeau architected JanusAI as a unified cognitive ecosystem that integrates multiple AI approaches, including quantum, neuromorphic, biomimetic, and autonomous machine learning, into a single enterprise platform. The result is a self-learning, explainable system of persona-driven cognitive agents that reason, adapt, and evolve alongside human teams, enabling faster decision-making, reducing risk, and accelerating digital transformation. Prior to joining DigitalNet.ai, Dr. Badeau held senior executive roles across the government contracting and technology sectors. He served as Chief Technology Officer at Empower AI, where he led innovation initiatives and directed advanced research and development through the CREATE Lab, driving next-generation solutions in AI, DevSecOps, robotics, and data science. Earlier in his career, he held leadership positions at ASRC Federal, CSC, Innovative Management and Technology Services, and Lockheed Martin, focusing on technology strategy, cybersecurity, advanced analytics, and large-scale transformation programs supporting federal and commercial missions. In addition to his enterprise leadership, Dr. Badeau is an entrepreneur and innovator. He is the founder of Harmonic AI and leads Allen Badeau LLC, where he advises organizations on AI strategy, human and AI integration, and emerging technologies including blockchain and quantum computing. Dr. Badeau holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Physics from West Virginia University. He is also a contributor to the scientific and technology community, with patents, publications, and ongoing work focused on advancing responsible and human-centered AI. Known for his ability to bridge deep technical expertise with strategic vision, Dr. Badeau continues to expand what AI can achieve. Through JanusAI and his leadership at DigitalNet.ai, he is helping organizations move beyond automation toward true cognitive partnership, unlocking a new era of intelligent, adaptive, and human-aligned systems. ## Raghavendra Bagalkoti Vice President - Capital Markets Data Platform, Barclays Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/raghavendra-bagalkoti/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Raghavendra Bagalkoti, Vice President - Markets Data Platform Delivery Lead, Barclays. Raghavendra Bagalkoti is a Vice President and Platform Delivery Lead in Markets Technology at Barclays, where he architects and delivers large-scale data platforms and streaming infrastructure for post-trade operations. With over 15 years of experience across global financial institutions — including Barclays, Citibank, and BNY Mellon — he works at the intersection of financial services technology and modern data engineering. Raghavendra has led enterprise-scale industry programs spanning T+1 settlement, DTCC Transformation, Global Payments Innovation (GPI), SWIFT, and CSDR, and has driven critical regulatory reporting and compliance initiatives across the trade lifecycle. His current focus is cloud-native data platform modernization and the application of AI to automate complex workflows across post-trade operations. He is an active member of ISDA and ISLA, and is passionate about making financial infrastructure technology accessible to the next generation of practitioners and technologists. ## Camille Bailey Associate Vice President, Consumer Sales, Princess Cruises Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/camille-bailey/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Florida Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Camille M. Bailey, Associate Vice President, Consumer Sales, Princess Cruises Camille Bailey is a sales and guest experience executive with more than 19 years of experience transforming contact center and commercial operations across the global cruise industry. As Associate Vice President of Consumer Sales at Princess Cruises, she leads the brand's Consumer Sales and Contact Center organization — overseeing Inbound, Outbound, Casino and Onboard Cruise Sales performance, revenue growth, and the end-to-end guest journey across voice, chat, social, text, and email. Before Princess Cruises, Camille held senior leadership roles at Crystal Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, and EO Travel Group, where she modernized quality assurance programs, led CRM and telephony transformations, and consistently delivered outsized gains in productivity and revenue — including 75% year-over-year growth as Regional Sales Director at Crystal Cruises. Camille is currently spearheading Princess Cruises' partnership with Harpin AI for North America Direct Sales, integrating artificial intelligence into the sales ecosystem to surface deeper customer insights, personalize the guest journey, and turn contact center interactions into moments that build lasting brand loyalty. The results speak for themselves: sharper conversion, stronger guest satisfaction, and a more agile, data-driven sales organization. Camille holds a bachelor's degree in Marketing and Leadership Studies from Johnson & Wales University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She's an avid traveler at heart, having visited more than 40 countries — a passion for exploring new cultures that shapes how she connects with people, wherever they're from. ## Nikunj Bajaj Co-founder & CEO, TrueFoundry Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nikunj-bajaj/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nikunj is the Co-founder and CEO of TrueFoundry, a platform helping enterprises build, deploy, and ship LLM applications quickly, cost-efficiently, and with the right governance controls within their own cloud. He previously led Conversational AI at Meta, where he built proactive virtual assistants and shipped Meta's first on-device deep learning model. Before that, he led the Machine Learning team at Reflektion, building an AI platform that powered search and recommendations for over 600 million users across major eCommerce sites. He's a frequent speaker at MLOps Community, GenAI Summit San Francisco, and Data+AI Summit by Databricks, alongside leaders from Meta, Databricks, Anthropic, and Cohere. He holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and an M.S. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Nikunj now focuses on helping enterprises deploy production AI safely and cost-effectively at scale. ## Brendan Baker Partner, Rackhouse Venture Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brendan-baker/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator ## Jason Baker Associate Provost & Senior Technology Strategist, Regent University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-baker/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Jason D. Baker, Ph.D., is Associate Provost and Senior Technology Strategist at Regent University, where he leads the artificial intelligence agenda. He founded the university’s AI Task Force to promote distributed AI integration across campus and co-chairs the AI Governance Committee. With a background that blends engineering, theology, and education, he equips leaders to meet the challenge of harnessing technology for human flourishing in an increasingly digital world. Jason has been a leader in academic innovation and online learning, reaching learners often overlooked by traditional offerings. He has leveraged data as a strategic asset to inform redesign initiatives that doubled enrollment, advanced quality standards, and balanced the budget. He has launched undergraduate and graduate degree programs, built forecasting models, automated operational processes, and guided technology integration across a wide range of disciplines from business and cybersecurity to theology and law. Jason has served as a senior systems engineer, startup founding member, technology consultant, and professor. He holds degrees in electrical engineering, educational technology, online communication, and computer and information technology. He is currently building the Institute for Technology Innovation with artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and robotics labs where students learn emerging technologies, build practical solutions, and lead ethical innovation. He is an award-winning author whose most recent book is Leading AI Well: An Executive’s Guide to AI Strategy. He is the co-author of Distance Learning in Higher Education (Teachers College Press) and the low-cost Social Science Research Design & Statistics digital textbook, co-editor of The Student Guide to Successful Online Learning, and co-developer of the CAP Perceived Learning Scale. Jason describes himself as an engineer who found a calling to use technology to help people while helping people use technology. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society; a Senior Member of IEEE; and a regional Community Fellow with the AI Collective. Jason is regularly invited to speak about advancing technology for good. ## Avinash Balachandran Vice President, Toyota Research Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/avinash-balachandran/ Track: Automotive Cadmium Role: Panelist Avinash Balachandran, Ph.D., is Vice President of the Human Interactive Driving (HID) division at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), where he leads the development of human-centric Physical AI that redefines how people and intelligent vehicles work together. His work is driven by the belief that the future of autonomy lies in human amplification, not human replacement. He oversees TRI’s driving-related research, guiding teams across machine learning, robotics, and human–machine interaction to advance how vehicles are designed, engineered, and manufactured while improving safety, confidence, and driver enjoyment. Before joining TRI, Dr. Balachandran was an early engineer on Uber’s self-driving program, contributing to the launch of its first autonomous ride service in Pittsburgh in 2016, and later led autonomous driving teams at Faraday Future. Across these roles, he has consistently worked to translate cutting-edge research into deployable technologies. A globally recognized industry leader, Dr. Balachandran is a frequent keynote speaker, advisor, and panelist on autonomy, human-centered AI, and the future of mobility. He delivered keynote addresses at the FAST-Zero Symposium in Kanazawa, Japan (2023), the SAE International World Congress Experience (WCX) (2024), the Open Data Science Conference (2025), and participated in high-profile discussions at the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit (2024). His invited talks span premier technical and academic forums, including the MIT Mobility Forum (2022), IFAC World Congress (2023), and IEEE ICASSP / Signal Processing for Autonomous Systems (2023), where he has articulated a human-centered vision for embodied AI in the physical world. Dr. Balachandran holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Cornell University. He is a Stanford Graduate Fellow and serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University, contributing to the next generation of engineers and researchers. ## Sama Bali Sr Manager, AI Solutions Product Marketing, NVIDIA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sama-bali/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist As an AI solutions leader at NVIDIA, Sama specializes in bringing AI products to market and helping enterprises adopt AI technologies. Sama’s experience includes leading Machine Learning solutions marketing at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and roles at Dell and Pure Storage. Her focus is on educating developers about AI innovations and facilitating their effective implementation in enterprise environments. ## Rick Balzano VP, GTM - AI Services, Safety, and Robotics, TaskUs Holdings Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rick-balzano/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Hey Everyone, My name is Rick Balzano and I'm the VP, GTM - AI Services, Safety, and Robotics at TaskUs. I partner with Enterprise Organizations, Frontier Labs, and leading Physical AI Innovators to bridge the gap between rapid innovation and responsible governance. My focus is helping companies navigate the complexities of Generative AI, Robotics, and Ethics - ensuring that 'AI-First' always means 'Safety-First.' ## Ashish Bansal Principal Machine Learning Engineer, The Vanguard Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashish-bansal/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Ashish Bansal working as Principal AI/ML Engineer, at Vanguard, leading the research and development of innovative, scalable Enterprise AI solutions spanning machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and generative AI. ## Natalie Barnes VP of Product Management & Product Design, Zumba Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/natalie-barnes/ Track: Product Management Industry: Other Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Natalie Barnes is Vice President of Product & Product Design at Zumba Fitness, where she leads global product innovation and AI strategy across platforms serving 15 million weekly users. With over 20 years of experience building and scaling product organizations at Zumba (13+ years) and Paramount/CBS (7 years), Natalie has championed the practical application of AI tools across product management workflows, from automating user research synthesis to accelerating feature ideation and requirements documentation. At Zumba, she sets the strategic vision for integrating AI capabilities into SaaS tools for fitness professionals while enabling her product teams to leverage generative AI for market analysis, customer feedback processing, and rapid concept prototyping. Her approach combines AI-powered efficiency with human-centered design thinking to accelerate product development cycles while maintaining strategic vision. ## Kiersten Barnet Executive Director, New York Jobs CEO Council Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kiersten-barnet/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: Other Job Function: Operations Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kiersten Barnet is Executive Director of the New York Jobs CEO Council, where she leads a coalition of Fortune 100 CEOs from companies including JP Morgan, Google, and Citigroup,, committed to hiring 100,000 low-income New Yorkers into family-sustaining jobs by 2030. Prior to this, she spent 15 years at Bloomberg, where she led the Gender-Equality Index, helping shape how major companies globally report on social sustainability. Kiersten also co-founded the U.S. 30% Club, a group of influential CEOs, including Warren Buffett and Larry Fink, and sits on several nonprofit and advisory boards. ## Brandon Barnett Founder, Trigate Coaching Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brandon-barnett/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dr. Brandon Barnett is the Founder and CEO of Trigate Coaching, a Strategy Center of Excellence dedicated to helping leaders and teams master the art and science of strategy. A recognized innovator at the intersection of business strategy, complex systems, and artificial intelligence, Brandon brings over three decades of leadership experience guiding organizations through disruption, transformation, and growth. Drawing on his background in applied physics and corporate strategy, Brandon has spent his career translating scientific principles into strategic advantages. He pioneered applying complex systems theory to business strategy, showing how networks of companies and stakeholders can self-organize to create new value. He was an early adopter of AI-driven approaches to market analysis, innovation, and strategic decision-making. His work integrates these disciplines into a transformative framework that enables leaders to build adaptive, living strategies in an era of exponential change. Before founding Trigate Coaching, Brandon held leadership positions in corporate and business unit strategy, mergers and acquisitions, market insights, innovation portfolio management, and communication with the board of directors. He has effectively partnered with senior executives and technologists to architect strategies across competitive ecosystems and culture-driven organizations, from emerging ventures to Fortune 100 companies. Leading joint corporate and academic research initiatives, he directed the development of theories on market evolution and transformation through the lens of complex systems theory. Brandon also served as General Manager in Intel’s New Business Incubator, where he led corporate innovation and market creation initiatives. Brandon’s leadership extends beyond industry. He has advised the White House, the World Economic Forum, Homeland Security panels, and the Congressional Research Service, offering insights on innovation, emerging technology, and system resilience. His research and thought leadership have been published in academic journals and conference proceedings, and his work has also been featured in Fast Company, The Washington Post, GigaOm, and The Venture Capital Journal. He holds nineteen patents. Brandon earned a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the University of Michigan, an MBA from the Oregon Executive MBA program, and a Sc.B. in Engineering from Brown University. Based in Portland, Oregon, he continues to explore how strategy, science, and human curiosity come together to shape the future of leadership and enterprise. ## Todd Barr CEO, Axonis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/todd-barr/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Todd Barr is the CEO of Axonis, which brings AI to the data - wherever it lives - and turns it into trusted, traceable decisions. Built originally for the U.S. defense and intelligence community, Axonis runs secure, real-time AI on operational, sovereign, and edge data without ever moving it: every outcome grounded in the right data, governed by policy, and fully auditable. It accelerates time-to-AI value while enabling cross-organization collaboration without sharing data. For example, Axonis is the AI platform behind a flood early-warning system that went live in Galveston County, Texas, in 2026. Todd has built the brands and categories behind the open infrastructure technical teams actually adopt. He was CMO of GitLab, where he helped define the DevOps Platform category, and of Chainlink Labs, the standard Web3 oracle platform; earlier, he helped turn Ansible and Red Hat into open-source infrastructure the industry runs on. Now he's doing it again for AI governance, backing an open standard for decision evidence so trust isn't locked to any one vendor. At Ai4, he'll argue that as AI collapses time-to-decision, the advantage goes to whoever can make those decisions safe, auditable and replayable. Join his session called "The AI Decisions Gap: Why Model Explainability Is Only Half the Battle" on August 4th at 11:05am. ## Dylan Barrell Chief Technology Officer, Deque Systems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dylan-barrell/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dylan is the Chief Technology Officer at Deque. He has almost 20 years of experience in technology development, technical sales, product management, product marketing, and corporate development. Dylan founded a startup in 1989 that was acquired. He then went public with OpenText and helped grow revenues to over $400 million. He later led the effort to create a digital center within a Borders store and to begin the transition from purely physical products to digital and physical product mix delivered in a cross channel online and in-store way. In addition to his work experience, Dylan has an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BS from the University of the Witwatersrand. Dylan believes in leading through action to create value for shareholders and the community. ## Brandon Barros Founding Technical GTM, Masta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brandon-barros/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Brandon Barros is Founding Technical GTM at Mastra. He wears various hats in this role, including GTM/Sales Engineer, Customer Engineer, and Developer Relations. Whether it be product, customer, engineering, or anything in between, Brandon can step in. He joined Mastra in April of this year. Prior to Mastra, Brandon was a VR Engineer at Meta, building features for the Quest Headset. Before Meta, Brandon started his career as an Investor on the Consumer Team at a16z. He is currently based in San Diego, California. ## Mahe Bayireddi CEO & Co Founder, Phenom Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mahe-bayireddi/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom Mahe Bayireddi is the CEO and co-founder of Phenom, the leader in applied AI with an infrastructure built specifically to redesign work operations. Driven by a purpose to help a billion people find the right work, Mahe built WorkOps, an operating model that gives enterprises the precision to deploy autonomous agents at scale with the context that each role, industry, geography, and moment demands. Under his leadership, Phenom has become one of Inc. 5000's fastest-growing private companies for six consecutive years, serving 700+ organizations with AI solutions that dramatically accelerate HR operations and condense processes that traditionally took weeks into minutes. Mahe advises some of the world's largest, most complex global brands on HR strategies, technology implementation, and advanced applications of AI across all talent personas. ## Anjelina Belakovskaia Associate Teaching Professor, Chair of the AI & Emerging Technologies Committee, Arizona State University, Thunderbird School of Global Management Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anjelina-belakovskaia/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Anjelina Belakovskaia is an Associate Teaching Professor in Global Finance at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University – ranked #1 in Innovation by U.S. News & World Report for 10 consecutive years. Anjelina’s expertise lies in the area of risk management and financial derivatives. Over the last 30 years, she has been involved in trading of Foreign Exchange, equities, weather and exotic derivatives, and cryptocurrencies. Her teaching portfolio includes "Derivatives and Risk Management," “Navigating Global FinTech Innovations,” "Principles of Finance for Global Organizations," and numerous other classes – including her unique course, "Chess, Leadership and Business Strategy" that bridges critical thinking, strategy, and decision-making. Since 2022, Anjelina has served as Faculty Advisor of the Crypto Club at Thunderbird and has become deeply engaged in the field of Artificial Intelligence. She currently chairs the AI and Emerging Technology Committee at Thunderbird and was instrumental in launching the ASU Downtown AI Community of Practice. This initiative fosters interdisciplinary collaboration through monthly AI/Tech Talks at Thunderbird, open to ASU faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as various conferences and campus-wide events. At the university level, Anjelina contributes to strategic discussions on AI Literacy and the evolving Future of Work – exploring the skills that future leaders, executives, and professionals will need in a rapidly changing world shaped by AI and emerging technologies. In Spring 2024, her proposal – Exploring AI-Enhanced Supplemental Instruction for Scalable Educational Support – was selected as a winner in the ASU AI Enterprise Innovation Challenge (1st cohort), earning her an OpenAI Enterprise license to develop scalable, AI-powered solutions in higher education. As a former professional chess player and a member of the U.S. Olympic Women’s Chess Team (1991–2000), Anjelina is a 3-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion (1995, 1996, 1999) and holds the title of Woman International Grandmaster (1993). In 2023, she won the Inaugural U.S. Chess Championship for Women 50+, and in 2023 and 2024, she led the U.S. Women’s 50+ Team to Silver and Bronze medals at the World Senior Team Chess Championships in Krakow and Prague, respectively. Blending her passions for Chess, Risk Management, and Trading, Anjelina remains active in those fields – managing personal crypto and equity portfolios and having served three years as a Member-At-Large on the U.S. Chess Federation’s Executive Board (2015–2018). ## James Belasco Head of Data Science for Advice and Wealth Management, Vanguard Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-belasco/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No James Belasco serves as the Head of Data Science for Advice and Wealth Management at Vanguard, as part of the Center for AI and Insights, where he leads advanced analytics and artificial intelligence initiatives in support of the firm’s Advice and Wealth Management businesses. He is responsible for building and scaling data science products that translate complex data into actionable insights for advisors, clients, and business leaders across the enterprise. He oversees multidisciplinary teams of data scientists and partners closely with product, technology, and business stakeholders to deliver solutions that improve client outcomes, increase operational efficiency, and enable smarter decision‑making at scale. His work spans applied machine learning, AI‑enabled decision support, GenAI solutions, and the integration of AI into core business processes, with a strong emphasis on production readiness, governance, and sustainable value creation. ## Dmitry Belov Vice President, Operations, Coated Products North America, BlueScope Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dmitry-belov/ Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: Washington Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader ## Douglas Benalan CIO & Head of Digital Transformation, CURE Insurance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/douglas-benalan/ Track: Insurance Industry: Insurance Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: New Jersey Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Revenue: $200M-$500M Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Doug Benalan is the Chief Information Officer at CURE Insurance, a recipient of the 2025 NJ Executive Excellence Award, and an Executive MBA graduate from Brown University. With 20 years of experience, Doug specializes in modernizing complex legacy environments and building agile, high-performance technology capabilities that improve operational efficiency, customer experience, and business performance. At CURE, he is helping redefine insurance operations through the practical application of artificial intelligence. His work includes implementing AI-enabled document intake and extraction, multilingual policy-servicing support, and intelligent workflows across claims and underwriting. Doug also holds an MS in Software Systems from the Birla Institute of Technology. His professional recognition includes being named a 2026 PropertyCasualty360 Insurance Luminaries Executive of the year Finalist, receiving the 2024 Technology Executive of the Year Silver Award from the American Business Awards, earning a nomination for the Philly CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards, and being included in the BT150 list of global digital transformation leaders. A respected industry voice, Doug has been featured in Guidewire and Lumen case studies, as well as in AI Magazine, InsurTech Digital, and FinTech Magazine. He has spoken at leading industry events, including IASA, Guidewire Connections, and numerous insurance and technology summits. Known for his commitment to delivering results and his “Seven Essential Rules to Empower High-Performance Teams,” Doug continues to advance technology leadership and operational innovation across the property and casualty insurance industry. ## Tiffany Benitez Head of Data & AI Governance, Compass Group USA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tiffany-benitez/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Tiffany is a seasoned technology leader with 23 years of experience across multiple industries, including finance, retail, and food manufacturing. She began her 12-year career at Bank of America, transitioning from the business side to technology after six years. Tiffany then moved to Walmart’s Global Data Technology organization, where she led portfolio strategy, Data Governance and the transformation to Agile and Product. She continued her career at Lowe’s, overseeing cyber-security strategy, data governance, GRC and communications, while also championing women in technology through BRG and Women in Tech leadership roles. As Senior Director at Tyson Foods, Tiffany led IT applications, business engagement, and S4 & Product transformation teams, co-chairing the Women's Business Resource Group and leading Tyson’s Women in Technology group. Currently, Tiffany is the Head of Data & AI Governance at Compass Digital, where she drives the transformation of enterprise data governance. A passionate advocate for women, she is also the founder and president of Women in Technology of Northwest Arkansas, a National non-profit, with 11 chapters across the US, dedicated to empowering women in tech. Tiffany is an author, speaker, and advocate for change, using her strong people skills to inspire growth and leadership. ## Fawzi Benmessaoud Professor of AI and Informatics & CTO, Indiana University Timeless Agora Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/fawzi-benmessaoud/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Fawzi BenMessaoud has pioneered educational technology and AI applications for over three decades. Beginning in 1984 with groundbreaking work in robotics and PLCs, he developed embedded systems for industrial and machine learning applications. His multifaceted career includes service as an intelligence analyst prior to being selected as an FBI special agent. Dr. BenMessaoud designed an information security systems program that received NSA Committee on National Security Systems approval in 2007, aligning with National Security Agency Information Assurance standards. In academic content creation, BenMessaoud has led diverse teams developing comprehensive materials and interactive learning tools. His collaboration with Jack Welch created the esteemed Jack Welch MBA program, now integral to the Jack Welch Management Institute. His innovative fusion of lab simulations with online platforms for information security courses was recognized among the top 101 Best Practices in Integrating Technology with Higher Education by Campus Technology magazine in 2005. His latest AI for Education work gained prominence in the EDUCAUSE 2022 Horizon Report, was showcased at the 2023 World AI Cannes Festival and EDUCAUSE conference, and earned a SEIRI 2023 grant. BenMessaoud regularly presents at global conferences on instructional technologies, AI, and seamless technology integration in education. ## Hadis Bergman AI & Automation Lead, Burns & McDonnell Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hadis-bergman/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Hadis (Nabavi) Bergman brings an end-to-end technical foundation to AI strategy, started from database architecture, full-stack development, and advanced in data science to modern AI agents, and automation. At Burns & McDonnell, one of the largest engineering and construction firms in the US, she leads AI and data product strategy focused on helping organizations move past the myths and marketing around AI and build the data infrastructure, workflows, strategy and team structures that make intelligent automation actually function at scale. She brings a builder's perspective as someone who has worked at every layer of the stack and knows exactly where AI initiatives break down and how to prevent it. ## Joshua Bernal CIO, Grupo Traxion Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joshua-bernal/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes I’m Joshua Bernal, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Traxión, the largest publicly traded transportation and logistics company in Mexico and one of the largest in Latin America. I lead the company’s enterprise technology strategy, digital transformation initiatives, and Artificial Intelligence programs, helping shape how technology drives operational excellence across a large and complex logistics ecosystem. Throughout my career, I’ve been passionate about using technology to solve real business problems. Rather than viewing AI as just another technology trend, I see it as an opportunity to fundamentally change how organizations make decisions, collaborate, and operate at scale. My work focuses on designing and implementing enterprise platforms that connect people, processes, and data across multiple business domains. I’ve led initiatives involving enterprise architecture, software engineering, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, data governance, analytics, automation, and Artificial Intelligence, always with the goal of creating technology that delivers measurable business value. One of the challenges I encounter most often is that organizations have more data than ever before, yet making timely, confident decisions remains surprisingly difficult. Valuable information is frequently scattered across disconnected systems, buried in reports, or locked behind technical barriers that prevent business users from accessing the insights they need. That challenge has shaped much of my work over the last several years. I’m particularly interested in how AI can bridge the gap between enterprise data and operational decision-making through conversational interfaces, specialized AI agents, modern data architectures, and trusted governance models. I believe the future of enterprise software isn’t about creating more dashboards—it’s about enabling organizations to interact with their business knowledge naturally, ask better questions, and receive intelligent, contextual answers in real time. As CIO, I work closely with executive leadership, operational teams, and technology organizations to ensure that innovation is practical, scalable, secure, and aligned with strategic business objectives. My philosophy has always been that technology should simplify complexity, empower people, and help organizations make better decisions—not simply generate more information. At Ai4 Las Vegas, I’ll be presenting "The Last Mile of Data: How AI Turns Enterprise Data Into Decisions," where I’ll share practical lessons from applying AI within one of the region’s largest transportation and logistics organizations. We’ll explore why the biggest challenge is no longer collecting data, but closing the final gap between information and action—and how Decision Intelligence is redefining the future of enterprise software. ## Emanuel Bettelheim Head of Data & Analytics, Bloomberg Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emanuel-bettelheim/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Emanuel Bettelheim is Head of Data & Analytics in the Office of the CTO at Bloomberg, where he leads the company’s structured data and analytics strategy. In this role, he oversees the product management of Bloomberg’s end-to-end data infrastructure — spanning ingestion and enrichment through semantic modeling, analytics, access, and activation. His remit includes Bloomberg Query Language (BQL), Bloomberg's Knowledge Graph, 3rd party developer experience, and the integration of emerging technologies such as generative AI.   Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2025, Emanuel held product leadership roles at Google, where he guided Alphabet's global data infrastructure platforms and contributed to the evolution of large-scale systems supporting AI and advanced analytics. He also led product management for Google's Advertiser Platform. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Product at ExecOnline, shaping the company’s digital learning platform in collaboration with leading business schools.   Earlier in his career, Emanuel held leadership roles at companies including Orbitz, Ask.com, and Imagekind, where he was CTO and General Manager through its acquisition by CafePress. He also held product leadership positions at Expedia, where he advanced data-driven growth strategies across IAC’s portfolio of online brands.   With more than two decades of experience driving innovation at the intersection of data, technology, and product strategy, Emanuel is recognized for his expertise in leading teams through complex technical environments and delivering transformative products to market. ## Chitra Bhagat Sr. Director, Analytics & AI - Business Solution Design, Cummins Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chitra-bhagat/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Chitra Bhagat is Senior Director for Business Solution Design at Cummins, focusing on Advanced Analytics and AI. She is a data and AI strategist with deep experience across Data & Analytics, Information Systems Architecture, Cloud, and Digital Transformation. At Cummins, she has led enterprise-wide initiatives in Finance Analytics Systems, Enterprise Data Management, Enterprise Data Architecture, and Advanced Analytics & AI. With over 20 years of experience across the Manufacturing and Finance domains, Chitra is known for combining strategic vision with practical execution, bringing breadth and depth across the data lifecycle. She holds an engineering degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and numerous professional certifications. Chitra is passionate about building future-ready organizations, mentoring talent, and advancing Cummins’ digital and data-driven future. ## Yogesh Bhagat Vice President, Pharmacy Technology Ecosystem, CSV Health & Health100 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yogesh-bhagat/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Yogesh Bhagat - Vice President, Pharmacy Technology Ecosystem | CVS Health & Health100 Yogesh Bhagat leads the pharmacy technology ecosystem supporting CVS Health & Health100 mail and retail pharmacy businesses, as well as enterprise AI platforms that help accelerate innovation across the organization. He is responsible for product, design, and engineering teams focused on modernizing pharmacy operations, advancing responsible AI adoption, and improving experiences for patients, pharmacists, and colleagues. With more than 25 years of experience across healthcare, retail, and commerce, Yogesh has led large-scale technology transformation initiatives that bring AI, data, and modern engineering practices into real-world operations. He is passionate about applying technology to solve meaningful customer problems, improve access to care, and create simpler, more effective healthcare experiences. ## Kunal Bhasin Co-founder, CTO, CPO, Fabrion Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kunal-bhasin/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Automotive Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kunal is the Co-Founder, CTO and CPO of Fabrion. Before Kunal conceptualized and incubated Fabrion, he has spent over 20 years building successful zero-to-one prodcuts in Big Data (Terracotta), Mobility (Scoot), Supply Chain (ICIX), and as an executive at AWS and Aptiv leading future technologies in Manufacturing, Automotive and IoT including physical AI. ## Shashin Bhaskar San Jose State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shashin-bhaskar/ Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter ## Guru Bhat EVP & Head of Data & AI Business, Evalueserve Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/guru-bhat/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: North Carolina Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Sandipan Bhattacharya SVP & Head of IT, US Ocean Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sandipan-bhattacharya/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Waseem Bhatti Principal Solutions Architect, UnifyApps Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/waseem-bhatti/ Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Waseem Bhatti is Principal Solutions Architect at UnifyApps, helping North American enterprises move AI from stalled pilots into governed production. Drawing on a career automating enterprise platforms, Waseem partners with technical leaders to solve the architecture around AI. His work focuses on unifying fragmented systems into a horizontal AI operating system, enabling organizations to build sustainable agents, apps, and workflows. ## Runa Bhaumik Research Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/runa-bhaumik/ Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Illinois Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Job Level: Individual Contributor: Can be a senior role, but no direct reports nor P&L management I am a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago. As a computer and information scientist with deep expertise in machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and natural language processing (NLP), I apply these methodologies in cancer, mental health and public health research. I currently serve as a Co-Investigator on multiple NIH R01 studies, where I lead advanced analytics, including generalised linear mixed models, high-dimensional ML, and large-language-model (LLM) models. I have collaborated across psychiatry, infectious diseases, and population health on projects that integrate biological, behavioral, and clinical text data. Across more than 40 peer-reviewed publications, my contributions center on turning messy, real-world clinical and digital data into actionable predictions and interpretable insights. ## Ronak Bhavsar Co-Founder/ COO, Finomics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ronak-bhavsar/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Ronak is Co-founder of Finomics, an intelligent FinOps platform that brings governance, control, and visibility to enterprise spend across cloud, SaaS, and private infrastructure. Drawing on years of experience leading a Data and AI firm, she co-created Finomics to help organizations turn cost discipline into a competitive advantage — through AI-powered forecasting, anomaly detection, and actionable recommendations. ## Kristen Biddulph Technical Director, Staff Operations for Security & Infrastructure, Nationwide Insurance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kristen-biddulph/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kristen Biddulph is a technology executive with more than a decade of experience leading enterprise transformation across software engineering, product management, AI strategy, and organizational operations. Throughout her career, she has specialized in helping organizations translate strategy into execution by building scalable capabilities, modern operating models, and governance approaches that accelerate technology adoption while enabling responsible innovation. Most recently, Kristen led enterprise AI enablement, where she helped define and operationalize her enterprise's generative and agentic AI strategy. Her work established foudnational capabiltiies spanning model governance, AI platforms, evaluation frameworks, and developer enablement, creating a trusted path for teams to adopt AI at scale. Today, Kristen serves as Technical Director of Staff Operations supporting the CTO and leadership team for Security & Infrastructure, where she focuses on organizational effectiveness, strategic execution, and enabling a product-centric, AI-enabled workforce. She is passionate about simplifying complexity, fostering high-performing teams, and helping organizations navigate transformation through the intersection of people, process, and technology. ## Alain Biem Co-founder ; Former Chief AI Officer, New York Life, S&P Global Market Intelligence, Columbia University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alain-biem/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: New York Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Alain Biem, PhD Dr. Alain Biem is an AI executive, senior scientist, entrepreneur, and academic whose career spans enterprise artificial intelligence, machine learning research, and data-driven transformation across fortune 100 companies. He is the former Chief Data Science Officer at New York Life Insurance Company and former Chief AI Scientist and Head of AI at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Dr. Biem has also held senior data science and AI leadership roles at Wayfair and Opera Solutions, and previously served as a Senior AI Scientist and Project Lead at IBM Research in New York. In addition to his corporate leadership, he is a co-founder and board member of several startups in fintech and quantum computing, bringing deep expertise at the intersection of scientific innovation, enterprise AI, and emerging technologies. Dr. Biem is also a lecturer at Columbia University, where he teaches machine learning and data science. He holds a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, has authored more than 50 academic publications, and holds multiple patents in machine learning, quantitative modeling, and AI-driven systems. His work as an executive, scientist, inventor, and educator has positioned him as a respected voice in the advancement and industrialization of AI. ## Robert Bierman Lecturer, San Francisco State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-bierman/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Robert Bierman, CISSP Lecturer, San Francisco State University I am a computer scientist, engineering leader, cybersecurity professional, product executive, researcher, and educator with more than four decades of experience building software, leading technical organizations, protecting intellectual property and consumer accounts, and teaching the next generation of computing professionals. My career spans the evolution of modern computing—from IBM mainframes, CP/M, DOS, OS/2, and early personal computers to cross-platform application frameworks, commercial games, internet publishing, embedded Linux, cloud systems, and cybersecurity. At San Francisco State University, I teach Machine Structures, Operating Systems, Embedded Linux Systems and Physical Computing, and Web Development. My courses emphasize hands-on systems work, including computer architecture, C programming, processes, synchronization, memory management, file systems, device interaction, networking, and embedded computing. I previously taught at SFSU from 2006 to 2011 and returned full-time in 2019. I also have taught cybersecurity through UC Berkeley Extension, where I have led multiple six-month cybersecurity bootcamp cohorts covering the practical, technical, and operational skills required to defend modern systems. At Electronic Arts, I served as Senior Manager of Intellectual Property and Consumer Security, where I led cross-functional security initiatives, developed standards for intellectual-property handling and consumer gaming assets, investigated account theft and information leaks, and improved EA’s overall consumer and cybersecurity posture. Previously, as a Senior QA Manager, I oversaw testing across studios, platforms, and online services, managing more than 400 QA personnel and helping ship products including Dead Space, Godfather II, Spore, Littlest Pet Shop, and Sonic Chronicles. Earlier, I served as Vice President of Business Development at UserLand Software, managing sales, marketing, strategic partnerships, business operations, customer support, and e-commerce. I helped introduce an early software-subscription business model and developed VAR relationships and strategic alliances. As Vice President of Engineering and Executive Producer at Sanctuary Woods, I oversaw engineering, art, QA, production, budgeting, purchasing, and packaging, shipping 38 consumer products in 36 months with a staff of approximately 40 people. At Symantec, I founded and architected the Bedrock cross-platform development project, including its internationalization architecture. I also worked on MORE, ThinkTank, Ready!, and Q&A, developed advanced DOS memory-management technology, and designed and implemented what was among the world’s earliest commercial OS/2 applications. My published research includes work in lossless compression and analysis of scientific imagery, and my broader interests include operating systems, embedded systems, computer architecture, cybersecurity, software quality, accessibility, and technical education. Across every role, my focus has remained consistent: understand how systems work at a fundamental level, build dependable technology, develop strong teams, improve processes, and help others become better problem solvers. ## Saad Bin Shafiq Founder/CEO, Nodes Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/saad-bin-shafiq/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Saad Bin Shafiq, B.Sc. in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science, is the Founder and CEO of Nodes, an enterprise AI company building intelligence and action layers across workforce systems. He leads the development of secure, human-approved AI workflows that help large organizations improve hiring, talent mobility, retention, and workforce productivity. Under his leadership, Nodes works with banks, insruance companies, and other data sensitive companies. ## Steven Birgfeld VP, Information Technology and Services, Blue Diamond Growers Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steven-birgfeld/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Steve led the overall strategy, design and implementation of Blue Diamond Growers information technology services, working closely with the business to define solutions that provide value to our growers and our customers. Blue Diamond was a 2023 SAP Innovation Award winner given their Digital Supply Chain transformation. Steve has led strategic efforts of large scale innovations and digital transformations throughout his career. He brings a strong balance of business, technical, resource and financial management leadership. Steve was with Blue Diamond from March 2016 until his retirement in May 2026. Prior to that, Steve has held a variety of Information Technology leadership positions including VP of IT and Workplace Services for Unisys; Chief Information Officer for Hostess Brands and CompuCom; VP of Information Technology for Quaker State; and acting Chief Information Officer for Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2012, Steve was named one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders. Steve is currently doing advisory board roles with several companies. ## Belinda Biscoe Senior Associate Vice President for Outreach/College of Continuing Education, The University of Oklahoma Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/belinda-biscoe/ Industry: Government Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Brief Bio — Belinda Biscoe, Ph.D. Dr. Biscoe serves as Senior Associate Vice President for Outreach/College of Continuing Education at the University of Oklahoma (OU Outreach), where she oversees seventeen departments and approximately 1,400 professionals. She also leads E-TEAM (Educational Training, Evaluation, Assessment, and Measurement Department), OU Outreach’s internal research and evaluation unit, and currently serves as an independent evaluator for an NSF RII grant. Over her career as a researcher, practitioner, and competitive grant writer, she has secured over $500,000,000 in funding for the State of Oklahoma. She currently leads a three-year longitudinal case study on AI literacy and adoption at OU Outreach, tracking readiness across three annual cohorts. Her research frames AI adoption not as a technology rollout but as an adult-learning and organizational-change challenge and introduces a five-stage framework for guiding institutions through it. Her paper, “Leading Human-Centered AI Adoption in Higher Education,” draws on this work and on E-TEAM’s use of AI-assisted thematic analysis in its own evaluation practice. Her broader portfolio spans research and evaluation, adult and continuing education, organizational development, strategic planning, and systems change. She is a 2018 inductee of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame, where she now serves as Executive Director, and a 2015 inductee of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame for Higher Education, having also served as President of the Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society Board (2022–2024). She serves on the board of The Center for Theory of Change (New York City) and has presented at the United Nations. Dr. Biscoe is co-founder of Eagle Ridge Institute, a community-based drug and alcohol treatment and prevention agency, and founder of Positive Tomorrows, an elementary school for unhoused children and their families. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oklahoma. ## Reid Blackman CEO, Virtue Consultants Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/reid-blackman/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Reid Blackman, Ph.D. is the author of “The Ethical Nightmare Challenge” (April 2026) and “Ethical Machines” (2022, HBR Press), as well as host of the Ethical Machines podcast. He leads Virtue in developing and implementing The Ethical Nightmare Challenge with clients, having previously led the company’s efforts in designing Responsible AI programs and training for the likes of Amazon, Etsy, Kraft Heinz, Merck, US Bank, Nationwide, and more. He has also advised the Canadian government on their federal AI regulations, was a founding member of EY’s External AI Advisory Board, and was an external Senior Advisor to the Deloitte AI Institute. He is also a keynote speaker, having delivered presentations to dozens of professional associations and conferences, as well as to the FBI, NASA, and the World Economic Forum. His work has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the BBC, Forbes, and Fox News. His written work appears in The Harvard Business Review and The New York Times. Prior to founding Virtue, Reid was a professor of philosophy at Colgate University and UNC-Chapel Hill. ## Ashley Blackwell-Guerra Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashley-blackwell-guerra/ Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Rehgan Bleile Co-Founder & CEO, AlignAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rehgan-bleile/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable As the Co-Founder and CEO of AlignAI, Rehgan Bleile is a seasoned leader in artificial intelligence with more than a decade of experience helping enterprises design and operationalize AI and machine learning initiatives at scale. Rehgan has worked with highly regulated enterprises to bring structure and clarity to how AI initiatives are evaluated, refined, and approved, enabling teams to accelerate innovation while maintaining strong controls and compliance. As a recognized industry voice, Rehgan has keynoted and spoken at more than 50 conferences, appeared on leading AI and data podcasts, and continues to shape the conversation around enterprise AI goverance, operating models, and organizational readiness. Rehgan is also the Founder of Women in Analytics, an industry initiative created to elevate diverse voices in data, analytics, and AI. Over the past decade, she built and led an ecosystem that included the flagship DataConnect Conference, which has showcased more than 400 speakers and become a premier gathering for practitioners and leaders across the industry. ## Mark Bloom Global Chief Information Officer, Gallagher Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-bloom/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Insurance Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Mark H. Bloom Global Chief Information Officer Mark H. Bloom is Gallagher’s Global Chief Information Officer, responsible for shaping and executing the company’s global technology and security strategy. Since joining Gallagher in 2022, he has led the continued advancement of the company’s digital, data and AI capabilities, while driving progress across M&A technology integration, cloud modernization, global operations and cybersecurity. With more than 35 years of business and technology leadership experience, Mr. Bloom brings a broad perspective on enterprise transformation, operational resilience and innovation at scale. In 2024, he was honored with the Chicago CIO Global ORBIE Award, recognizing his excellence in technology leadership for organizations with just under $10B in annual revenue and multi-national operations. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Freddie Mac. Before joining Gallagher, Mr. Bloom served as Global Chief Technology Officer and a member of the Management Board of Aegon N.V. Earlier in his career, he held several senior technology leadership roles, including Managing Director, Head of Global Consumer Technology Delivery Services at Citigroup, Inc.; Senior Vice President, Chase Home Financial Technology at JP Morgan Chase & Company; and Senior Vice President, eBusiness Solutions at CACI International. Mr. Bloom holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Bucknell University, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, and an MBA in International Business from the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. ## Alan Blount Product Manager, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alan-blount/ State: Colorado Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Murali Boddu VP, Deutsche Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/murali-boddu/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Jacob Bogage White House Correspondent, Reuters Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jacob-bogage/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Jacob Bogage is a White House correspondent for Reuters, where he covers economic policy, domestic affairs, and politics. He is also a co-author of Reuters' weekly U.S. politics newsletter, helping readers understand the forces shaping Washington and the country. At Reuters, Bogage covers the intersection of politics, policy, technology, and governance from the White House, with a particular focus on how emerging technologies—including artificial intelligence—are reshaping government, the economy, and public life. His work examines not only what policymakers are doing, but how institutions adapt to rapid technological change. Before joining Reuters, Bogage spent more than a decade at The Washington Post, where he reported on Congress, federal agencies, tax policy, the U.S. Postal Service, and the federal government's response to major national challenges. He was part of the Post team awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of President Donald Trump's DOGE-driven transformation of the federal government. His reporting has helped spur new legislation, congressional inquiries, agency reviews, and policy debates on issues ranging from tax administration to public accountability. A Maryland native, Bogage lives in the Washington area with his wife and their dog, Cash. ## Corbin Bolies AI Reporter, Variety Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/corbin-bolies/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Corbin Bolies is a reporter at Variety covering the intersection of AI and entertainment, including its impact on film, television, music and media. A University of Florida alum, he was previously a media reporter at TheWrap, where he covered the business of journalism and its intersection with politics and tech. He has covered media for The Daily Beast, and his work has also been published in the Associated Press and the Miami Herald. He’s also an avid lover of pop music. ## Michelle Bonat Chief Technology, Product and AI Officer, Golden Pear Funding Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michelle-bonat/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Michelle Bonat is the Chief Technology, Product and AI Officer at Golden Pear Funding. An experienced enterprise CTO and globally recognized AI expert, Michelle brings deep experience across artificial intelligence, enterprise software, financial services, and product development. Her career has focused on making AI-led technology operational, trusted, and impactful in industries where real risk, money, and people are involved. Previously she led AI at Golden Pear Funding, where she developed the company’s proprietary machine-learning models for AI underwriting and portfolio risk analysis, as well as its AI governance playbook to ensure responsible and scalable deployment of artificial intelligence across the platform. Before that, Bonat served as a CTO and then as Chief AI Officer at AI Squared, a venture-backed AI infrastructure company focused on operationalizing AI within enterprise environments. She helped scale the company’s technology and product capabilities into an enterprise platform used by Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Department of Defense. Earlier in her career, Bonat held AI leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase, including Head of AI Innovation and later an AI CTO at JPMC, where she helped build and scale AI across 100 Chase products serving more than 1.5 billion monthly logins. She is also lead inventor on patents for machine-learning systems that analyze privacy policies and track how consumer data is shared across third-party organizations. Bonat also held senior engineering and product leadership roles at Oracle, where she led global engineering and product for financial web applications deployed across more than 30 countries and 25 languages. She previously founded a fintech company that mined public company filings to generate ESG investment signals, achieving nearly full automation of the analysis pipeline, as well as lead on product for three companies that were acquired including public company Ariba. Still an AI builder at heart, Michelle is a globally recognized AI expert named to the AI 150, a frequent keynote speaker and has been cited in Fortune, Barron’s, Bankrate, and American Banker. She holds a degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, where she now serves on the AI advisory board. ## Jason Bonvie Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, CrewAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-bonvie/ State: Florida Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Kathleen Booth VP Marketing, Sequel.io Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kathleen-booth/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Kathleen Booth is a B2B marketing executive, community builder, and writer focused on the intersection of AI, brand, and revenue growth. As VP of Marketing at Sequel.io, she leads an AI-first, brand-forward approach to building pipeline and trust in a rapidly changing GTM landscape. Previously, she served as SVP of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion, supporting a global community of 10,000+ GTM leaders. Kathleen writes the weekly “Code Meets Creed” Substack and speaks about modern marketing leadership, ethical AI adoption, and the future of intelligent, human-centered growth. ## Billy Boozer CTO, Dualboot Partners Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/billy-boozer/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Billy Boozer is a product-driven technology executive with a passion for building scalable platforms. Until recently, he served as the Chief Technology Officer at Secure Bancard, leading the strategic development and innovation of their financial technology platforms. His domain expertise includes fintech, social media, energy, infrastructure, DevOps, e-commerce, CPG Brands, franchise brands, human resource information systems, applicant tracking systems, scaling software, digital transformation, and modernization. Billy sits at the intersection between business and product development. He takes pride in developing innovative and strategic technology solutions to address critical business problems. In addition, his leadership philosophy blends speed, clarity, and curiosity, and he builds teams that can execute with both precision and creativity. ## Mark Borden Founder, Egospeed Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-borden/ Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Mark Borden has spent the last five years embedded in tech-driven healthcare, writing about everything from an AI-powered IVF lab to the first Ketamine clinic in NYC. He is currently editorial director at Conceivable Life Sciences, where he leads content strategy for a biotech startup reimagining fertility care with physical AI and robotics. Borden was previously editorial director at Droga5 before joining The New York Times as Creative-At-Large, where his work bridged the newsroom and business side. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Fast Company, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune. As a Senior Editor at Fast Company, he conceived the "100 Most Creative People in Business" franchise, and his coverage of early internet influencers (The Influence Project) earned a National Magazine Award nomination. He is also founder of Egospeed, a communications and creative strategy studio named for the instant a bullet breaks the sound barrier — the moment when intention and momentum align, ideas meet execution, and brands move from rut to groove. ## Anik Bose Managing Partner, Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anik-bose/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Anik Bose is a strategist turned operator and venture capitalist who works closely with founders to bring their vision to life. As a cofounder and Managing Partner at BGV, he helps founders grow AI companies through strategic planning, partnerships, and operational discipline. Previously, he led corporate development at 3Com, overseeing M&A, strategic alliances, and a $250M venture fund. Anik also founded EAIGG – www.eaigg.org, a nonprofit with over 5,000 members dedicated to democratizing AI innovation and deployment. His 20 years of venture capital and corporate development experience include seven years as SVP of Corporate Development at 3Com. ## Prashant Kumar Bothra Principal, Woven Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashant-kumar-bothra/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator ## Alex Bovee CEO and Co-Founder, C1 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alex-bovee/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Alex Bovee is the co-founder and CEO of C1 (formerly ConductorOne), the AI-native identity platform. Before co-founding C1, Alex was a product leader at Okta, where he led the company’s authentication, security, and privileged access management product lines, as well as Okta’s overarching Zero Trust product strategy. He also held senior product roles at Lookout, overseeing enterprise device security products. Alex holds an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University. ## Sawyer Bowerman AI Developer Advocate, Red Hat Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sawyer-bowerman/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sawyer Bowerman is an AI Engineer and Developer Advocate on Red Hat’s AI team based in Boston, MA. He specializes in high-performance model serving and inference, focusing on scaling open-source ecosystems like vLLM and llm-d to make large language models more efficient and accessible for developers. He is dedicated to bridging the gap between raw model performance and real-world developer productivity through open-source innovation. ## Laura Boykin Okalebo Life Sciences Solutions Partner, Nebius Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/laura-boykin-okalebo/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes ​Dr. Laura Boykin Okalebo is a computational biologist and technology entrepreneur with over 27 years of experience in genomics and high-performance computing. She joined Nebius as Life Sciences Solutions Partner in April 2026. A Senior TED Fellow and WIRED25 honoree, Laura is known for pioneering portable DNA sequencing in Sub-Saharan Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. ## Chris Bradley Chief AI Officer, Veritiv Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-bradley/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Chris Bradley is Chief AI Officer at Veritiv, where he leads enterprise AI transformation initiatives focused on agentic AI, commercial innovation, and large-scale operational automation. A recognized innovation executive, entrepreneur, and inventor with more than 40 patents, Chris has spent over two decades helping global brands accelerate growth through design, technology, and systems thinking. At Veritiv, Chris founded the AI Transformation Lab, an enterprise “agent factory” focused on deploying AI agents that augment human performance across sales, customer service, operations, and supply chain workflows. His work centers on practical enterprise adoption of AI, including computer-use models, human-agent collaboration, and scalable AI operating systems that integrate into legacy enterprise environments. Under his leadership, Veritiv has rapidly expanded its AI capabilities with a focus on measurable business impact, organizational adoption, and productivity amplification. Chris is also the founder of the Sustainable Design Lab, a Silicon Valley-inspired innovation platform advancing sustainable packaging technologies, lifecycle analysis, and emerging material systems. He hosts both the Sustainable Design Lab Podcast and the AI Transformation Lab Podcast, where he explores the intersection of AI, innovation, sustainability, and enterprise transformation. Known for bridging visionary thinking with operational execution, Chris speaks frequently on agentic AI, enterprise transformation, human amplification, and the future of intelligent work. ## Kiran Brahmandam Managing Director, Gaming Analytics, Aristocrat Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kiran-brahmandam/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Kiran Brahmandam is the founder of Gaming Analytics and Managing Director, Gaming Analytics. An 18-year gaming industry veteran, Kiran built his career around one central idea: casino operators should be able to use data faster, more clearly, and more profitably. Before founding Gaming Analytics in 2017, Kiran spent 12 years at Bally Technologies, later Scientific Games, where he led innovation and systems R&D for brick-and-mortar casino operations. Products he helped develop generated more than $1 billion in revenue. Kiran founded Gaming Analytics after seeing a persistent gap in the casino industry. Operators had enormous amounts of data, but much of it was buried inside systems, reports, spreadsheets, and manual processes. The information existed. Access was the problem. That insight became the foundation for Gaming Analytics: A.I.-powered tools for real-time player analytics, slot optimization, marketing automation, player development, and operational reporting. From the beginning, Kiran believed casino teams needed more than advanced models. They needed practical tools that made daily work easier. GA’s product philosophy grew from that lesson. Before operators can use A.I. for higher-value strategy, they need reliable reporting, faster analysis, and a clearer view of the business. Under Kiran’s leadership, Gaming Analytics grew from a small technical team into the casino industry’s leading A.I. platform. Kiran’s leadership style shaped the company’s culture: technical, direct, practical, and close to the customer. Engineers met operators. Product decisions were informed by real casino workflows. Customer stories became the company’s strongest proof. In 2026, Gaming Analytics was acquired by Aristocrat. Kiran now leads Gaming Analytics within Aristocrat, continuing the mission that started the company: to help casinos use data, A.I., and real-time intelligence to optimize the floor, engage players more effectively, and maximize profitability. ## Blake Brannon Co-Founder, Chief Innovation Officer, OneTrust Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/blake-brannon/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Blake Brannon is Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at OneTrust, where he drives the company's innovation strategy at the intersection of data, AI, and governance. He focuses on shaping the next generation of AI-native capabilities, advancing responsible data use, and helping organizations operationalize trust in an era of rapid technological change. Brannon co-founded OneTrust and has held several senior leadership roles across the company's growth, including its first Chief Technology Officer and later Chief Product and Strategy Officer, overseeing all aspects of product roadmap, technology partnerships, and sales engineering. Under his leadership, OneTrust was awarded more than 300 patents and has grown into a global leader in privacy, security, and AI governance software, serving over 14,000 customers worldwide. Prior to OneTrust, Brannon was one of the first employees at AirWatch and served as Vice President of Product Marketing and Global Head of Sales Engineering. In 2014, VMware acquired AirWatch for $1.54 billion. During his time with VMware, Brannon helped integrate AirWatch into the broader Digital Workspace solution and the VMware end-user computing division, which became the largest business unit outside of VMware's core virtualization business. Brannon earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, where he worked as a research engineer. He served on the board of Georgia Tech's School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and is a Georgia Tech 40 Under 40 honoree. ## Ericson Brickers Executive Director, The Brickers Foundation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ericson-brickers/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Government Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ericson E. Brickers is an accomplished business and technology leader with over two decades of experience in management. He is a skilled program manager, process improvement specialist, and agile methodology expert. He has extensive enterprise architecture experience, data integrity assessment, and risk and scope analysis. Keen on self-improvement and development, Ericson holds a Master of Science in Management of Information Technology from the University of Virginia, a Master of Business Administration in Finance from Strayer University, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Old Dominion University. He also holds ITIL Foundations and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certifications. Ericson is a sought-after program management expert in the Intelligence community, providing best-practice insight to Scrum, and leading multiple programs that deliver workforce analysis, human capital research, and application requirements that impact strategic decisions. In addition to his professional work, Ericson founded and leads The Brickers Foundation, a non-profit organization that delivers grant resources to partner charity organizations focused on community advancement. Ericson has held senior positions at BAE Systems, Deloitte Consulting, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Navy Federal Credit Union, and Tata Consultancy Services in different capacities, where he provided direct oversight of program transformation strategy, executed change plans to improve customer resource efficiencies, security posture, and accelerate mission solutions. In his free time, Ericson loves to travel and see historical sites. He is passionate about the arts, including plays, concerts, and theater. He also enjoys watching movies, running and exercising, and watching and attending sporting events, including tennis, basketball, and football. ## Kalvin Brite Chief Product Officer, Siteimprove Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kalvin-brite/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kalvin Brite, Chief Product Officer of Siteimprove, is a dynamic product leader focused on driving company growth and revenue by creating products that customers love and value. His expertise spans every stage of the product lifecycle. In his role Kalvin oversees all aspects of product development and management. Kalvin brings extensive product leadership experience, from prior roles at Contentful, Twilio, and SendGrid. He enjoys building high-performing teams and developing actionable product strategies from discovery to launch. He holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Denver and product leadership certifications from CPO Accelerator and Silicon Valley Product Group. ## Alan Brown Senior Research Scientist, Boeing Research and Technology Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alan-brown/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Paul Browning Executive Chairman, Argon Power Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-browning/ Track: Energy Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Paul F Browning, PhD is Executive Chairman at Argon Power Group and serves on the Board of Directors of Chromalloy and LIfe Cycle Power. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Delaware, where he works with students on the future of energy systems and infrastructure. With more than 38 years of leadership in the power generation industry, he previously served as CEO of GE Vernova Gas Power, CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, and CEO of Irving Oil. Earlier in his career he held senior leadership roles at Solar Turbines (Caterpillar). Browning holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He lives in La Jolla, California with his wife Janel, where he enjoys golf, surfing, and exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and the energy transition. ## Tim Bucher CEO, Agtonomy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-bucher/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Tim Bucher serves as the CEO and Co-Founder of Agtonomy. He is a serial entrepreneur who has created several successful companies in high-tech and other industries over the last 3+ decades, taking one of them public and selling six others to tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Seagate. After acquisitions, he has always served in executive roles in those acquiring companies as an “intrapreneur” creating new innovations such as the original Xbox gaming platform and the original iPad which grew new markets and expanded revenue streams for those companies. Bucher has served in executive roles directly for Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell learning many skills from some of the best entrepreneurs in history. Throughout his career, Bucher has also stayed dedicated to his passion for ag which compelled him to start his own farming operation, Trattore Farms, at a very young age. Trattore Farms is located in Northern California and employs some of the most sophisticated AgTech technology which Bucher has personally developed over the decades. With over 50 issued patents, his expertise lies in AgTech, consumer products, EV vehicles, digital audio and video, AR/VR, gaming, cloud services, and IoT ecosystems with special focus on product strategy, user experience, design, and engineering. Bucher earned his Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California at Davis and also received his Masters degree in Computer Architecture from Stanford University. ## Goutham Budati VP, Data Strategy and Insights, The Farmer's Dog Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/goutham-budati/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Other Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Goutham Budati is the Vice President of Data Strategy and Insights at The Farmer's Dog, where he leads Consumer Research, Voice of the Customer, Data Science, Analytics, and Data Engineering teams. He specializes in building zero-to-one data teams, turning around data teams that don't scale with business after a strong start, and positioning them for scale - having done so three times across companies ranging from startups to Fortune 10 enterprises. At The Farmer's Dog, Goutham scaled the data organization, positioning it for enterprise-grade operations and sustainable growth. Previously, he led Data Products and Experimentation at Amazon, where he scaled experimentation frameworks across the advertising org. His turnaround work at Zocdoc and Oxford Road demonstrates his ability to transform data teams from technical support into strategic partners. Beyond his executive role, Goutham serves on the advisory council for University of Maryland's MS in Marketing Analytics and invests in data infrastructure startups. He is passionate about bridging the gap between data capabilities and business impact. ## Scott Bulloch Senior Manager, Product Management - AI, Flexera Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-bulloch/ Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Illinois Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Scott Bulloch is a Product Manager at Flexera, where he leads AI Cost Management — a consumption intelligence platform that helps enterprises track, attribute, and optimize AI tool spend across their technology estate. He brings deep expertise in software asset management, FinOps, and cloud spend optimization, with a passion for automating product management with AI. ## Ravi Bulusu CTO, IFS Loops, IFS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ravi-bulusu/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Systems Engineering/Network Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ravi Bulusu is CTO of IFS Loops, the agentic AI division of IFS. He began his career as a network analysis engineer in telecom before relocating to Silicon Valley in the early 2000s to study machine learning at Stanford, a pivot that put him at the leading edge of AI before it became a mainstream enterprise conversation. Since then, Ravi has co-founded and led a series of AI-centric technology companies, most recently TheLoops, which was acquired by IFS in 2025. That background gives him something rare: a technical foundation built on years of production ML work, combined with the experience of actually shipping and scaling agentic systems inside real businesses. At IFS Loops, Ravi oversees the development of an enterprise-grade agentic AI platform deployed across manufacturing, energy, and field service operations globally. His current technical focus is on the architecture decisions that separate agents that run in production from those that don't: orchestration design, agentic memory layers, guardrail frameworks, and the process changes that determine whether an agent delivers value or sits unused. He is a direct contributor to the view that agentic AI is not an extension of traditional automation, but a fundamentally different category that requires a different engineering and governance approach. ## Benjamin Burchfiel Placeholder, Placeholder Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/benjamin-burchfiel/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Mike Burgio Sr. Manager, Solution Architecture, OutSystems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mike-burgio/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Mike Burgio is an accomplished pre-sales leader with over 20 years of technical experience across various areas, including core systems, managed services, and software sales. Mike is currently a Sr. Manager, Solutions Architecture at OutSystems. In his role, Mike’s team is responsible for aligning business goals with technical capabilities to ensure long term value for clients. Supporting enterprise, commercial, and public sector sales teams, Mike has a proven track record of leading global, cross functional teams, to deliver solutions aligned to business challenges and initiatives. ## Greg Burns Realtor Salesperson, Hawai'i Life Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greg-burns/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Operations Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter ## Marshall Bush Founder, Baleen Research Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marshall-bush/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator ## John Buyers Partner, CMS LLP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-buyers/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Legal Job Function: Legal Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist John C. Buyers is a UK technology and commercial Partner practising at international law firm CMS LLP. He has over thirty years’ experience of large-scale domestic and international technology and outsourcing transactions. For the last decade he has practised almost exclusively in the Artificial Intelligence space. He is based in London and is a member of CMS' International AI and machine learning client team. John trained many years ago as a transactional outsourcing lawyer. He has seen the industry evolve from people intensive on-premise services to a world which is driven by cloud, digitalisation and artificial intelligence. His practice involves advising businesses on the regulatory impact of AI systems, licensing and procuring technology, including AI and Machine Learning and generally assisting enterprise move into the digital space. He is a widely acknowledged expert on AI law, governance and ethics and frequently writes, speaks and podcasts on the topic. He was recently interviewed on ABC TV's flagship current affairs program Nightline on the dangers of AI and has just completed the fourth edition of his book on AI and the law which is due to be published in September. He co-edits a global comparative guide on AI published by Global Legal Media (now in its third edition) and is the author of PLC's AI contracting due diligence practice note. Amongst his clients he is lucky to act for some of the world's biggest AI and technology businesses as well as a variety of innovative AI led startups. He is a frequent visitor to Silicon Valley and sits as an expert advisor on the UK parliamentary APPG (all party parliamentary group) on AI (a forum for UK parliamentarians), the influential CEPS (Centre for European Studies) EU task force, and the University of Durham's Bias in AI research group, EquiAI. John is ranked as a global market leader for Artificial Intelligence in Chambers and Partners guide to the legal profession and is privileged to be a member of the Legal 500's Hall of Fame for AI. ## Marc Cagulangan Technical Director, CSX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marc-cagulangan/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: Regulatory & Compliance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Marc Cagulangan is a Technical Director specializing in AI Governance and IT CyberSecurity Risk Management at CSX, where he leads enterprise initiatives focused on governance, risk, compliance (GRC), and technology security strategy. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Marc is a seasoned technology and risk leader with extensive experience driving secure, scalable solutions across complex enterprise environments. With a career spanning over two decades, Marc has built deep expertise across IT security, internal audit, risk consulting, and software quality engineering, enabling him to bridge the gap between technology delivery and regulatory compliance. His leadership focuses on embedding governance into modern technology stacks, ensuring organizations can innovate while maintaining strong control frameworks. Marc’s professional background includes progressive roles across major financial and technology organizations, including JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity National Financial, FIS Global, Citi, and CSX where he developed a strong foundation in risk management, audit, and enterprise systems. At CSX, Marc plays a key role in advancing technology risk management, cybersecurity oversight, and compliance programs within a highly regulated environment. He is known for his ability to operationalize governance at scale—integrating controls across platforms, enabling audit readiness, and supporting executive decision-making with actionable risk insights. Marc holds a Computer Science degree from the University of North Florida, providing a strong technical foundation that complements his leadership in risk and governance. ## Michael Caiola Senior AI Research Scientist, Credence Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michael-caiola/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Michael Caiola, Ph.D., is a Senior Biomedical AI Engineer at Credence, where he helps set research direction across the firm's portfolio of health research programs. His work sits at the intersection of machine learning, neuroscience, and regulatory science, with a career-long focus on movement disorders and on building AI that clinicians can trust. Dr. Caiola earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he modeled the circuit dynamics of Parkinson's disease, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in experimental neuroscience at the Emory National Primate Research Center. At the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, he developed interpretable ML methods to detect traumatic brain injury and stroke from EEG and served as software lead and FDA co-lead for WearGait-PD, a multi-site wearable-sensor study of Parkinson's gait. He has also served as an AI subject-matter expert in the national security sector, establishing rigorous methodologies for AI test and evaluation. His current projects include interpretable, sensor-based gait analysis and multimodal data fusion for health applications. ## Caio Camargo Host, [varejocast] Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/caio-camargo/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Caio Camargo is a retail specialist, international keynote speaker and bestseller author. Caio is one of the most influential and provocative voices in Brazilian retail, with more than 27 years dedicated to innovation, technology, and business transformation. Recognized as an experienced keynote speaker and moderator, he has taken part in major international events such as Web Summit (Lisbon and Rio) – 9x panelist, the Retail Executive Summit (USA) – 3x speaker, and Retail Expo (London) – 3x speaker, as well as leading national conferences including Apas, Feicon, RD Summit, Latam Retail Show, FBV, Expo Ótica, Eletrolar, Zero, Fipan, Expo Disney, and Brazil Promotion. His unique ability to translate complex trends into practical actions has also made Caio a go to reference for corporate conventions, working with major brands such as O Boticário, Cacau Show, Água de Cheiro, Natura, Bibi Calçados, Carmen Steffens, GPA, Grupo SMZTO, and Marisol, as well as respected institutions like Sebrae and Senac, through numerous events across Brazil. As host of [varejocast], one of the most listened to business podcasts on Spotify and Apple, Caio brings weekly market insights, exclusive interviews, and debates that directly influence thousands of retail professionals. He is the author of the best seller “Arroz, Feijão & Varejo” and a columnist for leading industry platforms, widely recognized for his clear, objective language and strong connection to the sector’s day to day realities. His solid professional track record also includes strategic roles at companies such as C&C Casa e Construção, Dicico (now Sodimac), Virtual Gate, Gouvêa Ecosystem, and Linx, where he played a key role in accelerating business growth, building strong brands, and introducing new practices in Brazilian retail. Today, Caio also serves as a volunteer advisor to the São Paulo Commercial Association (ACSP) and as a Business Advisor, helping B2B companies position themselves strategically within the retail ecosystem. His work has been recognized with important awards, including the “Media Highlight” award from the RDI (Retail Design Institute) and recognition from IBEVAR-FIA. ## Darren Cambridge Managing Director, Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law and Society, University of Maryland Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/darren-cambridge/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Darren Cambridge, Ph.D., is Managing Director of TRAILS (Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society), a $20M NSF/NIST-funded national institute spanning the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Morgan State University, and Cornell University, where he translates multidisciplinary trustworthy AI research into practice for policymakers, institutions, and the public. His career has centered on building networks and evidence around how people actually learn with technology, including through founding oa conversational AI edtech company, and directing of content strategy at the American Council on Education, policy research at the National Council of Teachers of English, and national projects for the American Council in Education and Intel as a principal consultant at the American Institutes for Research. Winner of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Prize, he has researched learning science and built coalitions that moved research into national policy and practice. That throughline, connecting rigorous research to the people and institutions who must act on it, now shapes how he cultivates trustworthy AI at scale. ## Oliver Cameron CEO, Odyssey Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/oliver-cameron/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Oliver is the co-founder and CEO of Odyssey. Odyssey is an AI lab pioneering general-purpose world models: causal, multimodal systems that learn to predict and interact with the world over long horizons. This foundational technology promises to revolutionize robotics, science, healthcare, education, gaming, defense, and beyond. Odyssey was founded in late 2023 by Oliver Cameron (Cruise VP, Voyage CEO, Y Combinator alum) and Jeff Hawke (Wayve VP, Oxford AI PhD), with deep roots in experts in world models, autonomous systems, RL, and frontier AI. They’ve since recruited a world-class research team from DeepMind, Tesla, Waymo, Meta, Apple, and Wayve. Odyssey has raised significant venture capital from GV and EQT, with additional backing from NVIDIA, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Guillermo Rauch, Garry Tan, Kyle Vogt, and researchers at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Midjourney. Prior to Odyssey, Oliver spent 8 years building and scaling fully driverless cars. Oliver served as VP of Product at Cruise—a leader in self-driving cars—after the acquisition of his own autonomous driving startup, Voyage. At Cruise, Oliver focused on AI, products, tooling, and services to scale the fleet, AV driving behaviors, next-generation vehicles, and more. He led the launch of the world’s first fully driverless service in San Francisco, and scaled it to 3 major US cities, generating substantial revenue and over 100,000 5-star ratings from customers. Before being acquired by Cruise, Oliver was co-founder and CEO of Voyage, a 70-person startup that developed and deployed state-of-the-art self-driving cars. In March 2021, Cruise acquired Voyage to supercharge their technology efforts. Prior to Voyage, Oliver was the VP of Product & Engineering at the online education startup Udacity. Oliver worked closely with AI pioneer Sebastian Thrun to deliver world-class online education to millions of people. At Udacity, Oliver led a 200-strong research, product, engineering, and content team, launching and growing online classes in AI, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and more. ## Collin Campbell Business Information Officer / Chief Information Officer - Recurring Revenue, Cushman & Wakefield Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/collin-campbell/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Collin Campbell is CIO for Services (Recurring Revenue) at Cushman & Wakefield, responsible for technology, data, and digital transformation across the firm’s global Services businesses. His remit spans contract-based service lines where scale, retention, and operational excellence directly underpin revenue growth and long-term client value. Collin’s focus is on using data, AI, and digital platforms to support and accelerate revenue—improving client outcomes, enabling cross-sell, increasing contract profitability, and strengthening renewal performance. He partners closely with Service Line leaders to modernize core platforms, activate enterprise data, and embed AI into day-to-day workflows that drive faster decisions, higher productivity, and more consistent global delivery. A strong advocate for pragmatic innovation, Collin prioritizes initiatives that can be adopted at scale, deliver measurable business impact in the near term, and reinforce Cushman & Wakefield’s broader transformation into a digitally enabled, data-driven enterprise—while keeping technology tightly aligned to commercial results. ## Nate Campbell VP, Customer Success Americas, WalkMe Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nate-campbell/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Nate is the VP of Customer Success at WalkMe, where he’s been championing digital adoption since 2016. From his early days as a Strategic CSM to now leading the North America CS team, Nate has been at the heart of WalkMe’s customer-first mission. With nearly a decade of experience helping enterprises drive meaningful change, he’s passionate about turning complex challenges into fun, high-impact solutions. ## John Capriotti VP, AI-First Business Design, EPAM Systems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-capriotti/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Pennsylvania Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter John A. Capriotti leads AI-First Business Transformation for EPAM's Business Information Systems and Financial Services and divisions, architecting transformation programs that deliver measurable business outcomes. With 25 years of experience in digital transformation and cognitive science, he specializes in helping organizations identify where AI creates unique strategic value—and where it doesn't—to drive meaningful business impact. Capriotti orchestrates multidisciplinary teams across Service Design, Business Process, Data/AI, and Architecture to create integrated solutions rather than isolated technical implementations. His "Practical AI" philosophy is grounded in the discipline of knowing when AI adds strategic value versus when deterministic solutions suffice, and designing for organizational adoption from day one. Capriotti believes sustainable business value emerges at the intersection of employee experience, business process optimization, and service design—where AI augments human capability and enables outcomes previously unattainable. His work helps executives move from AI experimentation to purposeful transformation, focusing on the business problems worth solving and the unique value AI brings to solving them. Outside of AI Business Transformation, Capriotti trains high-drive working dogs—Belgian Malinois, Cane Corsos, and German Shepherds. Effective training is never compulsory; it's about understanding what motivates each dog and aligning the training approach to their natural drives. This principle directly informs how he helps clients drive AI adoption—understanding what motivates employees and users, then aligning transformation approaches to work with those motivations rather than against them. ## David Cardozo Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-cardozo/ Track: Google Cloud Programming Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Brian Carlson NorAm Chief Tech, Data, Digital & Innovation Officer, Sodexo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-carlson/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Retail Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Brian Carlson is the senior technology leader at Sodexo North America, based in the New York City Metropolitan Area, with a career focused on delivering tangible business results, enterprise-scale transformation, and sustainable growth across enterprise technology and digital platforms. Brian leads large‑scale technology, data, digital, and innovation initiatives within Sodexo North America. Brian emphasizes business outcomes, operational excellence, and long‑term value creation rather than technology for its own sake. He pairs strategic vision with execution discipline and stakeholder alignment. Brian is experienced working across multiple geographies, including Asia, Europe, South America and North America in complex enterprise environments. ## Gretchen Carlson Co-Founder, Lift Our Voices Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gretchen-carlson/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Gretchen Carlson, acclaimed journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit LIft Our Voices, is a fierce, fearless, and internationally recognized advocate for women’s rights, whose bold actions against Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes helped pave the way for the global #MeToo movement. A former CBS News and Fox News journalist, author, TED talk alum, and champion for workplace equality, Carlson was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”. As the co-founder of LOV, she which works to end silencing mechanisms in the workplace that keep toxic issues secret. She's also a frequent contributor to CNN an MSNow, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers “Be Fierce” and “Getting Real.” Carlson’s story of harassment and retaliation at Fox News garnered international attention, including the Showtime mini-series “The Loudest Voice” and the movie “Bombshell.” Working with a bi-partisan coalition of legislators in Congress, her signature advocacy achievements include the passage of the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act” (2022) and the Speak Out Act (2022); two of the biggest labor law changes in the last 100 years eradicating arbitration and pre-dispute non-disclosure agreements for workplace sexual misconduct. More recently, her work has been instrumental in passing the bipartisan “Protecting Older Americans Act” eliminating forced arbitration for age discrimination in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Carlson has been honored by numerous organizations, including the New York Women in Communications’ Matrix Award; the Radio Television Digital News Association’s First Amendment Leadership Award; the National Organization for Women’s Women of Power and Influence Award; the YWCA Phenomenal Champion of Change; and the Arizona Foundation for Women’s Sandra Day O’Connor Lifetime Achievement Award. Carlson serves on the Advisory Board for the Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and the Center for Ethical Leadership in Media Advisory Board at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a member of the philanthropic organization Women Moving Millions. An honors Stanford University graduate who also studied at Oxford University, Carlson was a violin prodigy who performed with the Minnesota Orchestra as a soloist at 13 and was one of her high school's valedictorians. In 1989 she became the first classical violinist to win Miss America. Carlson is married to sports executive Casey Close. The couple has two children. ## Ed Cartagena Senior Director, Product Management, Menlo Security Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ed-cartagena/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Ed Cartagena is Senior Director of Product Management at Menlo Security, where he leads product for the company's AI-enabled secure enterprise browser portfolio. Ed brings more than a decade of product leadership across cybersecurity, identity and access management (IAM), zero trust and OT. He leverages AI and ML to build smarter products while designing defenses against AI-powered threats. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ed is always on the hunt for the next great Brazilian steakhouse. ## Eric Carter Product Marketing Director, Sysdig, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-carter/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Eric Carter is the Director of Product Marketing at Sysdig, where he leads go-to-market strategy for agentic cloud security. His work focuses on helping enterprises adopt AI systems that can reason, prioritize, and act — enabling security teams to reduce risk faster and operate at cloud speed. Throughout his career, Eric has spearheaded marketing efforts across security, monitoring, storage, and data protection, driving growth for enterprise technology solutions. He is passionate about working with Sysdig's alliance partners to bring modern, AI-driven cloud security capabilities to customers worldwide. ## Ben Cartwright CEO, Cirkadis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-cartwright/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Benjamin Cartwright, CEO Cirkadis I have been in the IT hardware lifecycle industry for about 10 years. I am passionate about this industry because it has become a very important topic impacting people and businesses around the globe. Innovations in this field are helping companies better strategize around their entire IT estate, impacting CAPEX, overall financial efficiency, and even the personal employee experience. Aa a true lifecycle partner, Cirkadis can assist lenders with residual value commitments and unique de-risking solutions. Significantly, the growing amount of IT hardware in use means that end-of-life systems are starting to impact our environment on a global scale. New innovations in lifecycle management are important if we want to continue to take advantage of new technology while also showing respect for our environment. I love all things outdoors and have enjoyed exploring and appreciating nature all over the world. I lived in Asia for many years and have a great deal of respect for the awesome majesty of our world. My favorite experiences involve rivers, mountains, horses, oceans, and lakes. I've spent most of my career in various industries that exist to protect the environment. From the business persepctive, these solutions also have to make economic sense. Combining those two goals is what drives innovation, competition, and advancement. I enjoy coming up with the creative solutions that help Cirkadis lead the way forward. ## David Casem CEO & Cofounder, Telnyx Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-casem/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Telecom Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist David Casem is CEO and Co-Founder of Telnyx, where he leads the company’s vision to modernize global communications infrastructure. Under his leadership, Telnyx has evolved from an early-stage startup into a globally licensed carrier operating its own private IP network and delivering voice, messaging, wireless, and AI capabilities on a unified platform. ## Matt Cashatt CEO, Polyrific Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-cashatt/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Matt Cashatt is the Founder and CEO of Polyrific, an enterprise AI company he has built and led for twelve years, delivering software inside organizations where data sensitivity and accountability leave little room for error. Matt saw early what agentic AI would do to the enterprise. By 2023 he recognized two forces arriving at once: an explosion of autonomous agents reaching into sensitive corporate data with little governance, and a new reality in which business teams could build their own problem-solving applications without waiting on engineering. Most companies treated the first as a risk to avoid and the second as a threat. Polyrific leaned into both. That conviction had already taken shape in Inferr.ing, Polyrific's inference applications that changed how enterprises put AI to work and now fold into a larger platform. In 2025 the company completed its transition from consultancy to product with the launch of Catalyst: Catalyst Runtime, an AI agent governance platform that deploys models safely on a customer's own infrastructure, and Catalyst Studio, a self-service engine that lets teams build applications connected safely to corporate data. Together they encode more than a decade of hard-won experience into a single suite, and Polyrific is building to define an entirely new category around it, the Enterprise Solutions Engine. The bet is working. Catalyst is now in production inside enterprises that cannot afford to get AI wrong, with adoption accelerating as agentic AI moves from experiment to infrastructure. Matt's perspective comes from doing the unglamorous work others skip: governance, observability, and accountability to the people these systems ultimately serve. At AI4, Matt brings the view from the trenches on what it actually takes to move enterprise AI from promising pilot to dependable infrastructure. Matt lives and works in upstate New York, where he is also a part-time farmer, an avid homebrewer, and a father of three. ## Ashley Casovan Managing Director, IAPP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashley-casovan/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator As the managing director of the IAPP’s AI Governance Center, Casovan serves as the primary thought leader and public voice for the IAPP on AI governance, while providing strategic direction and contributions to the development of practical, relevant and timely content for the AIGC. Casovan will lead the AIGC engagement efforts with industry leaders, senior policy makers, regulators and international organizations to ensure AI governance is top of mind when discussing AI’s potential. Through roles in the public sector at the municipal and federal levels, Casovan developed expertise in responsible AI, standards, policy, open government and data governance. As the former director of data and digital for the government of Canada, Casovan previously led the development of the world’s first national government policy for responsible AI. Building from this work, Casovan served as the Executive Director of the Responsible AI Institute, a multi-stakeholder non-profit dedicated to mitigating harm from the use of AI systems, a member of OECD’s AI Policy Observatory Network of Experts, a member of the World Economic Forum's AI Governance Alliance, an Executive Board Member of the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal on Artificial Intelligence and as a member of the IFIP/IP3 Global Industry Council within the UN. ## Olga Ceja Executive Director, Artificial Intelligence and Innovation, Grupo Financiero Banorte Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/olga-ceja/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Passionate about Technology ## Amish Chadha Global Technology Strategy Lead - Office of the CDTO, Kimberly-Clark Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amish-chadha/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Amish Chadha is a senior technology and transformation executive with more than 25 years building AI and digital capabilities across manufacturing, engineering, and critical infrastructure. He currently serves as global technology strategy lead in the chief digital and technology officer's office at Kimberly-Clark, where he architected the company's AI Automation Factory: a production platform of more than 40 models and 125 use cases spanning manufacturing operations, supply chain, and R&D, anchored by a once-in-a-generation modernization investment. A hands-on builder rather than an ivory-tower executive, Amish has delivered transformation on four continents and across 27 countries, including active conflict-zone operations. Throughout his career he has made a specialty of distressed portfolios and underdog teams, turning them into success stories. As sector chief digital officer at SNC-Lavalin, he led the turnaround of underperforming businesses, stood up new digital product ventures, and helped redefine how the engineering industry approaches digital delivery on its largest and most complex capital projects. His work sits at the intersection of operational excellence and applied AI. A certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, he brings deep grounding in equipment health, predictive maintenance, and the data and decision systems that keep production lines running. He serves as a board director and regional president for Canada with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence and as a standards committee member with IEEE. He also directs an AI neurotechnology program at OpenRatio, focused on behavioral modeling and model interpretability, and serves as chief risk officer at Helpful Engineering, a global engineering nonprofit. Amish holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a dual bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Penn State, with additional technical certifications from Stanford and UC San Diego. He is recognized in the United States as a specialist of DIstinguished Ability in applied AI and advanced engineering. His operating philosophy is simple: map the mess, build the machine. ## Parthasarathi Chakraborty VP - Global Head of Security Engineering, Broadridge Financials Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/parthasarathi-chakraborty/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Partha Chakraborty has over 20 years of cybersecurity leadership experience in financial services and healthcare. An active speaker and panelist in major cyber security conferences worldwide, frequently called in for views and interviews in electronic media. Currently, he is working as the Global Head of Security Engineering at Broadridge, the Fintech leader. Prior to that he was the Deputy CISO at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, Groupe BPCE Company. Prior to this role he headed up security architecture, engineering, and cloud for Humana Inc, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. A CISSP, CCSP, CEH, CHFI certified security evangelist holding a master's in cyber security from Western Governors University, another master's in technology management from Columbia University, a cybersecurity professional certificate from Stanford University, and an executive CTO program from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the chair person for Cloud Security Alliance's Key Managemnt Workgroup and an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University. ## Tuhin Chakraborty Co-Founder & CEO, Mimica Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tuhin-chakraborty/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Tuhin leads Mimica's vision and go-to-market strategy, empowering enterprise transformation and boosting productivity with AI. He brings deep engineering expertise from previous roles at LinkedIn and Pandora, and holds a patent for a supervised learning model developed during his time at LinkedIn. A lifelong entrepreneur from the Bay Area, Tuhin studied Machine Learning at Stanford University and founded a tech startup later licensed to Google. His work with Mimica empowers organizations to drive digital transformation, optimize processes, and build high‑ROI automations. ## Ajay Chakravarthy Chief AI Officer, Thales UK Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ajay-chakravarthy/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Professor Ajay Chakravarthy is the Head of Artificial Intelligence at Thales UK and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield, where he earned both his Masters and PhD in Computer Science. A Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Ajay brings over two decades of experience in Artificial Intelligence, spanning academic, governmental, and industry settings. He has held a range of distinguished roles across the public sector, including serving as Chief Scientific and Technology Officer (CSTO) for Counter Terrorism Policing and as Chief Scientist of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Ajay also served as a Senior Civil Servant at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (BDUK), where he was Director of Digital, Data and Technology. ## Alex Chan Vice President and Actuary, Internal Audit, Prudential Financial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alex-chan/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Alex Chan, Vice President & Actuary at Prudential Financial, is an audit executive with over 20 years of experience overseeing enterprise model risk and insurance risk on a global basis. Alex is responsible for the independent review, governance, and oversight of AI, actuarial, and quantitative models across underwriting, fraud detection, pricing, reserving, capital, and financial reporting. His work focuses on ensuring models used at scale are transparent, well‑controlled, and aligned with regulatory and enterprise risk management expectations worldwide. Alex brings a practitioner’s perspective on auditing advanced analytics and AI in highly regulated insurance environments, balancing innovation with rigor in model risk management and global risk oversight. Alex is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA), a CFA charterholder, and holds the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designation. ## Kitty Chan Professor of Practice, Columbia University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kitty-chan/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Dr. Kitty Kay Chan is Professor of Practice at Columbia University where she teaches machine learning and other data science technique. An internationally recognized expert in the governance and oversight of artificial intelligence, she advises regulators, Fortune Global 500 companies, non-profits, and international organizations. Her career has spanned state and federal government as well as the private sector and academia. Before joining Columbia, Dr. Chan held several senior executive positions, including as the inaugural Chief Data Analytics Officer for the State of New York, as well as Chief Economist of the Department of Financial Services and the state’s Deputy Inspector General. She currently serves on multiple federal, state, corporate, and nonprofit advisory and governing boards across a range of industries including financial services, technology, and transportation. ## Sanchita Chanda AWM RegTech Data & Analytics Program Head, JPMorganChase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sanchita-chanda/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Sanchita Chanda is a transformational technology executive at JPMorganChase Asset & Wealth Management, with a career spanning over 20 years driving cutting-edge solutions across data strategy, analytics, and more recently, AI/ML innovation. Sanchita has a proven track record architecting enterprise-scale data platforms, that have helped establish the foundation for business intelligence, Gen AI and agentic systems Sanchita is known for translating complex regulatory requirements into scalable, intelligent technology solutions—delivering measurable risk reduction, operational efficiency, and business growth. Operating at the intersection of financial services, data product architecture, and emerging AI, Sanchita partners closely with engineering teams, Chief Data Office, product stakeholders, and business leaders to turn strategic vision into durable platforms and outcomes. ## Aseem Chandra Co-Founder, MarcoPolo.dev Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aseem-chandra/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Aseem is co-founder at MarcoPolo.dev, founded with the mission to connect AI to internal data and unlock data intelligence for every user. Aseem was previously SVP for Experience Cloud at Adobe responsible for scaling go-to-market from $60M to $3.3B over 10 years. His prior experience includes Omniture, Oracle and Behlen Mfg. Aseem holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from IIT, Delhi and a master’s degree in business and manufacturing systems from UT-Austin. ## Anthony Chang Chief Intelligence and Innovation Officer, Rady Children's Health Orange County Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anthony-chang/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Anthony Chang, MD, MBA, MPH, MS is a pediatric cardiologist and serves as Chief Intelligence and Innovation Officer of the Sharon Disney Lund Medical Intelligence, Information, Investigation and Innovation Institute (Mi4) for Rady Children’s Health Orange County. The Institute is the hub of medical intelligence and innovation at Rady and serves as a national and international leader. Mi4 was the first institute of its kind in a children’s hospital. Dr. Chang completed his Master of Science (MS) in Data Science with a sub-specialization in artificial intelligence from Stanford School of Medicine and has completed a certification on artificial intelligence from MIT. Dr. Chang has a master’s in business administration (MBA) in Health Care Administration from the University of Miami School of Business and a master’s in public health (MPH) in Health Care Policy from the Jonathan Fielding School of Public Health of the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Chang is the founder of the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society (PCICS) and the founder of the Asia-Pacific Pediatric Cardiac Society (APPCS). He started a pediatric innovation leadership group whose bi-annual symposium Pediatrics2040: Emerging Trends and Future Innovations has become a catalyst for the International Society for Pediatric Innovation (iSPI). Each summer, the Mi4 Summer Internship Program, founded by Dr. Chang, mentors close to 75 young future clinicians. Dr. Chang’s book, Intelligence-Based Medicine is the first of its kind textbook on AI in medicine and is used at colleges and universities around the globe. He is the founder and organizing chair of several Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AI Med) that hosts meetings in the U.S. and abroad (Europe and Asia) focusing on artificial intelligence in healthcare and medicine (www.ai-med.io). He is also the founder the Medical Intelligence Society (MIS), the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (ABAIM), and the Alliance of Centers in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (ACAIM) and the Pediatric Centers of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (PCAIM), now with nearly 100 participating centers from around the globe. ## Davidson Charles VP, Citi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/davidson-charles/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Davidson Charles is a Principal Technical Architect, inventor, and technology leader with over 20 years of experience in API governance, intelligent automation, and enterprise platform strategy. Currently serving as Vice President and Principal Technical Architect at Citi, he leads large-scale initiatives focused on API enablement, automation, and AI-driven innovation. A holder of USPTO-approved patents, Davidson is a recognized speaker, industry judge, and advocate for leveraging AI, data, and APIs to drive business transformation, operational excellence, and scalable technology solutions. ## Bonnie Chase Director of Product Marketing, Vespa.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bonnie-chase/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Bonnie is a product marketing leaders specialized in AI product launch and development for the Enterprise. ## Ankita Chaudhari Senior Technical Product Manager, Bloomberg Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ankita-chaudhari/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Ankita Chaudhari is a Senior Technical Product Manager on the AI Platforms team in the Office of the CTO at Bloomberg, where she drives strategy and execution for cutting-edge AI products that power financial intelligence systems used by professionals around the world. Previously at Amazon, she worked on Alexa, contributing to large-scale consumer AI experiences, and at PayPal she was part of the Core Infrastructure and Experiences organization, focusing on the platforms that power global payments at scale. Across her career, Ankita has worked at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and product, and is passionate about turning complex technology into practical systems that teams can reliably build on. ## Guman Chauhan Technical Solutions & Security Lead, State of California Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/guman-chauhan/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Government Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No As an AI & Cybersecurity Leader, vCISO, and Board Advisor, I help organizations build security programs that not only protect but also enable growth, trust, and innovation. With over two decades of experience leading large-scale security architecture, governance, and risk transformation initiatives, I’ve guided enterprises and government entities through complex digital evolutions for aligning security strategies with business outcomes. I drive one of the government project for information security program, AI protection, and compliance programs that safeguard PII and PHI data while enabling business growth. I specialize in building and executing cybersecurity strategies rooted in Zero Trust, HITRUST, and multi-cloud resilience (AWS, Azure, GCP), while integrating AI/ML to automate threat detection and data protection. Holding CISSP, CISM, AWS and other security vendor certifications, I bring a deep technical foundation paired with executive-level insight to bridging the gap between cybersecurity, compliance, and innovation. My passion lies in transforming security from a cost center into a strategic enabler of resilience through the responsible integration of AI and automation. As a Government Cyber Advisor, Mentor, and Speaker, I’m committed to advancing collaboration across the global security community for helping emerging leaders grow and guiding organizations toward stronger governance, ethical AI adoption, and measurable risk reduction. I have also authored several journal and conference publications and contributed to advancements in AI-driven cloud security, data security and integrity. ## Ningyu Chen SVP Technology, The Home Depot Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ningyu-chen/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ningyu Chen, Senior Vice President - Technology, The Home Depot Ningyu Chen is senior vice president of Technology at The Home Depot. In this role, he leads technology strategy and development for online, marketing, and customer experience initiatives, with a focus on creating seamless digital experiences, scaling online growth, and accelerating AI-first innovation. Ningyu brings more than 25 years of experience leading enterprise-scale digital, data, and AI transformation across multiple industries. Prior to joining The Home Depot, he served as senior vice president of global technology at Starbucks, where he led digital and retail technology globally and drove data and AI transformation including the at-scale deployment of AI assistant for brisitas in 11,000+ stores across US and Canada. He also served as interim chief technology officer, with end-to-end responsibility for global technology strategy, execution, and operations across all domains, including digital, data, AI, retail, supply chain, corporate systems, infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Earlier in his career, Ningyu was senior vice president of digital technology and enterprise data at Inspire Brands, where he built multi-brand digital commerce and data & analytics platforms to power business growth. He previously held technology leadership roles at Macy’s and Delta Air Lines. ## William Chen Co-founder, Sapient Intelligence Pte. Ltd. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/william-chen/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter William Chen, Co-founder, Head of Strategy & Management. William is a multidisciplinary innovator with experience across robotics, embedded systems, and commercialization. He served as R&D Engineer at DJI and Hesai Technologies, and led venture development at Tsinghua Innovation Center. He graduated from Tsinghua University with the Zhaoping-Gaorong Scholarship. ## Kevin Chern Senior Benchmarking Researcher, D-Wave Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-chern/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Kevin Chern is a Senior Benchmarking Researcher at D-Wave. His current research is focused on developing and benchmarking quantum-classical hybrid algorithms---specifically in quantum annealing, Monte Carlo methods, combinatorial optimization, and machine learning. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science and computational statistics, respectively, from the University of British Columbia. His hobbies include boxing, photo/videography, and learning to play keyboard. ## Srikanth Chitipotu VP Engineering, Sage IT Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/srikanth-chitipotu/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Srikanth Chitipotu is Vice President of Engineering at Sage IT, where he leads the teams building the next generation of enterprise AI applications. Sage IT helps enterprises become truly AI-native, moving businesses beyond the hype cycle with dependable, production-ready intelligence. The company's RealMcC.AI™ suite has become synonymous with enterprise-grade AI that works seamlessly in complex real-world environments — practical, safe, and highly scalable automation that delivers immediate, measurable ROI. At Sage IT, Srikanth's engineering leadership spans enterprise AI, agentic transformation, and AI-accelerated software engineering. ## Mimi Chizever Vice President, Emerging Technology, Nationwide Insurance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mimi-chizever/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Insurance Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Mimi Chizever is Vice President of Emerging Technology at Nationwide, where she leads the adoption and acceleration of emerging technologies across the enterprise, including Generative AI. She has been instrumental in establishing Nationwide’s enterprise AI foundation, helping scale the responsible use of AI through governance, workforce enablement, and innovation initiatives that enhance both associate productivity and customer experiences. Prior to her current role, Mimi served as Vice President of Hosting Solutions, leading more than 600 technology professionals and overseeing Nationwide’s infrastructure technology portfolio, including hybrid cloud and modernization efforts. Throughout her 25+ year technology career, she has held leadership positions spanning software development, claims technology, infrastructure, and enterprise transformation. Mimi is the Nationwide executive sponsor for the National Executive Women’s Forum, supporting the advancement of women in cybersecurity, information security, and technology leadership. She was recognized by Columbus Business First as a "40 Under 40" honoree for her professional achievements and community impact. She holds an MBA in Organizational Leadership from Franklin University, a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Kent State University, and certifications including AWS Solutions Architect, Project Management Professional (PMP), and Organizational Change Management. ## Divya Choudhary Lead AI Research Scientist, X, The Moonshot Factory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/divya-choudhary/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Sky Christopherson CEO, GOLD AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sky-christopherson/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sky Christopherson is an Olympic cyclist, world-record holder, and inventor working at the intersection of sport, artificial intelligence, and public health. He has been featured in Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Outside Magazine, and the Financial Times. Sky holds 10 issued AI patents through GOLD, Inc., the AI health and fitness company he co-founded with founding advisor Tom Gruber (co-creator of Siri). GOLD translates Olympic medal-winning performance systems into consumer AI—building a foundational layer for the next generation of personalized health and longevity platforms. In collaboration with advisor Eric Topol, M.D., Sky pioneered a data-driven performance model integrating biosensing and advanced analytics. The approach contributed to a cycling world record and U.S. Olympic medals, and was chronicled in the award-winning documentary Personal Gold. His work bridges elite human performance science and applied AI, turning Olympic methodology into scalable consumer technology. At the Paris Olympic Games, Sky previewed GOLD’s consumer platform, which he and Tom Gruber will formally introduce at Ai4—bringing AI-powered coaching and medal-level insights to everyday health. ## Yi-Ting Chu Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing, National Chengchi University, Taiwan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yi-ting-chu/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1-10 employees State: California Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Entry-Level: Early in career, Under ~3 years of work experience Yi-Ting (Tami) Chu is a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing at the Graduate Institute of Business Administration, National Chengchi University (NCCU), Taiwan, and is currently a visiting researcher at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB), USA. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, digital marketing, and consumer psychology in technology-enabled marketing contexts. Her recent research examines how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and digital platforms, shape consumer perceptions, psychological responses, and consumption experiences. Her current work explores unmanned retail by investigating how different unmanned store formats influence consumer trust, moral self-awareness, and shopping experiences. Beyond research, Tami has teaching experience in marketing management and is interested in understanding how technological innovations can create more meaningful and human-centered consumer experiences. ## David Chun Researcher, Columbia University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-chun/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes David Chun is a senior higher education technology executive with extensive experience in enterprise IT strategy, digital transformation, data modernization, and artificial intelligence. He has served in CIO leadership roles at Montclair State University, Sonoma State University, Hamline University, and the University of Miami Herbert Business School. Across these institutions, he led university-wide technology strategy, Workday modernization, generative AI initiatives, data and analytics, and digital equity programs. At the University of Miami, he also served as a faculty member and Distinguished Engineer-in-Residence, teaching business technology, innovation, and emerging technologies. His career also includes senior technology roles at SunGard Data Systems, now FIS, and Benihana, with responsibilities spanning the United States, Japan, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Chun holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Georgia Institute of Technology, completed executive education at Stanford and Oxford, and is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. He enjoys Big Band jazz and spends time with his wife, a Project Management Professor, their rescue Shiba Inus, and their son, a Naval Aviator from the United States Naval Academy. ## Caroline Chung Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/caroline-chung/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Chung is Co-Director of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, a tenured professor in Radiation Oncology and Diagnostic Imaging with a clinical practice in CNS malignancies and computational imaging lab. In her role as inaugural Chief Data & Analytics Officer for MD Anderson Cancer Center, she led the development of a Data Impact and Governance department, a metadata-enriched data management system called Context Engine, and institutional data and AI literacy program that has enabled collaborative data science and responsible AI adoption. Motivated by challenges observed in her own clinical and research pursuits, Dr. Chung has developed and leads institutional, national, and global efforts to enable quantitative measurements to realize precision and personalized medicine through clinically impactful utilization of data, AI and data science. Her international leadership roles include founding co-president of the Quantitative Medical Imaging Coalition (QMIC), Co-Chair of the Quantitative Imaging for Assessment of Response in Oncology Committee of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU), Co-chair and Champion of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) AI Community of Practice and Co-Chair of the recent NCI workshop on AI benchmarking. Additionally, she served as the biomedical lead for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)-appointed committee addressing Foundational Research Gaps and Future Directions for Digital Twins. ## Luiz Cieslak SVP of Healthcare & Life Sciences, CI&T Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/luiz-cieslak/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Luiz Cieslak, SVP, Head of Healthcare & Life Sciences at CI&T, is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in digital solutions. He has played a pivotal role in expanding CI&T's presence across North America and Europe, where he leads a dedicated business unit primarily focused on healthcare and life sciences clients. His journey as an innovative leader in digital encompasses extensive tech expertise, a long track record in the HLS space with hundreds of successful projects. Luiz has proven his fortitude in digital marketing engagements within complex, Fortune 50 enterprise environments. His expertise in patient and physician experience, regulated industries, process optimization and collaborative cost-reduction strategies is unmatched. Luiz lives in Hillsborough, NJ with his wife and two sons. ## Vojta Ciml Founder & CEO, SlidesLive Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vojta-ciml/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Vojta Ciml is the founder and CEO of SlidesLive, a company built on the belief that knowledge shared at live events should not disappear once the room empties. With a background in computer science, he has spent the past 14 years building SlidesLive alongside a highly specialized team into a globally trusted platform that has captured more than 117,000 talks across 3,900 events for organizations including NeurIPS, ICML, Siemens, and Mayo Clinic. Today, Vojta and the SlidesLive team are pushing the boundaries of AI to make professional event recording dramatically more scalable, efficient, and accessible to organizers anywhere in the world — without large production crews or heavy equipment. At the heart of this is NATE, SlidesLive's proprietary AI-powered automated system, which fits in a single travel case, checks in as luggage, and delivers broadcast-quality results with a fraction of the complexity. As Vojta often says, "If it wasn't recorded, it didn't happen." ## Edmund Clark Chief Information Officer, The California State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/edmund-clark/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ed Clark is Chief Information Officer for the California State University Office of the Chancellor, where he leads technology strategy for the nation’s largest four-year public university system. In this role, he has helped shape CSU’s first comprehensive systemwide IT Strategic Plan, co-developed the CSU AI Strategy, advanced the AI Commons Hub and AI Workforce Acceleration Board, strengthened cybersecurity through the creation of the Cyber Fusion Center, and oversaw the largest PeopleSoft cloud migration in U.S. higher education. His leadership has also helped launch shared services that are saving more than $20 million annually for reinvestment in strategic priorities. Across a career spanning multiple universities, Clark has led digital transformation efforts that support student success, research, and institutional effectiveness. He serves on the boards of 1EdTech, CENIC, and the National Center for Teacher Residencies, teaches information systems at Cal State Fullerton, and was previously recognized as Minnesota’s nonprofit CIO of the year. ## Cinnamon Clark Chief Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer, Government Agency Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cinnamon-clark/ Track: Inclusive AI Industry: Government Job Function: HR Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Cinnamon Clark is a senior DEIB strategist and Navy veteran with more than two decades of experience leading culture transformation in complex, high‑stakes environments. From 1997 to 2021, she held multiple Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion roles across the United States Navy and later the Department of Defense, where she shaped policy, training, and organizational systems to advance equitable access and operational readiness. At the United States Naval Special Warfare, Cinnamon played a pivotal role in gender‑integration efforts. Her administrative and policy leadership helped clear the path for the first enlisted woman to complete the Special Warfare Combatant‑Craft Crewmen pipeline. She also led the shift toward gender‑neutral messaging across Navy Special Operations Forces, modernizing how elite units communicate identity, mission, and inclusion. After her military service, Cinnamon led a global team at McLean & Company, supporting more than 200 organizations in developing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging diagnostics, human‑capital strategies, change‑management frameworks, and executive workshops. Her work emphasized sustainable Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging roadmaps, measurable outcomes, and systems‑level transformation across industries. Cinnamon currently serves as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer in the state of California, where she leads enterprise‑wide efforts to embed equitable and inclusive practices across the department and serve the people of California. Her office focuses on equitable policy, strategy, inclusive onboarding, equitable hiring, employee‑centered program design, and building conditions where all employees have access to thrive. She champions the belief that inclusion is a verb and an intentional daily practice. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social science from Chapman University and a master’s degree in human behavior and organizational development from National University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in Human Resource Management, with a dissertation examining intergenerational communication in the modern workplace. Based in San Diego, Cinnamon serves as Chair and Commissioner of the San Diego Citizens Equal Opportunity Commission and sits on the Advisory Board of the Borderview YMCA. She partners with multiple organizations across California to advance equity, belonging, and community impact. ## Kevin Cochrane CMO, Vultr Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-cochrane/ Track: Keynote Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Kevin Cochrane is a 25+ year pioneer of the digital experience space. Kevin co-founded his first start-up, Interwoven, in 1996, pioneered open source content management at Alfresco in 2006, and built a global leader in digital experience management as CMO of Day Software and later Adobe. Kevin has also held senior executive positions at OpenText, Bloomreach, and SAP. Now at Vultr, Kevin is now working to build Vultr's global brand presence as a leader in the independent Cloud platform market. ## Bob Coecke Founder, CEO, Relational Intelligence Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bob-coecke/ Track: Quantum AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Prof Bob Coecke is Founder and CEO of Relational Intelligence. Before that he was Chief Scientist of Quantinuum, 2020-2025, and Professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at the Department of Computer Science of Oxford University, 2001-2020, where he built and led the 50 member Quantum Group. He has supervised 100 PhD students and managed some 300 researchers. He is also Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, and Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He was the first person to have Quantum Foundations as his professorial title. He pioneered Categorical Quantum Mechanics (now in AMS's MSC2020 mathematics subject classification), Quantum Picturalism, ZX-calculus, DisCoCat, Quantum Natural Language Processing and Quantum Music. He co-authored Picturing Quantum Processes, a book providing a fully diagrammatic treatment of quantum theory and its applications. He co-authored Quantum in Pictures, which does the same, but now accessible to people with no maths background. Using the latter, he showed that everyone can understand quantum, as reported in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/16/physicist-bob-coecke-its-easier-to-convince-kids-than-adults-about-quantum-mechanics He received the 2024 IEEE-LiCS test-of-time award. He founded the Quantum Physics and Logic and Applied Category Theory communities. His Royal Institution talk on quantum picturalism was the 5th most watched science talk of 2025. ​ He also has been called a pioneer of Industrial Music, he produced the 1st piece of music with a quantum computer, and invented the Quantum Guitar. He performed the first ever Quantum Symphony, called "Quantum Universe". ## Josh Coffey Chief Technology Officer, Apryse Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-coffey/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Josh Coffey is Chief Technology Officer at Apryse, where he leads global engineering teams building scalable, enterprise-grade document processing and data infrastructure used by tens of thousands of organizations worldwide. With nearly two decades of experience in software engineering and platform leadership, Josh specializes in designing systems that balance performance, reliability, and transparency at scale. Prior to Apryse, Josh served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Social Solutions, overseeing large distributed teams and guiding multiple platform integrations and M&A initiatives. Throughout his career, he has focused on responsible system design, data integrity, and governance - foundational elements for building trustworthy, scalable, and verifiable software and AI systems. ## Howard Cohen Head of Communications, North America, Mistral Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/howard-cohen/ Track: Keynote State: New York Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker ## Tor Constantino Writer / AI, Quantum Computing, Blockchain Consultant, Forbes Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tor-constantino/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Communications Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Tor Constantino is a communications professional with 25 years experience as a former journalist and corporate communications executive with an MBA degree. His career has spanned a wide range of deep-tech industries including quantum computing, telecommunications, cloud-based SaaS applications, Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and MedTech. In 2024, he launched a successful AI consultancy for small-and-medium-sized businesses to help owners save time and money through the benefits of AI. Since 2015, he has also written about emerging technologies in robotics, quantum computing/networking/sensing/security, personalized medicine, blockchain, Web3, and tokenized assets. His writing has appeared in outlets including Inc.com, Motley Fool Ascent, Decrypt, Entrepreneur, Success, Fortune, and Yahoo! Finance. ## Jordan Cooke Global Head of UX, Service Design & Research, PepsiCo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jordan-cooke/ Track: Product Design Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Jordan Cooke is the Global Head of UX, Service Design and Research at PepsiCo, where he leads global teams focused on enterprise, consumer, and AI-enabled digital experiences. Previously, he held a design leadership role at Meta and has spent his career helping shape digital products, innovation strategy, and human-centered experiences at scale. Known for blending strategic thinking, storytelling, and strong creative direction, Jordan’s work explores how emerging technologies such as AI are reshaping the future of design. He is a frequent speaker on UX innovation, design leadership, and the evolving relationship between people and technology. ## John Copeland VP of Marketing, eGain Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-copeland/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes John Copeland is VP of Marketing at eGain Corporation (NASDAQ: EGAN), where he leads global go-to-market for the AI knowledge platform that enterprises rely on to power trusted, automated customer experiences. His work centers on a thesis now reshaping enterprise AI: in the age of generative and agentic systems, knowledge is no longer documentation. It is instruction for AI. The companies that learn to engineer that knowledge with the same rigor they once applied to software will define the next decade of customer experience. That conviction is grounded in more than two decades at the intersection of data, technology, and customer strategy. Before eGain, John led Global Marketing Analytics and Insights at ServiceNow, scaling the metrics and insight capabilities behind the company's marketing engine and activating generative AI across customer-facing marketing and sales touchpoints. He spent nearly seven years at Adobe in a series of senior roles, most recently as Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Strategy Group, where he helped enterprise customers transform how they compete in digital channels. Earlier at Adobe he ran Marketing and Customer Insights, leading analysts, data scientists, and researchers who optimized customer acquisition and retention across Adobe's Digital Media and Digital Experience businesses. Before Adobe, John was Global Leader of Customer Analytics and Insights at eBay, where he built a 60-plus-person organization spanning market research, data science, and customer strategy to make the marketplace more customer-centric. His earlier career includes senior roles at McKinsey & Company, Prophet, Rosetta, and Accenture, advising leaders across retail and e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, media, and technology. John holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota and a BA in Psychology from the University of Michigan. He serves on the advisory board of LatentView Analytics and has published widely on marketing, analytics, and customer strategy. At Ai4, as part of the AI in CX track, John will explore why knowledge is the load-bearing wall beneath enterprise AI, and what it takes to build the engineering discipline that turns trusted knowledge into reliable, customer-facing AI outcomes. ## Robin Copland Head of AI Business Transformation, Avanade Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robin-copland/ Track: Workshop Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Robin Copland is Head of AI Business Transformation and co-founder of the AI Transformation Office at Avanade, where he helps C-suite leaders turn AI from isolated wins into enterprise-scale operations. Drawing on 25 years building new practices in ambiguous territory, his conviction is simple: building the technology is a milestone. Rewiring how the business operates is the finish line. ## Jonathan Corbin CEO/Co-Founder, Maven AGI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonathan-corbin/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jonathan Corbin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Maven AGI, where he’s redefining customer experience with enterprise-grade AI agents. With over two decades of leadership at Hubspot, Adobe, Marketo, and Sprinklr, Jonathan has built scalable customer success systems across industries. His vision for Maven was born from firsthand experience navigating the complexity of fragmented tools, siloed data, and the growing demand for personalized, efficient support. Now, he’s leveraging generative AI to solve those challenges at scale. ## Sergio Coronado CIO, NATO Support and Procurement Agency Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sergio-coronado/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Government Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Prof Dr Sergio Coronado is an internationally recognised expert in Information Technology and Communications with more than 35 years of experience across IT Strategy, Digital Leadership, Cloud Technologies, Cybersecurity, AI and Education. He is CIO at the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) and an Assistant Professor (associé) at the University of Luxembourg, where he teaches Advanced Project Management and Cybersecurity Risk Management. Sergio holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering, an MSc in Software Engineering, a Certificate in Corporate Governance from INSEAD Business School, an MA in Clinical Psychology and Education, and a BSc in Electrical Engineering. In his free time, Sergio contributes to developing Luxembourg’s future digital talent through the Luxembourg Tech School (LTS) non-profit. Since 2016, LTS has grown from 30 students to more than 1.500 today, expanding from a one-year programme to a three-year programme covering Game Development, AI, FinTech, Robotics, Emerging Tech, Creative Coding, Digital Thinking and Interaction Design. The initiative also supports kids and adults with special needs, including autism, mental disabilities and neurodiversity. ## Alejandro Correa Bahnsen VP of Data & AI, Grupo Bursátil Mexicano Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alejandro-correa-bahnsen/ Track: Recommendation & Ranking Systems [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Alejandro Correa Bahnsen is an AI executive and applied machine learning leader who specializes in taking AI systems from research to production in complex, real-world environments. He has served as VP of AI at Rappi, AB InBev, and GBM, leading large-scale personalization, recommendation, risk, and agent-based initiatives across consumer platforms, global CPG, and financial services. His work spans building end-to-end ML platforms, deploying LLM-powered systems, and designing governance and operating models that allow AI to scale responsibly under real constraints of regulation, latency, and organizational adoption. In addition to his industry leadership, Alejandro is a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey and previously at Universidad de los Andes, where he teaches applied AI and digital transformation. He holds a PhD in machine learning, has authored more than 40 academic papers, and is the inventor on 7 U.S. patents in applied AI systems. His perspective bridges deep technical rigor with hands-on experience navigating change management, platform architecture, and AI deployment at scale across multiple industries. ## Bruno Costa Strategic Sr. Sales Engineer, Retool Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bruno-costa/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes With over two decades of experience in the tech industry across Latin America, the U.S., and Canada, I’ve built a career at the intersection of technology and business. As a Pre-Sales Solutions Engineer, I specialize in guiding enterprise clients through complex digital transformation journeys, blending technical expertise with a consultative approach to deliver measurable business outcomes. At Retool, I collaborate with strategic accounts to maximize the value of our solutions and drive customer success. By combining deep technical knowledge with a focus on business impact, I’ve consistently helped clients achieve their goals while contributing to multimillion-dollar revenue growth. I’m passionate about solving complex challenges, building strong client relationships, and helping teams adopt cutting-edge content management and digital experience solutions. ## Amrith Coumaran Computer Vision Scientist, Privateer Space Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amrith-coumaran/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator I am Amrith and I work as a Computer Vision Scientist at Privateer Space where I work on solving real-world problems in the geospatial domain. I also collaborate with other researchers on domain adaptation techniques, few shot learning approaches and self-supervised learning for Geospatial CV data. ## Jordan Crenshaw Senior Vice President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jordan-crenshaw/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Jordan Crenshaw is the senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Technology Engagement Center (C_TEC), where he leads the day-to-day operations of the policy team. Crenshaw also manages the Chamber’s privacy working group, which is comprised of nearly 300 companies and trade associations and is responsible for developing model privacy legislation and principles. Prior to his role at C_TEC, Crenshaw led the Chamber’s Telecommunications and E-Commerce Policy Committee, which analyzed federal privacy, cloud computing, broadband, internet, e-commerce, and broadcast policies that impact U.S. businesses. Before joining the Chamber, Crenshaw was an attorney focused on environmental issues and consumer privacy laws. Crenshaw worked at McGuireWoods, LLP assisting discovery issues for environmental nuisance, TCPA, and other civil litigation. Crenshaw also held roles in the Virginia Senate leadership, the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Administrative Law Judges, and the National Right to Work Defense Foundation. Crenshaw earned both his undergraduate degree and Juris Doctor from the College of William and Mary. He is licensed to practice law in Virginia and is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US). He and his wife, Molly, and their daughter and son live in Virginia. ## Nathalie Criou VP, Product, Vapi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nathalie-criou/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Telecom Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Nathalie Criou is VP of Product at Vapi with more than 20 years of experience leading product organizations across startups and public technology companies. She focuses on AI, product strategy, and translating technical innovation into customer and business value. Vapi is a platform for building voice AI agents, where she is learning to navigate the practical challenges of building AI products at scale. ## Bradley Criqui Global Head of Engineering, CBRE Investment Management Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bradley-criqui/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Brad Criqui is the Global Head of Engineering & IT Operations at CBRE Investment Management. He leads the strategy, design, and delivery of scalable technology platforms that drive innovation and operational excellence across the firm’s digital ecosystem. Currently, Brad is focused on architecting and scaling enterprise AI platforms and orchestration services, and advancing agentic engineering workflows across the full software lifecycle. This work is shaping a more autonomous engineering organization using agents to increase delivery velocity, improve clarity and decision quality, and amplify the impact of highly skilled teams while embedding risk management, security controls, and AI governance from prototype through production. Before joining CBRE IM, Brad spent 15+ years delivering transformative technology solutions in fintech, payments, and enterprise services at Bank of America, Capital One, Solaris, and Ziosk. His background spans cloud-native systems, customer and enterprise applications, AI/ML-enabled services, and observability platforms establishing foundations for efficiency, resilience, and growth. Brad earned a B.S. in Information Systems from Virginia Commonwealth University. ## James Croom Senior Director Marketing - Chrome, Google Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-croom/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Jacob Crossman Sr. VP of Autonomy, May Mobility Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jacob-crossman/ Track: Automotive Industry: Automotive Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Jacob Crossman is senior vice president of autonomy at May Mobility, Inc. He was appointed to the position in August of 2021 and is responsible for the company’s autonomy engineering and robotics engineering functions and leads his teams in the development and deployment of May Mobility’s autonomous vehicles. Crossman joined May Mobility with more than 20 years of professional experience in research and development of autonomous sense/react technologies at Soar Technology, Inc. and Deepgram, where he served in various senior roles. He has a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Michigan. ## Taryn Crouthers CEO, Big Spaceship Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/taryn-crouthers/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Taryn Crouthers is the CEO of Big Spaceship, MSQ Partners' award-winning creative agency. A passionate leader, Taryn has spent her decades-long career inspiring teams to create work that moves both people and business. Along the way, she has earned recognitions including Campaign U.S. Inspiring Women (2026), Campaign U.S. 40 Over 40 (2025), Ad Age Leading Women (2024), Cynopsis Corporate Visionary, and Cynopsis Top Women in Digital. Her expertise spans advertising, media, and entertainment, as well as the distribution and commercialization that scale those sectors. As President of social-first global media company ATTN:, Taryn helped lead the company from pre-revenue through its $100M acquisition by Blackstone. In partnership with The Female Quotient, she co-founded the Women in AI Summit for the Creative Community and launched the Women in AI Creative Cohort, which selects 15 top global executives for a six-month AI mentorship program. An entrepreneur at heart and a nationally recognized voice on the future of creativity and AI integration, Taryn brings a founder's mindset to scaling creative businesses and developing new revenue models. She has appeared on stages at Cannes Lions, CES, POSSIBLE, Advertising Week New York, and Social Media Week, as well as contributed to juries for Young Lions, The One Show, ADC, Webby Awards, and other prestigious industry competitions. A member of the Miami Ad School Advisory Board, Taryn also actively invests in emerging creative and technology-driven companies. ## Nicole Crozier Managing Director, Engineering, SilverRock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicole-crozier/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Automotive Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Nicole Crozier is Managing Director of Engineering at SilverRock, where she leads enterprise engineering teams focused on building resilient platforms, modernizing technology ecosystems, and delivering scalable digital solutions that support business growth and operational excellence. Over the past five years at SilverRock, she has played a key leadership role in advancing engineering strategy, driving organizational transformation, and strengthening the company’s ability to innovate at scale. With a leadership style rooted in collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement, Nicole is known for building high-performing teams and fostering engineering cultures that balance speed, stability, and long-term sustainability. Her experience spans software delivery, technology modernization, operational optimization, and cross-functional execution across complex enterprise environments. Nicole is passionate about helping organizations evolve through practical innovation and emerging technologies, including AI-enabled transformation and intelligent automation. She brings a people-first approach to engineering leadership, emphasizing mentorship, adaptability, and creating environments where teams can deliver meaningful customer and business impact while navigating rapid technological change. ## Larry Crumbley Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/larry-crumbley/ Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Dr. D. Larry Crumbley, CPA, CFF, CRFAC, MAFF, FCPA, and RFI, is a Professor of Accounting in the College of Business at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. His academic record includes at least 350 journal articles, especially about oil/gas, accounting malpractice, fraud, and forensic accounting, research grants, at least 70 books, including 13 novels and Forensic & Investigative Accounting (11th edition), academic conference presentations, and awards. His works have been cited in many media, including Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Accounting Review, and Washington Post. He is editor of J. of Forensic & Investigative Accounting and editor of Oil Gas & Energy Quarterly (more than 49 years). He has been President of four sections in the American Accounting Association. He received the AAA Forensic Accounting Section Lifetime Achievement Award, the Federation of Business Disciplines Outstanding Education Award, named 24 Pioneers: Titans of Financial Consultants by NACVA, Society of La. CPA Lifetime Achievement Award in Accounting Education, KPMG Mentoring Award from the Gender Issues & Worklife Balance Section of the AAA, and Distinguished Contribution to the Development of Forensic Accounting by University of Toronto. His part time passion is engaging in forensic accounting consulting and expert witnessing.. ## Clark Cully Technology Division Chair, DeVoe School of Business Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/clark-cully/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Dr. Clark Cully is the chair of the Technology Division at Indiana Wesleyan University, overseeing graduate degree programs in artificial intelligence, data analytics, information technology, and cybersecurity. He is also the founder of the university's Center for Applied Ethics & AI. Previously, Dr. Cully was the Chief Data Officer for the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as the military’s top official for AI strategy. In addition to 14 years at the Pentagon leading nuclear, cyber, innovation, and emerging technology initiatives, Dr. Cully served with the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, NATO Headquarters in Afghanistan, the Department of Energy, and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Cully holds a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from the University of Michigan and is a graduate of Calvin University. ## Jason Cumberland CPO & Co-founder, Revenium Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-cumberland/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jason Cumberland is the Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Revenium, a platform that helps businesses track AI costs, control agent spending, and prove ROI in real time. He brings more than 25 years of experience in cloud computing, enterprise software, and SaaS product leadership. Before co-founding Revenium, Jason served as SVP of Product at NTT and spent a decade at Dimension Data, where he built and led the company's cloud and SaaS solutions business, helping software vendors modernize how they delivered and priced their products. A recognized voice in cloud strategy and API monetization, Jason serves on the API World Advisory Board and is a frequent contributor on API monetization and AI cost strategy, including published work with Kong and MuleSoft. ## Celeny Da Silva Founder & Chief Executive, MAKERS AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/celeny-da-silva/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 11-50 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Celeny Da Silva is the Founder and CEO of MAKERS AI, a firm that grows technology companies and advises enterprises on agentic AI architecture and organizational design. Through MAKERS AI, Celeny has led growth initiatives across the US, Singapore, Australia, the EU, Latin America, and Japan. Outside of work she flies airplanes, runs marathons, and explores the world — 150 countries and counting. linkedin.com/in/celeny/ ## Pranjal Daga Co-Founder & CEO, Accend Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pranjal-daga/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Pranjal Daga is Co-Founder and CEO of Accend, a Y Combinator-backed company that builds AI agents to make commercial underwriting faster and more accurate. Prior to founding Accend, Pranjal led Product for Risk at Brex, where he saved millions in losses while processing billions in transactions. His work directly contributed to Brex's growth during a critical scaling phase in the fintech sector. Before Brex, Pranjal helped establish Cisco Innovation Labs, where he earned four patents and contributed to the company's AI research capabilities. Pranjal's expertise spans the intersection of AI, risk management, and financial services, making him a sought-after speaker at premier industry conferences including Money20/20 Europe, FinovateSpring, and Machine Learning Week. He serves as a judge for the Banking Tech Awards USA and holds committee positions at leading AI conferences. Under Pranjal's leadership, Accend has secured $3.2M in seed funding from top-tier investors including Adverb Ventures, General Catalyst, YC and 645 Ventures. A former PhD candidate in AI at Purdue University, Pranjal combines deep technical expertise with practical business acumen, having transitioned from academic research to building scalable enterprise solutions that serve global institutions. ## Thierry Damiba Member of GTM Staff, Arcade.dev Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thierry-damiba/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 11-50 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Thierry Damiba is a member of the GTM staff at Arcade, where he works at the intersection of developer experience, agent infrastructure, and go-to-market strategy. He helps developers build AI agents that can securely take action across real applications and enterprise systems, with a particular focus on MCP, tool use, authentication, retrieval, and production reliability. With a background in data science and vector search, Thierry has built recommendation engines, semantic caching systems, AI-powered search platforms, and evaluation frameworks for agentic systems. Thierry regularly hosts and speaks at AI events, conferences, and workshops at venues including AWS, GitHub, Cloudflare, and AGI House. His work emphasizes practical demonstrations, clear technical communication, and building communities where developers can experiment openly with emerging technology. Outside of work, Thierry is building DAMIBA, a fashion house inspired by West African craft and canonical literature. His interests also include art, literature, stand-up comedy, soccer, and crabbing along the San Francisco coast. ## Tahereh Daneshi Program Chair, Professor, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tahereh-daneshi/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Co-Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Professor Tahereh Daneshi, Ph.D., has over 30 years of experience in higher education. She has extensive teaching experience in traditional classroom, blended, and fully online delivery formats. During her higher education career, she has served as a tenured full professor, senior professor, curriculum manager, professor, and program chair at both public and private universities. In addition, Dr. Daneshi has 12 years of industrial experience working in the Semiconductor, Data Management, Transportation, and Wireless Telecommunication Industries. Throughout her industry career, she played a key role in the design, architecture, and development of innovative technology solutions across multiple domains, including Programmable Logic Arrays (PLAs), Enterprise Data Management, Airline Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) Monitoring, Handheld Wireless Tracking Devices, and Telecommunications Broadband Wireless systems. ## Mohammad Daoud Farooqi Partner Solutions Architect, A.I., MongoDB Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mohammad-daoud-farooqi/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Mohammad Daoud Farooqi is a Partner Solutions Architect for AI at MongoDB and the author of the technical whitepaper on Constitutional AI Ethical Governance with MongoDB Atlas. His work is fixing a problem most teams know too well: AI agents in production are stitched together from four systems that were never meant to talk to each other, a vector database here, a keyword engine there, a graph store, a system of record. His job is to collapse that into one. He helps banks, insurers, and large data teams move agents into production in the industries where "move fast and break things" was never an option. He came from financial services, so he lived on the customer side of data governance, security, and compliance long before he had to architect around them. Today he builds MongoDB's Database-as-a-Service platform and the open-source AI reference architectures that run on top of it: long-term memory, hybrid vector and full-text search, and agentic quickstarts. Beyond the Constitutional AI whitepaper, he wrote MongoDB's guide to building AI memory systems with AWS and Claude, and, most recently, a cookbook for running agents on Anthropic's Claude Managed Agents with MongoDB Atlas as their retrieval, graph, and system-of-record layer. At Ai4, he shows how to collapse the modern agent stack, vector search, memory, and conversational state, into a single operational data layer. Connect with the author: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/farooqimdd/ · mohammaddaoud.farooqi@mongodb.com ## Henna Davar AI Engineering Leader, American Airlines Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/henna-davar/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Henna Davar is an AI Engineering leader at American Airlines, driving enterprise‑scale transformation through generative and agentic AI platforms. She leads the strategy, governance, and execution of the airline’s most critical AI initiatives, with a focus on orchestration layers, platform architecture, and trusted AI infrastructure. Her work defines how autonomous AI systems are built and operated at scale - establishing standardized agent runtimes, orchestration patterns, tool registries, and control frameworks that enable teams to deploy AI agents safely while meeting rigorous security, privacy, and regulatory expectations. Henna embeds governance directly into the AI platform, integrating orchestration engines, identity and access management, cost controls, and deep observability to ensure AI systems are auditable, resilient, and aligned with enterprise risk tolerance. This approach enables innovation to scale without compromising trust or operational integrity. She partners closely with executive leadership and cross‑functional teams across cybersecurity, legal, privacy, and platform engineering to translate emerging agentic AI capabilities into durable, enterprise‑approved architectures. Her leadership bridges strategy and execution in one of the world’s most complex and regulated industries. At Ai4, Henna brings an executive practitioner’s perspective on building orchestration layers for agentic AI - sharing real‑world lessons on how large enterprises can scale autonomous systems responsibly, govern AI through software, and design infrastructure that balances speed, trust, and long‑term business value. Henna holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, and has completed postgraduate studies in Artificial Intelligence at The University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on applied and enterprise AI. ## Jason Davenport Area Technical Lead, Google Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-davenport/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Colorado Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Jason is an Area Technical Lead at Google Cloud. He is the overall Tech Lead for information experience, developer relations, and frameworks and languages. He focuses on applied generative AI in coding and software development, including AI in the SDLC, integration with AI in business transformation, and forward looking trends in AI. His background is in data engineering, software engineering, and devops. Prior to his current role at Google, Jason has held various roles in technical leadership and management, including as a practice director for a regional consultancy. ## Jessica Davis Vice President, AI Product, USA TODAY Co., Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jessica-davis/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jessica Davis is Vice President of AI Product at USA TODAY Co. and founder of its AI Council, leading responsible AI adoption across one of the largest media organizations in the United States. A strong advocate for rethinking how organizations govern AI at scale, Jessica champions a product-driven approach: using automated evaluations to give teams clearer standards and better oversight without the manual burden. ## Matthew Davis Senior Partner, Head of Pioneering Intelligence, Flagship Pioneering Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matthew-davis/ Track: Executive Summit Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Matthew Davis is a Senior Partner at Flagship Pioneering where he leads the AI strategy for a portfolio of breakthrough biotech innovation companies. Prior to joining Flagship, Matt led AI/ML research and development at publicly traded companies in the human genetics deep technology spaces. He served as Head of AI & Data at Invitae, where he led strategic business development in AI/ML and grew a team to apply machine learning to clinical interpretation, scalable operations, and personalized patient insights. His team’s application of probabilistic machine learning to variant interpretation led to the resolution of tens of thousands of clinical human variants. He later led the technical transformation of Sema4/GeneDx as Chief Product and Technology Officer. He began his career at IBM working in Linux development and high-performance computing, which led him to academic research in systems and computational biology. He worked with pioneers at UT Austin and UC Berkeley applying machine learning to high throughput morphological phenotyping, x-ray crystallography, and transcriptional regulation.  Matt returned to computer science as a group leader at IBM Research, founding a team to research multimodal AI agents and human-computer interaction. In addition to developing several enterprise software products in this space, Matt continued to author papers and patents in the fields of NLP, AI, HCI, and biology. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from UT Austin and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. ## Sirish Davuluri Vice President, AI Strategy & Business Design, Cognizant Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sirish-davuluri/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Sirish Davuluri is a strategy and technology leader with a proven track record of scaling enterprise platforms and AI initiatives. Before joining Cognizant, he led worldwide GTM strategy for Microsoft's Azure open-source databases and spent nine years at Accenture, where he founded and scaled their AI Strategy Practice. With a foundational background as a top-performing software engineer and experience successfully exiting his own startup, Sirish bridges the gap between deep technical architecture and high-level Go-To-Market strategy. He holds an MBA from Cornell and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Texas. ## Alexandria de Aranzeta Data and AI Governance Policy Lead, Boeing Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alexandria-de-aranzeta/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Other Job Function: Regulatory & Compliance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Alexandria de Aranzeta is the Data and AI Governance Policy Lead at Boeing. She is a former compliance startup founder, ex-regulator, strategic operator, and systems builder with 15 years of experience across AI startups, government, higher education, and enterprise. She has advised AI startups from Atlanta Tech Village, MIT Venture Studio, and SF; hosted The Culture of Machines-- a Responsible AI podcast; and has been a featured speaker at Georgia Tech, Women in Product Conference, and SF TechWeek. ## Jeronimo De Leon Director, Applied AI, Backblaze Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeronimo-de-leon/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Jeronimo De Leon is an AI leader with more than ten years of experience building and scaling artificial intelligence products across enterprise and startup environments. As Director of Applied AI at Backblaze, he leads a team developing AI-focused SDKs, developer tools, integrations, and reference applications that support modern, multi-cloud AI workflows. His work also explores how AI agents use the Backblaze platform and how Backblaze applies AI agents and intelligent automation across its internal operations. Previously, as Head of Artificial Intelligence at Intelas, Jeronimo led AI and data architecture strategy for the real estate intelligence platform, integrating Machine Learning and Large Language Models into data workflows for document classification, validation, and extraction to generate actionable insights for asset management clients. Jeronimo's career includes leading Bloomberg's first marketing chatbot as Product Management Team Lead, founding Welcome.AI (a research platform helping professionals discover and evaluate AI solutions), driving product go-to-market at Spell, a Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) platform that streamlined ML model development, training, and deployment (acquired by Reddit), and working on IBM Watson and Data Science products as a certified IBM Watson Application Developer. Jeronimo has consistently leveraged cutting-edge AI technologies to deliver impactful products and drive organizational success. ## John De Oliveira AI Architect, Hapax Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-de-oliveira/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter John De Oliveira has been working on artificial intelligence since before most of the world believed in it. He began his career as a software developer at The Bank of Bermuda, then went on to become an ontologist on the DARPA-funded Cyc project, one of the earliest and most ambitious attempts to build artificial general intelligence by encoding human commonsense knowledge. It was the start of a career-long fascination with getting machines to reason over messy, unstructured human knowledge — a thread that runs through everything he has done since. After those early years in engineering and AI, John spent more than a decade leading product at a series of high-growth startups. He was Vice President of Product at Gro Intelligence, a data company building products that changed how the world understands agriculture, and before that led product for TrendKite and Dachis Group, both of which grew rapidly and exited successfully. More recently he served as VP of Product for Quantified.ai. Today, as AI Architect for Hapax, he has come full circle — back to being hands-on with the technology. Hapax is a proactive AI platform that learns how a business works, maps the events that drive work across an organization, and automatically builds and deploys the custom AI agents teams need — knowledge-graph reasoning over real-world business complexity, the same problem that first drew John to AI decades ago. John led the team that published the OpenCyc commonsense knowledge base and ontology, founded Semantic Web Austin, and serves on the advisory board for Texas A&M's Master's in Analytics. He holds five patents in social analytics and in extracting knowledge from unstructured text. Raised in a large, noisy family on Long Island, New York, John holds a B.A. in English from Le Moyne College and an MBA in Market Research from Regis University. ## Ratan Deep Singh CEO, SkillUp Online Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ratan-deep-singh/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 201-500 employees State: Washington Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Every enterprise leader I talk to is wrestling with the same question: we invested in AI — why isn't it working? The technology is deployed. The licenses are active. But the workforce hasn't changed. The gap between AI access and AI adoption is not a technology problem. It's the defining capability challenge of our era. And solving it requires a fundamentally different approach than what the market is offering. I'm the CEO of SkillUp Online, an end-to-end upskilling platform operating across the US, India, and Europe. We partner with IBM, Google Cloud, and Microsoft to deliver certification-backed programs in AI, Data Science, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Software Engineering. Our flagship enterprise offering — the AI Readiness Program — is built on a proprietary AI Capability Maturity Model that diagnoses where organizations stand before designing any training. The result: role-specific, industry-tailored programs that produce measurable adoption, not just awareness. If your organization has AI tools but your workforce isn't using them, this is the program I'd love to discuss. Before SkillUp, I spent 12 years in tech/tech leadership, including leading global technology groups at UnitedHealth Group and establishing tech teams across multiple geographies. I'm passionate about the intersection of technology, learning, and enterprise transformation. ## Thomas DeFabrizio CFO, Impellam Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thomas-defabrizio/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Other Job Function: Finance Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Thomas DeFabrizio is a 2025 Atlanta CFO of the Year finalist and serves as CFO for a global workforce solutions company, overseeing finance and operations across the Americas. He has more than 20 years of finance leadership experience spanning Wall Street (Bank of New York), mid-market operational CFO roles, and board service across technology, professional services, workforce transformation, and distribution companies ranging from $50 million to over $2 billion in revenue. He started his career inside one of the largest custodial banks in the world during the 2008 financial crisis, where he watched institutions with more data than anyone still get blindsided. The lesson stuck: data is not visibility. Since then he has led finance through acquisitions and integrations, made payroll calls when cash was tight, implemented multiple cloud systems, renegotiated bank covenants, and built the reporting that tells leadership the truth before the quarter does. What sets his work apart is that he builds the systems himself. He has designed and deployed AI-powered diagnostic and automation tools that connect finance data to live decisions, including a working diagnostic running on a no-code pipeline wired to a large language model. He treats AI the way he treats finance: not as a headline, but as plumbing that has to hold when the decision is on the line. His approach centers on the five areas most leadership teams struggle to see clearly: growth quality, profit structure, cash positioning, operational efficiency, and business value. He is known for replacing reporting complexity with decision-grade clarity. Thomas holds CPA, MBA, MSA, and CGMA credentials, is a 2026 Titan 100 honoree, and holds multiple AI and enterprise systems certifications. As a certified Zodiak facilitator, he has trained hundreds of non-finance leaders to connect daily decisions to the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow ## Grace DeGraaf Writer & Researcher, Harvard Business School Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/grace-degraaf/ Track: Software: Productivity & Collaboration Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Grace DeGraaf is a Research Associate for Harvard Business School's Mid-US Research Center. She is focused on companies and organizations in the Midwest, South, and Mountain regions of the US. She also writes and edits for a variety of publications. Previously, she was an Editor at Business Insider, where she helped build the widely-read Discourse desk. There, she covered trends in work, tech, culture, real estate, supply chains, and transportation. ## Sandeep Desai CISO, Arizona Department of Eduction Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sandeep-desai/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Education Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sandeep Desai is the Chief Information Security Officer for the Arizona Department of Education and a leader in AI governance, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. He helps organizations navigate the opportunities and risks of emerging technologies while building trust, resilience, and measurable business value. With experience spanning government, financial services, and global manufacturing, Sandeep has led initiatives across cybersecurity, risk management, audit, compliance, and enterprise technology modernization. His work focuses on enabling responsible AI adoption through practical governance models, security-by-design principles, and risk-based decision making. As a public sector technology executive, Sandeep is passionate about helping leaders move beyond AI experimentation to achieve sustainable outcomes that improve services, strengthen operational resilience, and deliver meaningful value to the communities they serve. ## Malhar Deshpande Sr. Director, Product Engineering - AI, Clean Harbors Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/malhar-deshpande/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Malhar Deshpande, MBA, M.S., B.E., is Senior Director of Product Engineering – AI at Clean Harbors, where he leads the company’s AI Center of Excellence and enterprise AI product engineering strategy. Over more than a decade at Clean Harbors, Malhar has progressed from a software engineering to senior technology leadership. Today, he leads multidisciplinary teams developing and scaling machine learning, generative AI, computer vision, and agentic AI solutions across environmental services, field operations, safety, and regulatory compliance. His work focuses on moving AI beyond experimentation by embedding intelligent capabilities into mission-critical business workflows. He is responsible for establishing the engineering platforms, governance frameworks, human-in-the-loop controls, and operating models required to deliver responsible AI solutions at enterprise scale. Malhar also contributes to the broader technology community as a venture mentor, judge, author, industry speaker, and technical reviewer for publications covering large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, and modern AI agents. He holds an MBA and a Master of Science in Information Systems from Northeastern University, a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from the University of Mumbai, and an executive specialization in Artificial Intelligence from the MIT Sloan School of Management. ## Cole DeVingo Synthetic Data Specialist, Toyota Research Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cole-devingo/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Cole Robert DeVingo is a synthetic data engineer, currently serving as a Synthetic Data Specialist at Toyota Research Institute, with prior experience at iRobot. He designs and builds end-to-end synthetic data pipelines using Python, Blender, Unreal Engine, and C++ to generate large-scale, high-fidelity training data for computer vision and robotics applications. His work has included procedural 3D floor plan generation, stereo correspondence datasets, defect detection systems, OCR and object detection pipelines, automated annotation backends, and simulation environments for validation and QA. Across both robotics and industrial AI settings, he has focused on scalable data generation, automated labeling, infrastructure development, and close collaboration with cross-functional teams to improve model performance and accelerate deployment. ## Pouya Dianat Chief Product Officer, Quantum Computing Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pouya-dianat/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Pouya Dianat, PhD, Chief Revenue Officer, combines over 18 years of experience in the photonics industry including more than a decade in commercialization of photonic technology and eight years as a graduate student in photonics. Previously Dr. Dianat served as the Director of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) and Foundry Services, where he led the commercial offerings of the Company’s thin-film lithium niobate technology since July 2024. Dr. Dianat was the Chief Technology Officer for Nanograss Solar LLC., a company commercializing high-speed photodetectors, from 2018 to 2021. From 2021 to 2022, he was Entrepreneur-in-residence at Drexel University, while also working as a scientist at Princeton Infrared Technologies, a company focused on high-end infrared cameras. From March 2022 to July 2023, he was a Senior Photonics Engineer at Optogration, a Luminar Company, where he led commercial offerings, business development and scale-up of photonic detector chips for automotive LIDAR products. Dr. Dianat served as the Market Expert and Director of PIC and Quantum Technologies at OPTICA, a world-leading optics and photonics association, from 2023 to 2024. Dr. Dianat received his PhD and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Dr. Dianat also served a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University. ## Lisa Dieker Williamson Family Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lisa-dieker/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Lisa Dieker, is the Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Special Education in the School of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Kansas (KU). She serves as the Director of a Center in the Assessment and Achievement Institute called FLITE (flexible learning through innovations in teaching and education). Dr. Dieker’s research focuses on harnessing the power of teachers working across disciplines in the general education setting, focusing on teacher education, special education, and innovative technology uses. Before KU she was a Pegasus Professor at the University of Central Florida, where she served as the Lockheed Martin Eminent Scholar, directing the Lockheed Martin/UCF Mathematics and Science Academy, which produced over 500 teacher leaders in STEM. She also served as the co-coordinator for the Ph.D. program in special education, advising over 100 students. In her role as Co-Director of the UCF Center for Research in Education Simulation Technology (CREST), she and two colleagues created a widely used tool to prepare teachers and leaders using a mixed reality simulator called TeachLivE™, now commercialized by Mursion. Currently at KU, she co-leads two U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Stepping Up grants to create a data tagging tool and to harvest resources to support STEM coaches working with special education teachers. In partnership with a public charter school district, the second project is creating an AI agent combined with biometrics to support students with disabilities in STEM. She has managed over 60 grants from state, local, national, international, and foundation sources, amounting to more than $25M. She has provided over 150 keynotes, produced seven books and over 100 articles and chapters, and served as an editor for four journals in the field. She holds six patents in simulation and education. She has served as the national conference Co-Chair for the Council for Exceptional Children and in an elected position on the Innovation and Technology Committee for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and on eight journal review boards. She has been awarded the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC): the Children Advocacy Network Advocate of the Year Award; the Romaine P. Mackie Award from the Division of Legacy and Leadership (DLL); the Outstanding Service Award and the Outstanding Journal Article Award from Teacher Education Division (TED), the UCF Graduate Student Mentor of the Year Award, and the University of Illinois and Eastern Illinois University Outstanding Alumni of the Year Awards. ## Nirmayee (Nemo) Dighe Associate Director, Business Intelligence, Delaware Life Marketing, A Group 1001 Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nirmayee-nemo-dighe/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Nirmayee "Nemo" Dighe is a data strategist with experience helping organizations design and scale decision-driven operating models within complex enterprise environments. She works at the intersection of business, data, and technology, partnering with leaders to translate strategic goals into practical analytics roadmaps that deliver measurable business value. She developed a practical framework that guides teams from defining business objectives and assessing data readiness to evaluating infrastructure and building the skills and culture required for sustainable impact. Her work helps organizations cut through the noise, align data initiatives to real business needs, and establish the clarity required for scalable, responsible use of analytics and AI. A published writer and frequent speaker, Nemo shares insights on the future of analytics, AI, and decision intelligence through industry journals, conferences, and community events. She is also a passionate advocate for women in technology, supporting initiatives that promote representation, mentorship, and leadership development across the tech ecosystem. ## Murad Dikeidek Head of Cybersecurity, UI Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/murad-dikeidek/ Track: Generative AI: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Murad leads cybersecurity at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, bringing more than two decades in IT and more than a decade of hands-on security experience. His career reflects a steady rise through the technical ranks across infrastructure, engineering, and information security, giving him a practical understanding of how to build and mature security programs in the complex environment of a teaching and research academic health system. Before joining UI Health and establishing its cybersecurity program, he spent his final two years in the U.S. Army working in cybersecurity. He has also taught cybersecurity and networking, reflecting a leadership style rooted in technical credibility, practical execution, and capability building. ## Sofija Dimitrijevic Student, California Polytechnic State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sofija-dimitrijevic/ Industry: Software Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Sofija Dimitrijevic is a recent computer science graduate from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. At Cal Poly, Sofija specialized in artificial intelligence and machine learning with a minor in linguistics and also completed AI-focused software engineeering internships at HP and Microsoft. She is an incoming computer science master's student at UC Santa Barbara with intended research concentration in natural language processing. Sofija is passionate about applied ML and computational linguistics and thrives at the intersection of language, data, and technology, where she builds solutions that bridge human communication and AI. ## Boyan Dimitrov CTO, SIXT SE Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/boyan-dimitrov/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: IT Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Boyan Dimitrov is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SIXT, responsible for the company’s tech vision and strategy. He oversees the SIXT Engineering Hubs in Munich, Bangalore, Kiev, and Lisbon. Prior to joining SIXT in 2015, Boyan had a long career in the startup ecosystems in the UK and Bulgaria. In his last position, he led the platform teams at Hailo in London, where he worked on a global microservices platform in the mobility space. With over 15 years of experience in cloud and distributed systems, Boyan is a frequent speaker at tech conferences around the world. He holds a bachelor’s degree in network technologies and an MSc degree in IT project management from Aston University in Birmingham. ## Andy Dingler Head of AI Strategy, Daimler Truck North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andy-dingler/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Andy Dingler is Head of AI Strategy at Daimler Truck North America, where he leads enterprise AI adoption across the organization. He partners with executive, data, technology, and business leaders to move AI from experimentation into secure, governed, production-ready systems that create measurable business value. Andy’s work focuses on building AI-native operating models for large enterprises, including AI portfolio intake, prioritization, governance, delivery enablement, and adoption measurement. His experience spans generative AI, agentic AI, data platforms, analytics strategy, machine learning, and enterprise transformation. Prior to his current role, Andy helped build Daimler Truck North America’s modern data and AI platform foundation, including Snowflake-based analytics and machine learning capabilities that support enterprise-wide AI solutions. He brings a background in consulting, advanced analytics, and platform strategy, with a focus on bridging business strategy and deep technical execution. At Ai4, Andy brings a practitioner’s perspective on how large organizations can scale AI responsibly by combining executive alignment, reusable technology patterns, governed delivery models, and real adoption inside business workflows. ## Rob DiNuzzo VP of Marketing, Nimble Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rob-dinuzzo/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Rob DiNuzzo is a technology go-to-market leader with more than 15 years of experience helping high-growth  companies scale from early adoption to market leadership. Throughout his career, he has led go-to-market strategy across AI, cloud infrastructure, observability, cybersecurity, and developer platforms, holding leadership roles at Datadog, Smartly.io, Epsagon, and Gladly. He has helped scale several category-defining technology companies to major growth milestones, including Datadog's IPO, Smartly.io's acquisition by Providence Equity Partners, and Epsagon's acquisition by Cisco. Today, Rob is part of the leadership team at Nimble, which powers production AI agents with expert-level web search. He works closely with enterprise organizations building AI applications, helping them bridge the gap between experimentation and production through reliable access to the data their AI systems need. Having worked across multiple technology waves, from cloud infrastructure to today's AI revolution, Rob brings a practical perspective on enterprise adoption, product strategy, and building technologies that deliver measurable business value. Outside of work, Rob is a passionate classic car collector who enjoys restoring vintage automobiles, combining an appreciation for timeless engineering with a love of innovation. ## John Divine Assistant Managing Editor, Investing, U.S. News & World Report Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-divine/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes John Divine is Assistant Managing Editor of Investing for U.S. News & World Report. He has a background in finance and has been a financial journalist for the last 15 years. In addition to U.S. News, John's work has been published by The Motley Fool, Yahoo Finance and InvestorPlace, among other outlets. As reader interest in AI surges, John is interested in staying abreast of the newest AI developments, and the opportunities and risks that they pose to investors. In his free time, John enjoys playing basketball and is a small-time real estate investor. He can often be found listening to true crime podcasts while struggling to tame his unruly garden. ## Daniel Dobos Co-Chair, AI For Good Impact Initiative Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/daniel-dobos/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Telecom Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Daniel Dobos co-chairs the ITU AI for Good Impact Initiative, chairs the Swiss AI Standardisation Commission and he bridges cutting-edge research with real-world customer solutions, most recently as Research Director at Swisscom. Previously, he led AI and data analysis projects at CERN — contributing to the landmark Higgs boson discovery — and at the United Nations. His research spans artificial intelligence, quantum computing, graph neural networks, and particle physics, with publications cited tens of thousands of times. Educated at TU Dortmund with affiliations at Lancaster University and CERN, he is a leading voice at the intersection of science, AI, and societal impact. ## Brian Docili Vice President, IT Infrastructure & Operations, Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-docili/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Brian Docili, MBA is Vice President of Infrastructure & Operations at Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions, where he drives enterprise innovation across AI, automation, cloud transformation, and cybersecurity. With nearly two decades of executive IT leadership experience—including senior roles at Technicolor and IBM—Brian has led large-scale digital transformation initiatives that modernize legacy systems, optimize business processes, and enhance operational resilience. He specializes in aligning emerging technologies such as AI and RPA with strategic business objectives to deliver measurable efficiency gains and competitive advantage. Brian is passionate about building high-performing teams and translating complex technology strategies into practical, value-driven outcomes for the enterprise. ## Lynn Dohm Executive Director, Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lynn-dohm/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Lynn Dohm, Executive Director of Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS), leads initiatives to recruit, retain and advance women in cybersecurity. With over two decades of experience as a strategist, she has successfully aligned businesses, nonprofits and grant-funded programs with workforce goals. Her accolades include an honorary Doctor of Science & Technology from Champlain College (2024), two SANS Difference Maker Awards and recognition as one of CS Hub’s Top 25 Cybersecurity Leaders. Lynn also contributes to the cybersecurity community through her roles on the CSA AI Initiative, the UMGC CIT Advisory Board, and as a Board Member for the CIS Alan Paller Laureate Program. ## Dan Donovan Congressman, RegulatingAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dan-donovan/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Legal Job Function: Legal Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Daniel M. Donovan, Jr. Regulating AI Advisory Board Member Former Member of US Congress (NY 11) Former NYC District Attorney ## Ryan Donovan Host, Stack Overflow Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-donovan/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Ryan Donovan, podcast host and blog editor at Stack Overflow, has spent over twenty years working with and writing for software engineers, understanding their mindset, workflow, and technology. Now, as the host of The Stack Overflow Podcast and editor of StackOverflow.blog, he leads conversations with technologists, founders, engineers, and industry leaders and shares stories about software development, AI, developer culture, and the future of technology. Through a mix of technical understanding and storytelling ability, Ryan brings that same spirit of curiosity, collaboration, and practical knowledge to conversations about where the tech industry is headed next. ## Rick Doten AI Researcher and Author, AiSuNe Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rick-doten/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Rick focuses on AI Governance and Ethics research and advising companies, venture capital firms, and numerous cybersecurity startups. He is an award winning CISO, where he has supported many organizations and industries. He is frequent speaker, podcast guest, and writer of papers for topics ranging from cybersecurity, neurodiversity, and AI governance and security. In prior roles, Rick was a Healthplan CISO for Centene, CISO for multinational mobile services company, and Virtual CISO supporting international companies. During his time as vCISO he educated corporate boards, developed and matured security programs, built a SOC, and created the curriculum for a Cybersecurity Master’s degree program for an International University. Rick has spoke at cybersecurity conferences such as RSA, Secureworld, and FutureCon, and guest on podcasts such as The CyberWire Hashtable, CISO Series, Google Cloud, Elevate Your Career, and The Rsnake Show talking about cybersecurity, AI, leadership, and Neurodiversity topics. He on the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) CXO Trust Advisory Council, and the Boards of his local Charlotte ISC2, BSides, and CSA Chapters. Rick is a member of the CIS Critical Security Controls editorial panel and was a major author for Version 8 of the Controls. Rick has a Cybersecurity YouTube channel where he recorded an overview of changes to each of the 18 new CIS CSC v8 Controls, and has recent Keynotes and other videos on cybersecurity and neurodiversity topics. Rick has alternated between being a cybersecurity management consultant and CISO throughout his 25+ year cybersecurity career, and has led many ethical hacking, incident response and forensics, and risk management teams. In his spare time Rick is the social coordinator for his Charlotte CISO community, a foodie, yoga teacher, and climbs at his local rock climbing gym. ## Jed Dougherty SVP of AI & Platform, Dataiku Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jed-dougherty/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Jed Dougherty is SVP of AI & Platform at Dataiku, where he helps companies shape the future of their enterprise AI platforms. He leads the strategy for building and scaling end-to-end AI ecosystems across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and for deep integration with partners such as Snowflake, Databricks, and NVIDIA.With a background in data science and field engineering leadership, Jed works with executives and builders to turn AI ambition into secure, governed, production-grade impact. A frequent industry speaker and media contributor, he is known for pragmatic leadership on operationalizing responsible AI at enterprise scale. ## Kat Downs Mulder GM of Yahoo News, Yahoo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kat-downs-mulder/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kat Downs Mulder, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Yahoo News Kat Downs Mulder is an award-winning digital news innovator. As SVP and General Manager of Yahoo News, she oversees global product, editorial and strategy across the Yahoo homepage, news app, Yahoo Creators, Games and Weather and content spanning news, entertainment and lifestyle. Downs Mulder came to Yahoo after 14 years at The Washington Post where she was most recently Chief Product Officer and Managing Editor, bridging newsroom and engineering and driving a strategy aimed at accelerating digital innovation across the company. Previously she was The Post’s first-ever Vice President of Product & Design. Downs Mulder graduated from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and has also taught courses at Georgetown University and Northwestern. Her work has been honored by the Peabody Awards, the Society of Newspaper Design, the Online Journalism Awards and the Malofiej International Infographics Awards. She resides in Washington, DC. ## Emily Drazan Chapman Legal AI Architect, DragonGC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emily-drazan-chapman/ Track: Legal Industry: Legal Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Emily Chapman is Legal AI Architect at DragonGC, where she spearheads issuer-focused research and AI-driven disclosure innovation. She leverages over a decade of securities law expertise from both Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, providing regulator-grade guidance on complex filings, rulemaking, and emerging areas such as cryptocurrency and cross-border offerings. A former SEC rulemaking contributor who presented directly to Commissioners, Emily also serves as a member of the Albany Law School Board of Trustees and is President of its National Alumni Association Board of Directors. She holds a J.D., cum laude, from Albany Law School, an MBA from the University at Albany, and a B.S. in Finance and International Business from SUNY New Paltz. ‍ ## Andrew Duncan Chief Executive Officer, QualityAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-duncan/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Andrew Duncan is an accomplished business leader and entrepreneur with more than 30 years of international experience across consulting, technology, and professional services. Recognised for driving sustained growth, managing complex transformations, and building high-performing teams, Andrew has driven innovative strategies for many of the world’s most respected brands across global markets. Before joining QualityAI as Chief Executive Officer, Andrew served as CEO of Infosys Consulting, positioning the firm as one of the fastest growing and most profitable business units within the Infosys group. Under his direction, the organisation adopted a new operating model, strengthened its leadership through internal promotions and targeted external hires, and launched several cutting-edge service lines. The impact was significant: record-breaking revenues, double-digit annual growth, and market-leading profitability. His strategic vision and operational discipline helped drive exceptional client retention and significantly elevated the firm’s profile across the C-suite, analyst, and media communities. Earlier in his career, Andrew held senior leadership roles at A.T. Kearney, AlixPartners, and Galphay, and co-founded a professional services firm that achieved rapid scale under his direction. He has delivered major initiatives in strategy, digital transformation, and organisational change across a wide range of industries, including financial services, retail, energy, and healthcare. Andrew holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London. A dual UK–US citizen, he was named a ‘Global Leader in Consulting’ by Consulting Magazine in 2022. He is frequently published in international media, a regular contributor to the Forbes Technology Council, and a sought-after speaker on the future of leadership, AI, and digital innovation. ## Praneet Dutta Founder, usepomo.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/praneet-dutta/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Praneet Dutta is the CEO and co-founder of Pomo, an autonomous AI marketing platform applying agentic systems to real-world decision-making. Previously, he was a Research Engineering Tech Lead in Generative AI at Google DeepMind, where he worked on post-training and deployment of large-scale foundation models, including Gemini, Nano Bananas, Imagen. His work spans industrial control systems, climate solutions, recommender systems, and large-scale advertising platforms, bridging research and production at scale. Praneet has received numerous awards for contributions to applied AI and has served on program committees for leading machine learning conferences. ## Debojyoti Dutta Chief AI Officer, Nutanix Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/debojyoti-dutta/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Soumitra Dutta Portulans Institute and Former Dean, Cornell University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/soumitra-dutta/ Track: AI Policy Summit Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Bill Dwoinen Chief Revenue Officer, Mural Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bill-dwoinen/ Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Bill Dwoinen is a dynamic revenue leader with over 20 years of award-winning experience transforming organizations and accelerating sustainable growth. In his current role as Chief Revenue Officer at Mural, Bill leads revenue operations and customer success, where he aligns sales, marketing, customer success, and partnerships around delivering a seamless end-to-end customer experience. His career spans the human capital and SaaS sectors, marked by leadership roles at industry leaders including Slack and Salesforce. Bill excels at building high-performing global teams, crafting go-to-market strategies that win new business, and maximizing growth across existing customer portfolios. A champion of operational excellence, he is passionate about designing efficient, scalable processes and fostering a culture built on trust, innovation, and accountability. Dedicated to community engagement, Bill invests in the next generation by mentoring students and imparting crucial business skills that help empower future leaders to thrive. ## Caleb Eastman Field CTO - Americas, Siemens Digital Industries Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/caleb-eastman/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] State: Georgia Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Caleb works closely with manufacturers across the country to help translate emerging technologies into practical, scalable industrial solutions. In this role, Caleb serves as a trusted technical advisor to executives, engineers, and operations leaders navigating digital transformation, automation, and AI adoption in complex production environments.  With a background spanning industrial automation, AI and product engineering, Caleb brings a systems-level perspective to solving real-world manufacturing challenges. ## Kris Efland VP of Engineering, Deepgram Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kris-efland/ Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kris is VP of Engineering at Deepgram, where he helps small, focused teams turn cutting-edge speech AI into practical tools for developers. Over the past two decades he’s shipped everything from consumer gadgets to global cloud services. Before Deepgram, Kris led the Amazon Personalize, and the Geospatial AI/ML portfolio at AWS, launching satellite-imagery capabilities for Amazon SageMaker. Earlier, he headed both autonomous mapping and autonomous AI tooling at Lyft and held senior engineering leadership roles at HERE and Nokia, with a few startup adventures along the way. Kris cares most about building products customers actually use and growing engineers who love their craft. ## Nina Eisenberg AGC, Workplace Ethics & Investigations, Coinbase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nina-eisenberg/ Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Legal Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Nina Eisenberg, AWI-CH leads the Workplace Ethics & Investigations function at Coinbase. She oversees all internal investigations into workplace misconduct, including, but not limited to: interpersonal conflict, bullying, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, data exfiltration, disruptive or harmful speech, insider threat concerns, insider trading, and other violations of Company policy. Nina has personally conducted over 500 internal investigations and advised on a panoply of internal employment concerns. Nina also trains managers and HR on employment best practices, employee resources, and crisis management. Nina is a credentialed investigator (AWI-CH) and is certified in Mental Health First Aid. Prior to joining Coinbase, Nina worked as an employment lawyer at Perkins Coie LLP, and a litigator at Boies Schiller & Flexner. ## Ayman Elhalwagy Co-Founder and CEO, RootCause.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ayman-elhalwagy/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Software Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Ayman Elhalwagy is Co-Founder and CEO of RootCause, the ground truth for business decisions. RootCause's platform autonomously uncovers the real drivers behind business performance, generating explainable, high-ROI decisions across every function. Powered by proprietary causal AI, autonomous ontologies, and temporal digital twins, it cuts analytical time by 80% and surfaces actions that traditional BI and ML miss entirely. Before RootCause, Ayman founded and led an AI R&D consultancy, solving high-stakes operational challenges for enterprise clients using frontier machine learning. His PhD research pioneered dataset fusion and generalized deep learning models that cut computational needs by 90%, work later deployed by NASA and across 8-figure portfolios, and awarded the 2023 Brunel Research Impact Award. ## Mohamed Elhoseiny Associate Professor & Founder, KAUST & CreativAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mohamed-elhoseiny/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Mohamed Elhoseiny is the founder and CEO of CreativAI and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at KAUST, and is a senior member honoree of AAAI and IEEE. Previously, he was a visiting Faculty at Stanford Computer Science Department (Oct 2019-March 2020), a Visiting Faculty at Baidu Research (March-October 2019), and a Postdoc researcher at Facebook AI Research (Nov 2016- Jan 2019). Dr. Elhoseiny earned his Ph.D. in 2016 from Rutgers University, where he was part of the art & AI lab and spent time at SRI International in 2014 and at Adobe Research (2015-2016). His primary research interest is in computer vision and especially in efficient multimodal learning with limited data in zero/few-shot learning and Vision and language. He is also interested in Affective AI and especially in understanding and generating novel visual content (e.g., art and fashion). He received an NSF Fellowship in 2014, the Doctoral Consortium award at CVPR’16, the Best Paper award at ECCVW’18 on Fashion and Design,and was selected as an MIT 35 under 35 semi-finalist in 2020. His zero-shot learning work was featured at the United Nations, and his creative AI work was featured in MIT Tech Review, New Scientist Magazine, Forbes Science, and HBO Silicon Valley. He has served as an Area Chair at major CV/AI conferences, including CVPR21, ICCV21, IJCAI22, ECCV22, ICLR23, CVPR23, ICCV’23, NeurIPS23, ICLR’24, CVPR’24, ECCV’24, SG Asia’24 and has organized Closing the Loop Between Vision and Language workshops at ICCV’15, ICCV’17, ICCV’19, ICCV’21, ICCV’23. In an unplanned participation, he won third place at the data+AI summit hackathon at San Francisco held in may 2024 (200 participants) with a multimodal LLM hack called HomeGPT. ## Byron Ellis Principal Staff Software Engineer, Big Data Pipelines & Platform Infrastructure, LinkedIn Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/byron-ellis/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Byron is a Principle Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn working in Big Data Pipelines and Platform Infrastructure. Over the years he has held a wide variety of roles including roles in software engineering, data science, product management and executive leadership across companies ranging from startups to major technology companies such as Google and YouTube. He has also been involved in a variety of open source communities and helping to build the next generation of talent through participation in programs like Code Next. He suspects early 2026 will prove to be the last time he wrote code directly in a professional setting. ## Amir Emadzadeh Software Engineering Manager ML, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amir-emadzadeh/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Dr. Amir Emadzadeh is a Software Engineering Manager for Machine Learning at Meta's Ads organization. With experience spanning healthcare, autonomous vehicles, and consumer technology, he has contributed to AI/ML initiatives at companies including Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Waymo, and Nvidia. At Genentech, he led development of AI-powered platforms for clinical trial automation, while at Gilead Sciences he worked on optimization algorithms for clinical operations. Amir holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and is the author of "Navigation in Space by X-ray Pulsars" (Springer). He also serves as Adjunct Professor at California Science and Technology University, teaching Machine Learning & AI courses, and has been granted several patents in AI/ML applications and positioning systems. ## Tegan Emerson Chief Data Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tegan-emerson/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Tegan Emerson is a Chief Data Scientist in the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She leverages her mathematics background to develop data science solutions in support of the DOE mission. Specifically, Dr. Emerson focuses on assuring AI in high-consequence settings; both developing models that are assured by design and improving, evaluating, and understanding assurances for frontier models. Her work and technical leadership has supported innovations in hyperspectral imaging, overhead image analysis, models of atmospheric turbulence, signal processing, neuroscience, medical imaging, materials science, and many other application domains. Dr. Emerson’s research interests include geometric and topological data analysis, dimensionality reduction, image processing, generative AI, and optimization. In 2022 Tegan, along with two of her PNNL colleagues, founded a collaborative research community in topology, algebra, and geometry in data science which has grown to include over 1000 researchers across the world. ## Grace Engels Chief Strategy Officer, PWA Practice, Ameriprise Financial Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/grace-engels/ Track: Product Design Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Grace Engels is a creative executive and enterprise AI strategist who builds the systems, teams, and technology ecosystems that transform how organizations operate at scale, with experience from product development in consumer packaged goods to Ameriprise Financial Services, Chief Strategy Officer in private wealth advisory practice. Currently joining Ameriprise as an AI and Automation Strategy leader for private wealth management, Grace brings a rare combination of deep technology architecture expertise and large-scale organizational transformation experience to one of the industry's most consequential AI moments. Prior to Ameriprise, Grace served as Director of Design Transformation at Newell Brands, where she architected a fully integrated, ERP-driven content supply chain built for generative automation at scale. Her technology ecosystem spanned the full content lifecycle, connecting Salesforce, Salsify, SAP, and Windchill for product data and workflow governance; Adobe AEM, WorkFront, Firefly Services, GenStudio, Fusion, and Substance for AI-powered creative production; and Frame.io for global review and collaboration across 60+ iconic consumer brands including Sharpie, Graco, Elmer's, Coleman, Yankee Candle, and Rubbermaid. She also led the implementation and integration of CGI rendering pipelines and collaborative robotics within photo and video production studios, enabling fully automated, high-volume asset creation at enterprise scale. The result: a centralized creative footprint, a 5× increase in creative content output YOY, 150% growth in new product development pipelines, and multimillion-dollar cost savings, alongside the transformation and relocation of a 160+ person global design organization. ## Leila Ensaniat Assistant Professor, San José State University, Department of Design Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/leila-ensaniat/ Industry: Education Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Leila Ensaniat is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design in the Department of Design at San José State University. She is an award-winning industrial designer with industry experience at Cisco, specializing in consumer electronics and human-centered innovation. Her expertise includes industrial design, color, material and finish (CMF), and manufacturing processes. Her current research explores how AI, virtual reality, and augmented reality can be thoughtfully integrated into design practice and education. Her work has received recognition from the Red Dot Design Award, the A’ Design Award, ASUS, and other leading organizations. ## Jeff Erno Technical Fellow, Dassault Systèmes Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeff-erno/ Track: Product Design Industry: Software Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jeff Erno works at the front edge of how engineering is evolving. His work spans Computer Aided Design (CAD), simulation, and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), with a focus on early-phase design, configuration at scale, and the data structures required for AI to move beyond reading engineering data… to actually learning from it. Jeff holds multiple patents across CAD methods, turbomachinery, and model-based automation, reflecting a career grounded in building—not just describing—engineering systems. He is known for bringing clarity to complex topics—and for challenging the industry to move beyond legacy approaches that limit innovation. At Dassault Systèmes, he helps companies rethink how products are defined—not as disconnected files and BOMs, but as unified, model-based systems that capture intent, relationships, and decisions. ## Akbar Esfahani Enterprise AI & Systems Architect, Central California Alliance for Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/akbar-esfahani/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Akbar Akbari Esfahani, MIS, is the AI & System Architect and Advanced Analytics Manager at Central California Alliance for Health, a Medi-Cal managed care plan serving 420,000 members across rural Central California. He chairs the AI Governance Committee and holds Enterprise Architect standing. Over the past three years he designed and scaled an embedded analytics function with AI as a native capability, spanning clinical operations, care management, program integrity, and member engagement, with fifty solutions now in production. His work is built on a distinction most organizations haven't yet made: dashboards are reports you visit; instruments are systems embedded at the moment of work. He builds the latter. Before the Alliance, Akbar was Director of Data Science Innovation at LA Care Health Plan and Head of Analytics at Vital Decisions. At Highmark Health he led data science evangelism and built the foundational distributed computing infrastructure, training more than 300 staff. Earlier, at UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research, he worked on CalAIM population health and California Health Interview Survey methodology. He has taught R for Data Science and Data Mining as adjunct faculty at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College, and is published in Environmental Modelling & Software. Akbar holds a Master of Integrated Sciences from the University of Colorado Denver and a B.S. in Mathematics. His operating conviction is simple: analytics shouldn't be where you go. It should be invisible as work gets done. ## Darrell Etherington Editor, The Angle Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/darrell-etherington/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Darrell Etherington is the founder of The Angle, a twice-weekly newsletter covering AI, early-stage startups, and the intersection of technology and society, and co-host of Artifactor, a podcast exploring AI, gadgets, and consumer tech. He is also Senior Vice President at SBS Comms, the tech and culture communications agency behind some of the most influential companies in technology, including Cursor, Mercor Ramp, Cloudflare, GitHub, and Bessemer Venture Partners. At SBS, he helps category-defining startups and enterprises shape their narratives at the leading edge of AI, fintech, infrastructure, and beyond. Before making the move to communications, Darrell spent more than a decade at TechCrunch, ultimately serving as Managing Editor, where he covered everything from space and transportation to the rise of generative AI. His career also includes in-house roles at Apple and Shopify, giving him a rare perspective spanning journalism, big tech, and the startup ecosystem. A frequent commentator on AI's impact on how companies build, hire, and communicate, Darrell is based in Toronto, Canada. ## Devon Euring AI Risk Executive, iHeartMedia. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devon-euring/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Devon J. Euring, Chief Risk Officer, Author and 3X Board Advisor, is a nationally recognized executive in AI governance, cybersecurity, blockchain, and enterprise risk. known as The Risk Rebel, Devon works with boards, regulators, and global organizations to help them deploy advanced technologies, AI, automation, blockchain, and digital platforms, without losing accountability, trust, or ethical integrity. With over two decades of experience spanning media, finance, fintech, and emerging technology, Devon specializes in translating complex AI risk into decision-grade frameworks executives can act on. His “Risk Rewritten” book philosophy challenges organizations to move beyond compliance theater and instead engineer identity, intent, and human oversight directly into AI systems. Devon is a sought-after advisor and speaker on agentic AI, Zero-Trust architectures for non-human actors, and the future of ethical, scalable automation. At AI4, he brings a bold, pragmatic perspective on how enterprises can accelerate innovation while ensuring AI remains aligned to human values, regulatory reality, and long-term business trust. ## Giovanni Everduin Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, Commercial Bank International Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/giovanni-everduin/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Gio serves as Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at CBI, a Dubai based bank. he oversees a broad portfolio of Strategy, Transformation, Business Intelligence, Innovation & Sustainability. His role included the scope of Chief AI Officer for the bank. Gio founded CBIx, a subsidiary of the bank that includes its Corporate VC and the bank's Innovation Lab which builds uses cases for fintech, AI, and Web3. His work helped the Bank win multiple innovation awards, including the Forbes Best Banks list for 2026 Gio serves as a Board Director for Zypl, a series-A synthetic data & AI startup, serves on the advisory board for Luna PR, the AI advisory board for the UAE's United Banking Federation and is a steering board member for Tumar, a national AI & innovation venture fund between The World Bank and Government of Kazakhstan. Lastly, he serves as special advisor on AI to th National AI Council of Tajikistan, and was part of a UN working group supporting the draft of a UN resolution on regional collaboration in AI development and governance. Gio is a HBS alum who loves vibecoding and lifehacking with Claude. ## Tala Fakhouri Vice President Consulting, AI & Digital Policy, Real-World Research, Parexel Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tala-fakhouri/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Dr. Tala H. Fakhouri, PhD, MPH, VP, Consulting: AI & Digital Policy, Real-World Research at Parexel, is the former Associate Director for Data Science & AI Policy at FDA/CDER, where she led policy tracks for AI and RWE including authoring FDA’s first AI and RWE guidance documents, co-chaired the CDER AI Council, and helped shape global regulatory frameworks for AI, digital health technologies and real-world evidence. Prior to FDA, Tala held leadership roles at CDC including Chief Statistician for CDC’s flagship health study NHANES, and served on the Federal Committee for Statistical Methodology. ## Yishay Falick Co-Founder & CEO, Bility Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yishay-falick/ Track: Secret Content Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Yishay Falick, MD, MBA, CEO & Co-Founder Bility Dr. Falick’s is a corneal and stem cell reconstructive surgeon and physician-executive bridging clinical rigor with disruptive engineering. An MD and an MBA alumnus of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, ranked 10th in the Global Top Ten for Alumni Entrepreneurship His leadership journey includes serving as the CEO of a public Hospital and as the Chairman of the Israeli BioChip Consortium. During his tenure as Director of HealthTech & BioConvergence technologies innovation at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), he led his team to secured the largest grant to date (113M) from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) to establish the national BioChip R&D center. His commitment to humanitarian impact is profound; during the COVID-19 pandemic, he led a specialized delegation of ophthalmologists to Azerbaijan, treating 150 veterans and restoring sight and function to those wounded in conflict. Currently, as the CEO of Bility, an NVIDIA Inception member, Dr. Falick leads this Physical AI startup, redefining Human aware artificial limbs & bio-robotic operating systems. By integrating surgical precision with human-aware locomotion, Bility is developing next-generation adaptive prosthetics with a direct human interface, dedicated to restoring mobility and dignity to wounded veterans and amputees worldwide. ## Matt Fangman Field CTO, SailPoint Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-fangman/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Matt Fangman is a seasoned technical leader with over 30 years of experience in enterprise software, cloud services, AI, data solutions, and strategic integration. In the last five years, he has driven innovation and technical strategies at Microsoft and SailPoint, focusing on AI-driven transformations, data maturity, and modern workplace solutions. Currently, as Field CTO at SailPoint since February 2025, Matt aligns with field sales and technical teams to spearhead strategic account engagements. He specializes in integrating SailPoint's identity governance platforms with Microsoft technologies, while pioneering AI agents and multi-agent systems to optimize Agent Identity security and helping bring security and governance to AI solutions and agents. Prior to joining SailPoint, he was the Data & AI Leader for strategic accounts in Microsoft's manufacturing segment, Matt managed the company's largest clients within the Data & AI solution area. He advanced customer maturity models to accelerate adoption of cutting-edge data and AI capabilities, leading a specialized team with deep engineering partnerships to deliver market-aligned solutions that addressed complex industry demands. In his prior role as CTO for Microsoft's Modern Workplace business in the US Enterprise segment—encompassing Office 365, Microsoft Security offerings, Enterprise Mobility Suite, and Windows offerings—Matt orchestrated sales and go-to-market strategies and led these teams for 8 years. ## Paul Farnsworth President, Dice Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-farnsworth/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Paul Farnsworth is the President of Dice, a tech-focused job platform under DHI Group that connects technology professionals with employers across the United States. Dice combines advanced AI-driven job matching, skills-based search, and data-driven hiring insights with the deepest pool of specialized tech professionals in the market — making it the go-to platform for employers using AI and technology teams that will define the next era of business. As an experienced leader with a strong focus on technology driving business objectives, Mr. Farnsworth has a demonstrated track record of delivering excellence across products, strategy, and operations, helping organizations of all sizes navigate the impact of digital change on business. Prior to becoming President of Dice, Mr. Farnsworth served as Chief Technology Officer of DHI Group, overseeing the technology strategy powering both Dice and ClearanceJobs. Earlier in his career, he held the role of CTO at Reed Group and served as Senior Vice President of Information Technology at Level 3 Communications, with additional roles of increasing responsibility at Qwest Corporation. He has also served as a board member and advisor to various startup and growth companies, guiding technology best practices and long-term roadmaps. Mr. Farnsworth has lived and worked in Europe, India, and the United States, bringing a global perspective to the future of work and the evolving needs of today's tech talent market. ## Shameem Farouk Human Capital Director, Group Technology, Digital Banking, and Data, Maybank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shameem-farouk/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: AI & Data Services Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Quinn Favret Co-Founder and COO, Tavus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/quinn-favret/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees State: California Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Quinn is the Co-Founder and COO of Tavus, an AI research lab focused on human computing, building foundational models for human-machine interaction, backed by Sequoia, CRV, and YCombinator. He is a Thiel Fellow and University of Michigan alumna. ## Alexander Fedotov Director, AI to Transform Care, Enterprise AI, AstraZeneca Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alexander-fedotov/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Alexander Fedotov, PhD is a Director in Enterprise AI at AstraZeneca, where he focuses on applying and scaling multimodal AI models and agentic workflows across the precision health ecosystem. He has nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of precision medicine, AI/ML, and digital health, spanning enterprise data platforms, interoperability frameworks, and clinical risk-assessment engines. Previously, he led the development and deployment of AI-powered precision medicine platforms at Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, established strategic partnerships across the healthcare, biopharmaceutical, diagnostics, and technology ecosystems, and held a product leadership role in an early-stage digital health company. Dr. Fedotov holds a PhD in genetics and molecular biology from Emory University. ## Daniel Fernandez Coviella Senior Application Security Engineer, Visa Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/daniel-fernandez-coviella/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Daniel is a Senior Application Security Engineer at Visa, where he works at the intersection of secure software development, AI-assisted engineering, and responsible AI adoption across enterprise workflows. He partners closely with engineering teams to help ensure software moving through the development lifecycle and into production meets strong security standards. Daniel has developed internal tools, guidance, and developer enablement resources that help teams integrate AI more effectively and securely into their workflows. His hands-on experience includes evaluating AI-generated code quality, identifying coding-assistant failure modes, and helping shape practical controls that make secure development the path of least resistance for developers — not an afterthought. Daniel is passionate about making security practical for developers and helping teams adopt AI in ways that improve engineering velocity without compromising code quality, data safety, or accountability. ## Adam Field Chief AI Officer, Tungsten Automation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/adam-field/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Adam Field is Chief AI Officer at Tungsten Automation, leveraging his extensive global experience in enterprise intelligent automation to drive innovation and optimize Tungsten Automation's customer experiences to maximize the value and ROI they derive from their Intelligent Automation Platform investment. Field joined Tungsten Automation from Pegasystems, where he was global head of innovation and experience. He spent nearly 17 years with the company, ultimately leading its technology innovation group, its global executive briefing program and its multinational sales proposal organization – among many other responsibilities. Prior to Pegasystems, Field worked at Staples, where he designed and built the platform for the company's first international e-commerce website. ## Gary Fingerhut EVP, Kore.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gary-fingerhut/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Florida Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Team or company is hiring: No Industry-leading innovators are applying Enterprise AI to change the healthcare industry. Whether focused on interactions with patients, members, employees, call center agents, consumers, or healthcare professionals - organizations are driving operational advantages throughout their organizations. Learn insights and hear forward-thinking approaches from the leader in Conversational AI on current use cases and the future of AI in healthcare. Gary Fingerhut is the EVP of Pre-Built Agentic Industry Solutions at Kore.ai, where he leads cross-industry strategy across healthcare, banking, retail, and travel & leisure. He brings together product and go-to-market teams to accelerate the development and deployment of intelligent, industry-specific AI solutions. Over the past five years, Gary has been instrumental in shaping Kore.ai’s healthcare provider, insurance payer, and life sciences offerings, delivering measurable outcomes and advancing the company’s vision for conversational and generative AI. He continues to lead the healthcare strategy and product portfolio, helping payers, providers, and life sciences organizations transform engagement and operations. ## Guy Flechter Co-Founder and CEO, Sola Security Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/guy-flechter/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter A self-proclaimed technophobe (we know, very believable), with over 20 years of security grit: from leading teams at AppsFlyer and LivePerson to co-founding Cider Security (acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2022) and Sola. On a mission to redefine the cybersecurity industry. ## Evan Fleisch Head of Sales, Euno Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/evan-fleisch/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Evan Fleisch is Head of Sales at Euno. Over the past 20 years, he has built and scaled enterprise sales organizations at early-stage AI and data companies, including Buildots and Sisense. Today, he is leading Euno's go-to-market as the company helps enterprises make AI work reliably on top of their core data with its Enterprise AI Context Platform. ## Alexandra Foote Lead Product Manager, The Walt Disney Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alexandra-foote/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Alexandra Foote is the Lead Product Manager for Player Experience at Disney+, where she oversees streaming experience strategy across Disney+ and Hulu, shaping how hundreds of millions of fans discover, watch, and engage with content while driving platform innovation and AI adoption across the company's product and technology organization. A product and technology leader with experience spanning AI, advertising, search, and entertainment, Alexandra has built her career at some of the world's most influential technology companies. Prior to Disney, she held senior product roles at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, building products used by billions of consumers and enterprises worldwide while driving meaningful revenue, growth, and scale. A builder of novel, impactful products whose innovations have earned a U.S. patent, she has also led intern programs and championed early-career development across every company she has joined, driven by a genuine commitment to investing in the next generation of tech talent. A Forbes-featured startup founder and prolific speaker, Alexandra has taken the stage before tens of thousands on career navigation, salary negotiation, and business excellence. As multifaceted as she is accomplished, she also won Miss Boston USA 2025 on a platform with a simple message: beauty and brilliance are not mutually exclusive, but a power combo. An Atlanta native, Alexandra earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, where she was a student-athlete. She currently resides in New York City. ## Reza Forghani Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), AdventHealth Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/reza-forghani/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Reza Forghani is a neuroradiologist, Chief Medical Information Officer for Imaging at AdventHealth, and an internationally recognized leader in clinical artificial intelligence (AI), imaging informatics, and digital transformation. He earned his MD and PhD at McGill University, completed his Diagnostic Radiology residency at McGill, and pursued fellowship training in Neuroradiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. With extensive experience spanning clinical practice, executive leadership, operations, research, and innovation across academic and private healthcare settings, Dr. Forghani focuses on bridging clinical care, enterprise technology, and artificial intelligence to translate innovation into scalable clinical practice. He has successfully led large initiatives in imaging informatics and clinical AI adoption, and his work encompasses enterprise AI strategy, governance, workflow integration, and responsible deployment to improve clinical outcomes, operational performance, patient safety, and sustainable value creation while advancing whole-person, consumer-centered care. Dr. Forghani is a widely invited speaker, educator, and thought leader in clinical AI. He has authored more than 150 scientific publications and serves in editorial and advisory roles that help shape the evolving field of clinical AI. He is passionate about bringing together healthcare, technology, and industry to develop practical, trustworthy AI that augments clinicians, creates measurable value, and helps shape the next generation of intelligent health systems. ## Kirby Forlin VP Digital & Analytics Performance, The Cigna Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kirby-forlin/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Kirby Forlin has over 20 years of experience driving growth, building high-performing teams, and integrating analytics, technology, and strategy to unlock revenue and operational efficiencies across Fortune 500 enterprises. Currently, Kirby is the VP of Digital & Analytics Performance leading a team focused on Enterprise Data Governance, Intelligence Solutions, Digital Data and Insights and Customer Engagement. Career Accomplishments • Transformed B2B marketing with an analytics-driven omnichannel strategy, restructuring a 150-person team and advancing AI/ML data strategy for scalable, personalized targeting and growth. • Developed enterprise-wide data commercialization strategies that leveraged proprietary data assets to create new products, unlocking profit and growth in adjacent markets. • Built advanced analytics functions for two fortune 500 companies scaling teams from zero to 70+ staff and delivering strategic initiatives that optimized demand planning, marketing, and operational efficiencies. Contributed over $500M in bottom-line impact through innovative pricing, promotion, and product strategies. Kirby is recognized for her ability to translate complex data into actionable strategies, engage C-suite leaders, and foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. Her leadership has consistently delivered a measurable impact across multiple industries and business functions Personal Kirby currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband Matt. Together they have four children. When not wrangling teenagers, she enjoys all things food related which she tries to balance with her love of hiking, gardening and running. Education • MBA, University of Calgary • BA, Psychology/Philosophy, University of Guelph • Principles of Marketing Research, University of Georgia ## Tim Fox Chief Data and AI Officer, Ogletree Deakins Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-fox/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Legal Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Timothy Fox is Chief Data and AI Officer at Ogletree Deakins, where he architects the firm's generative AI ecosystem and has scaled it from concept to firmwide adoption across 1,100 attorneys and 60 offices. He also leads the firm's data strategy, turning previously siloed information into resources that drive decision-making, and recently guided the firm through ISO 42001 certification for its AI management system. Before joining Ogletree Deakins, Tim co-founded LegalMation, an early player in AI-driven litigation automation, and spent 7 years as a practicing attorney handling intellectual property and commercial disputes. He began his career in technology at a Fortune 500 company. Tim is a regular speaker on AI and data in the legal field, serves on the California Judicial Council's Information Technology Advisory Committee, and teaches AI strategy as an Adjunct Professor at USC Gould School of Law, where he earned his J.D. He also holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Cal Poly. ## Stephen Franklin CEO / Co-Founder, NetWatch.AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stephen-franklin/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: IT Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Stephen Franklin, Chief Executive Officer of Netwatch.ai, is a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience spanning cybersecurity, IT operations, enterprise software, and business transformation. Throughout his career, Stephen has held leadership positions across high-growth technology organizations, including Netwatch.ai, Evolver, Argent Software, and Pitney Bowes. His background uniquely combines deep technical expertise with executive leadership, having started his career as a systems administrator before advancing into senior sales, strategy, and operational leadership roles. Today, Stephen leads Netwatch.ai's vision and growth strategy, helping organizations leverage artificial intelligence to reduce operational complexity, strengthen cybersecurity, and improve visibility across increasingly complex technology environments. He is passionate about the practical application of AI within IT and security operations and works closely with organizations to modernize their approach to monitoring, incident response, and operational resilience. ## Kevin Frazier Professor, The University of Texas School of Law Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-frazier/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Legal Job Function: Legal Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Professor Kevin Frazier leads the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute. His research focuses on the nexus of regulatory design, innovation policy, and constitutional law. Frazier has testified before Congress on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to undersea cables; he regularly advises state and federal policymakers on how to accelerate adoption of emerging technologies. You can listen to his two cents on all things tech policy via the Scaling Laws podcast. Born and raised in Beaverton, Oregon, Frazier is a graduate of the University of Oregon, UC Berkeley School of Law, and Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to joining the legal academy, he clerked for the Montana Supreme Court and conducted a research fellowship on AI. ## Stephen Frein SVP of Software Development, Fulton Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stephen-frein/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: DevOps Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Stephen Frein is SVP of Software Development at Fulton Bank and an adjunct professor of computer science at Villanova University. He and his team are currently applying agentic engineering and machine learning to complex, enterprise-scale software engineering and banking challenges. Before coming to Fulton, he held senior roles with Comcast, the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Department of Defense. ## Brian Frerichs Chief AI Officer, ICDU.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-frerichs/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees State: South Carolina Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Brian C. Frerichs is an AI and digital transformation operator with over 20 years of experience leading enterprise modernization across healthcare, life sciences, and technology. He has held leadership and advisory roles at Cognizant, Novartis, Quest Diagnostics, McKesson, Zoetis, and other Fortune 500 companies. At Cognizant, he led the turnaround of a $1B U.S. healthcare portfolio, delivering a 38% cost reduction and restoring profitability after seven years through large-scale, AI-enabled operational redesign. Brian has led global teams of more than 4,000 professionals and built AI Centers of Excellence focused on efficiency, governance, and measurable outcomes. He is the inventor of Intent-Conscious Data Units (ICDU), with multiple U.S. patent filings, and the author of Breaking Better: Your 3×3 Guide to Life, Work & AI (2024). ## Leah Fricke Board Director/Chair Audit Committee, Various Companies (Australia) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/leah-fricke/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Leah Fricke (MBA, LLB (Hons), BA, FCIS, FGIA, FAICD, TFASFA) is an Australian Non-Executive Director and Audit & Risk Committee Chair whose current board portfolio spans icare NSW, ColCap Financial, Openmarkets Group and Forager Funds Management. She is recognised for her work at the intersection of technology, governance and emerging risk, and, for how boards make decisions about artificial intelligence and technology investment. Her view is that AI is not a technology decision but a capital-allocation decision made under uncertainty: the value of any AI investment depends on an organisation's strategy, risk appetite and the returns it is genuinely trying to create. Leah's career combines executive operational leadership with contemporary board oversight across listed, regulated, government and high-growth organisations undergoing transformation and scale. Her experience spans financial services, insurance, funds management, fintech and regtech; technology, data analytics, AI and digital platforms; renewable energy; and health, government and the public sector. She works with boards and executive teams on growth and scaling strategy, capital markets and funding, digital transformation and technology investment, cyber resilience and operational risk, and complex transactions including listings, capital raisings and acquisitions. A former Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and Company Secretary, she chairs and serves on audit and risk committees across financial services, insurance, health and renewable-energy. She is also Founder and Principal Coach of BoardCraft, an invitation-only governance coaching program for CFOs, Company Secretaries, CROs, General Counsel and other C-suite executives in board-facing roles. Her qualifications include a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Sydney. She has undertaken executive study in Cybersecurity and AI: Business Strategy at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Innovation Governance for Directors at DeGroote Business School/Directors College (Canada), and is currently completing the INSEAD International Directors Programme. She is a member of the Japan Board Directors Network and a graduate of the Japan Board Director Training Institute. Leah is particularly focused on the implications of AI, digital infrastructure and changing market expectations for boards and leadership teams and on keeping human judgment and accountability at the centre of the decisions that create long-term value. ## Lior Friedman CEO, OptimalNets Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lior-friedman/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Age: 2-3 Years Company Funding: $1-3M Funding Stage: Pre-Seed / Seed Lior Friedman, M.Sc., is Founder and CEO of OptimalNets. He has spent more than 25 years across networking and AI/ML — starting with core router devices at Dune Networks, acquired by Broadcom, and later architecting distributed network operating systems on high-end Broadcom and Cisco platforms. He also founded and led StreamItUp, an enterprise cloud platform built on AI and machine learning algorithms. At OptimalNets he leads ON.AI, an autonomous datapath control plane that brings job awareness to AI cluster networks — unlocking billions of dollars in capacity for AI datacenters and their customers from infrastructure already deployed. ## Robert Fulk Chief Innovation and Information Officer, State of Indiana Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-fulk/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Government Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Robert Fulk is an internationally recognized technology executive, AI strategist, and digital transformation leader with more than 25 years of experience leading enterprise innovation across multinational corporations, federal government, and state government organizations. Throughout his career, he has led large-scale technology modernization, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, enterprise operations, and emerging technology initiatives supporting global organizations including Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Dow, 3M, Stellantis, Johnson Controls, thyssenkrupp, and numerous public and private sector enterprises operating at global scale. As Chief Information Officer for the Indiana Secretary of State, Fulk leads enterprise technology, AI, cybersecurity, and modernization initiatives across statewide Elections, Securities, Auto Dealer Services, and the INBiz business platform serving more than 800,000 businesses and 1.2 million users. Under his leadership, the organization has become nationally recognized for advancing cloud-first government modernization, Zero Trust cybersecurity strategies, enterprise AI governance, and innovative digital services that improve transparency, efficiency, regulatory oversight, and constituent engagement. Fulk is widely recognized as a leading voice in responsible AI adoption and enterprise innovation, pioneering the use of generative AI, intelligent records modernization, AI-powered constituent engagement platforms, cloud-native architectures, and advanced data modernization strategies within government. His work has focused on transforming decades of complex legacy systems into scalable, secure, AI-enabled ecosystems capable of delivering faster, more intelligent, and more accessible public services. He has collaborated extensively with global technology leaders including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and strategic industry partners to deliver enterprise-scale modernization and AI initiatives leveraging advanced cloud computing, cybersecurity frameworks, machine learning, generative AI, intelligent automation, and data analytics. His leadership has helped position public sector organizations as models for secure and ethical AI adoption while balancing innovation with governance, privacy, transparency, compliance, and accountability. Fulk’s work has received national recognition for advancing AI for the public good and demonstrating how emerging technologies can responsibly improve citizen services, operational performance, cybersecurity resilience, and government effectiveness at scale. He is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, enterprise modernization, and the future of digital leadership, regularly engaging with international technology executives, government leaders, industry innovators, and global strategic partners shaping the next generation of AI-enabled enterprises and public services. ## Torrell Funderburk Founder & CEO, Overspace Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/torrell-funderburk/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Torrell Funderburk is the Founder & CEO of Overspace. Overspace enables organizations to fix what matters most in their environments by using AI-enabled digital twins to prioritize and remediate security and design weaknesses. Torrell brings deep operational expertise to this mission, having previously served as Global CISO for Sealed Air Corporation, where he led security transformation across 120+ countries. A recognized leader in AI and resilience engineering, he speaks globally on the future of autonomous defense and enterprise risk. ## Glenn Fung VP of AI Development and Strategy, Exact Sciences Corp Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/glenn-fung/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Glenn received a B.S. in mathematics from Universidad Lisandro Alvarado in Venezuela. He then earned an M.S. in applied mathematics from Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela, where later he worked as an assistant professor. He also earned an M.S. degree and a Ph. D. degree in computer sciences and statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. His main academic interests are machine learning and AI, with emphasis in mathematical optimization which is a key component of modern AI. For more than 20 years, he has worked developing and applying novel ML techniques to solve challenging industry-related problems. Early in his professional career he worked at Siemens Medical solutions using Computer vision and machine learning on the first FDA approved Computer aided diagnosis system for lung cancer and other applications of personalized medicine. After that he joined Amazon as a principal ML scientist to work on novel applications of human-in-the-loop machine learning applied to retail and automated pricing. His career in insurance (Casualty and Healthcare) started around 12 years ago, when he created a ML R&D team in American Family insurance whose mission was innovate by experiment with new novel applications of AI in the insurance industry. As the AVP of Data science and emerging technologies, He proposed and led the creation of the University of Wisconsin – American Family data science institute – A 10-year, 20 million dollars initiative to bridge the gap between the insurance industry and state-of-the-art academic data science research in Wisconsin. Ather 10 years with American family insurance, He joined Liberty Mutual insurance as the head of the Solaria Applied Science team that partner with our incubation teams across the enterprise to identify opportunities to leverage AI, Gen AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to enhance the customer experience and drive operational efficiencies. More recently, before joining Exact Sciences, Glenn led the Elevance enterprise AI team through their consolidation and restructuring of their centralized AI science team with around 200 data scientist and AI engineers (onshore and offshore). The team was responsible for the exploration and assimilation of new and rapidly evolving AI techniques to enable solutions that quickly delivered significant value to the enterprise. The team delivered many transformative applications related to healthcare insurance both in government and commercial settings, including call center efficiency, information extraction, AI platform standardization, AI strategy, responsible AI among other areas. He is an author of 100+ scientific publications and 30+ patents and he an active member of the academic AI, ML and data science community by serving as an organizer, reviewer and senior committee member of several of the top academic conferences and journals. Glenn is also an active member of several Industry and academic boards. Outside of work, he enjoys playing bass and producing music, travelling with his wife and kids, and having fun collecting and playing trading card games. ## Erin Fusaro Chief Technology Officer, PadSplit Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erin-fusaro/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Erin Fusaro is the CTO of PadSplit, where she leads technology focused on solving the affordable housing crisis through co-living. Previously, she held engineering leadership roles at Marco Polo, Chipper Cash, Greenlight and Mailchimp. With over 15 years of experience Erin is passionate about using technology as a force for good. She is based in Atlanta, GA. ## Krishna Gade Founder & CEO, Fiddler AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/krishna-gade/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Krishna Gade is the Founder and CEO of Fiddler AI, where he is building the control plane for AI systems - helping enterprises monitor, evaluate, and control models and autonomous agents in production. Previously, he time at Microsoft working on search ranking for Bing, and later led data and machine learning teams at Twitter and Pinterest. He is most known for his work on AI Explainability at Facebook/Meta and these days he is now focused on making AI systems trustworthy, scalable, and production-ready for the enterprise. ## Megan Gainer Solution Advisor Expert, SAP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/megan-gainer/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Megan Gainer is a Solution Advisor at SAP with more than 20 years of experience helping organizations transform supply chain operations through technology, process innovation, and business strategy. Throughout her career, Megan has led enterprise planning and transformation initiatives across demand planning, supply planning, S&OP, and digital supply chain programs. She combines deep business process expertise with hands-on experience delivering SAP solutions that drive operational agility, improved decision-making, and measurable business outcomes. Today, Megan works with organizations evaluating and adopting SAP Public Cloud and AI-powered business applications, helping leaders understand how emerging technologies can accelerate transformation while creating resilient, intelligent, and connected enterprises. She is passionate about bridging the gap between business strategy and technology innovation, with a particular focus on the practical application of AI to improve planning, productivity, and enterprise performance. ## Patrick Gallic Head of International AI Hub, Tokio Marine Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/patrick-gallic/ Track: Insurance Industry: Insurance Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Patrick Gallic is Head of AI Hub across the Tokio Marine Group companies globally, where he leads AI across Applied AI, Governance, and Learning & Development. His work focuses on translating AI capability into practical enterprise value, with an emphasis on responsible adoption, scalable implementation, and business impact across the global insurance sector. ## Patrick Gao Northern American VP, AGIBOT Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/patrick-gao/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Patrick Gao is North America VP of AGIBOT, a world-leading general-purpose embodied intelligence of robots manufacturer. Dr. Gao received his Ph.D degree in Power Electronics and Energy Systems from University of Alberta and holds P.ENG to perform engineering design and consultation. Dr. Gao served as an active member in IEEE PES and PELS, IAS societies and is a reviewer of multiple IEEE transactions. Under his leadership, AGIBOT has extended its international integration of industry -leading full-stack robotics platform with ‘Embodiment + AI’ to assist American enterprises and consumers. Before joining AGIBOT, Dr. Gao’s professional career includes product management, regional director and GM roles in renewable energy and consumer electronics. His unique cross-disciplinary expertise, deep technical foundation, and proven ability to build technology ecosystems have consistently positioned him as a transformative leader in high-tech industries. ## Rohit Garewal CEO, Object Edge Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohit-garewal/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Rohit Garewal is the CEO and chief architect of Object Edge, a 150-person, engineering-first firm. Across a 30-year career in enterprise technology, he has delivered complex, mission-critical systems for billion-dollar organizations — and is now rebuilding the firm, and its clients, around one conviction: in the AI era, the data platform is the moat, and almost everything above it is commoditizing. A builder-CEO who still writes code and designs systems, Rohit is the chief architect of HIVE and Sayya — Object Edge's semantic-intelligence and agent-orchestration platform and its conversational interface layer. HIVE starts from a blunt premise: enterprises stall on AI not because the models are weak, but because their data is illegible to those models. HIVE makes the enterprise legible — combining a knowledge graph, episodic memory, and entity dossiers with an orchestration layer that turns legibility into action. The full stack (graph database, vector retrieval, tiered model routing) deploys with 100% data containment inside the customer's own cloud, so proprietary data and IP never leave the perimeter. A leader in the Palantir and enterprise-ontology AI circuit, Rohit is proving that architecture in the field with Motorola Solutions, Volkswagen Brasil, and Royal Caribbean, and across a federal track spanning work with the Social Security Administration and partnerships with Leidos and Bain. Earlier, he led Object Edge's emergence as a premier Oracle and Salesforce CPQ implementation partner, delivering revenue-critical commerce and configure-price-quote systems for the Fortune 500. His view on data infrastructure is shaped by a contrarian read of where defensibility is heading. As foundation-model capability commoditizes and the "build premium" collapses, he argues the durable advantage is no longer the application or the API — it's a well-governed semantic layer over proprietary data. Get the data platform right and AI compounds; get it wrong and no model rescues you. Rohit writes and speaks frequently on the semantic layer as the foundational unlock for enterprise AI, the shift from jobs to tasks, and why hard problems and relationships — not capital — are the real moats. A Bay Area native, he now lives in Barcelona with his wife and three children, where he co-hosts a family podcast on the move from California to Catalonia. ## Ashutosh Garg CEO, Eightfold AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashutosh-garg/ Track: HR and Recruiting Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ashutosh Garg, CEO and Co-Founder at Eightfold AI, brings decades of machine learning and search experience. He was previously the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Co-Founder of BloomReach. Prior to that, he worked at IBM Research and Google. He is also a prolific publisher/inventor, with a book on machine learning, 30+ papers, and 50+ patents. Ashutosh holds a BTech from IIT-Delhi and a Ph.D. from UIUC and has earned numerous awards for his research, including the best thesis award at IIT Delhi, an IBM Fellowship, and an outstanding researcher award at UIUC. ## Greggory Garrett CEO & Managing Director, CGS Advisors, LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greggory-garrett/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Greggory R. Garrett is a multi-time founder and currently the CEO and Managing Director of CGS Advisors, a 15-year-old boutique strategic transformation and innovation advisory firm that works with senior leaders at public companies and select private organizations. He is an experienced board member, a dynamic international keynote speaker, an adjunct professor of business and engineering, the host of the “You, Me, and Your Top Three” podcast, and the author of the best-selling business leadership book, Competing in the Connecting World. Having addressed audiences from 20 to upwards of 1500 people in public and private/corporate events, Gregg is at his best when he can focus on industry-shaping & transformational topics. Before launching CGS Advisors, Gregg was the Chief Strategy Officer for IT & Innovation at Volkswagen Group of America. Before his time with VW, Gregg led corporate strategy at Deutsche Telekom and was part of Ernst & Young’s Management Consulting practice. He is a visionary leader who prides himself on recognizing common-sense solutions for complex problems. He supports “Corporate Bravery” by motivating teams to achieve greatness beyond typical boundaries. ## Giulian Garruba Senior Director, Product Marketing, Mimecast North America Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/giulian-garruba/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Giulian Garruba is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Mimecast, leading a team of product marketers that spans the full portfolio of Mimecast solutions. With over a decade of experience in cybersecurity, he has held a variety of roles and worked closely with customers to implement security strategies and address real-world challenges. Prior to his time at Mimecast, Giulian spent eight years at Microsoft in a variety of roles, including leading product marketing for Microsoft Defender and working directly with customers to architect and implement cybersecurity and collaboration solutions. His customer-centric approach has enabled him to build trusted relationships, gather valuable insights directly from security decision makers, and translate complex technical needs into effective go-to-market strategies. ## Joe Gaska Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, GRAX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joe-gaska/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Joe Gaska is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of GRAX and a serial entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience building and scaling enterprise software companies. Over his career he has founded multiple companies, led them through successful acquisitions by major public tech companies, raised venture capital, bootstrapped others to profitability, and built and led teams across IoT, cloud, and SaaS. At GRAX, he leads product strategy for a platform that gives enterprises complete ownership of their historical data and makes it usable by AI, work that places him directly at the intersection of enterprise data and applied AI. He holds a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science ## James Gaskin Professor of Information Systems, Brigham Young University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-gaskin/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. James Gaskin is a professor of information systems at Brigham Young University in Utah. He has published over 225 research articles in the areas of human computer interaction, including human-AI and human-robot relations, augmented reality, and mental health. Beyond his research, he is better known for his contributions to methodological scholarship through his YouTube videos, StatWiki, and Workshops, which have collectively been viewed tens of millions of times. He is also the creator of SEMwise, used by scholars and consultants worldwide. ## Benjamin George Global AI Leader, SkillUp Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/benjamin-george/ Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees State: Washington Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Head of Global AI, SkillUp · Managing Partner & CTO, The ALICE Group I build intelligent systems at the intersection of technology and human potential. As Head of Global AI at SkillUp, I lead the design of state-of-the-art agentic learning systems — AI that adapts to how people actually learn and helps them grow faster. Alongside this, I serve as Managing Partner and CTO of The ALICE Group, where I drive innovation in AI-driven financial technologies. My path into technology started early: I built my first computer at 14 and was creating websites at 16 during the dot-com boom. That early curiosity became a career spanning AI and machine learning, blockchain, and distributed systems, along with founding and operating businesses across several industries. In my late twenties I spent six years living and working throughout Central and South America — an experience that shaped how I think about building things that serve real people. Areas of focus: Agentic AI & machine learning — autonomous systems, adaptive learning, and applied intelligence Financial technology — AI-driven platforms and decision systems Blockchain & distributed systems — secure, resilient network architectures Human-centered technology — platforms designed to foster meaningful connection I'm also the author of No Absolutes, a book on navigating uncertainty and complexity. Whether in my work or my writing, I'm drawn to the same question: how can technology amplify what people are capable of? I'm always glad to connect with others working on AI and machine learning, applied blockchain, or the broader question of how we build technology that genuinely serves people. ## Kasra Ghaharian Director of Research, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, International Gaming Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kasra-ghaharian/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Kasra Ghaharian is the Director of Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas International Gaming Institute, where he leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data science, and gambling. His current interests center around AI ethics and governance, machine learning applications for consumer protection, and the responsible modernization of gambling technologies. ## Mark Gill Head of Infrastructure and Services, Zuora Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-gill/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Mark Gill is Head of Infrastructure & Services at Zuora, where he's building an AI-native enterprise that raises the whole team's productivity ceiling as the company scales, so the organization gets smarter as it grows, not just bigger. His perspective is forged in high-stakes technical work. At HPE, he ran $24B revenue platforms and led the technical side of the HPE Software spin-merge into Micro Focus. Having served as Technical Incident Commander during major security events and negotiated seven-figure investments, he's learned that the most robust systems balance ambition with the discipline to keep them stable. His core belief is simple: technology should make work easier, not harder. Working alongside Security, Legal, and Finance, he builds modern workplace stacks that cut risk while lifting productivity — currently through Zuora's 6-Pillar AI Foundation, which pairs fast adoption of tools like Tray.ai and Zoom AI with the governance to make it safe. ## Binny Gill CEO, Kognitos Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/binny-gill/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Binny Gill is the founder and CEO of Kognitos, the AI platform bringing trustworthy, deterministic AI agents to finance and accounting. Kognitos combines plain-English automation with symbolic reasoning and context graphs to deliver hallucination-free, fully auditable execution across AP, journal entries, month-end close, and financial controls, trusted by global enterprises and recognized by Gartner in two 2026 Hype Cycles. Binny founded Kognitos on a simple conviction: machines should understand human language, rather than forcing business users to think like machines. A prolific inventor with nearly 100 computer science patents, he previously served as CTO at Nutanix, where over an eight-year tenure he helped scale the company from zero to $1.5B in revenue. His vision is to make AI safe for mission-critical business functions by making it naturally deterministic and hallucination free. ## Heather Gillbanks Executive Editor, CXPA Book of Knowledge Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/heather-gillbanks/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Customer Service Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No 𝑬𝒙𝒆𝒄𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝑬𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒐𝒓 𝑪𝑿𝑷𝑨'𝒔 "𝑪𝑿 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒐𝒇 𝑲𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒍𝒆𝒅𝒈𝒆", 1st ed; 2023-5 CXPA Board of Directors With over 3 decades of work experience, Heather is a seasoned professional in enterprise-scale digital transformation, customer experience/ service, sales, and technology. Heather has been a consultant, a practitioner, and an internal advocate/coach for customer-focused startups (the most fun one scaled to .$5B in less than 2 years). An inclusive, versatile & goal-oriented leader with deep expertise in customer experience (CCXP), process & cost optimization (Lean/ Six Sigma MBB), change management (ADKAR), and leveraging best practices Heather utilizes exceptional interpersonal and communications skills to guide and develop cross-functional teams and drive consensus among executives. Heather is a driven and strategic top-performer who delivers efficiency and profitability for organizations in B2B, Manufacturing, Energy/ Oil & Gas, Aviation, Banking & Insurance, Entertainment, Medical Devices, & entrepreneurship. Heather's sweet spot is the intersection of Customer Experience, Employee Experience, process improvement, and cost management ... finding solutions that are advantageous to customers and organizations simultaneously. Currently based in the Chicagoland area of Indiana, Heather has lived or worked in more than a dozen countries and over 20 US states + 2 Canadian provinces. ## Art Gilliland CEO, Delinea Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/art-gilliland/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Art Gilliland is CEO at Delinea and brings proven success in the global enterprise software industry, leading large organizations in product development, enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, go-to-market strategy, and SaaS operations. He most recently was SVP/GM of the Symantec Enterprise Division of Broadcom reporting to the CEO, where he led the integration and business operations post-acquisition. Before Symantec, Art held executive positions at Skyport Systems, HP, Symantec, and IMlogic. ## Rick Ginsberg Dean of the School of Education and Human Sciences, The University of Kansas Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rick-ginsberg/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Rick Ginsberg, Ph.D., served as Dean of the School of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Kansas from August, 2005 to August, 2026. He is the co-founder of the Center for Reimagining Education, focusing on transforming teaching and learning in K-12 schools utilizing AI. He served as co-chair of the Learn Coalition promoting increased research funding for education, and co-chair of the Global Education Deans Forum, a group of Education Deans from research universities across the world who meet to learn, advocate, and work to transform education. He previously was on and served as chair of the Kansas Professional Standards Board, served on the Kansas Continuing Legal Education Commission, the Board of Directors and former chair of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), and on the Board of Directors of the Council for Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). He chaired the 2022-2023 KS Board of Regents Educator Work Force Task Force and a 2019 Kansas Department of Education Blue Ribbon Task Force on Bullying. He has been presenting widely onissues related to AI use in K-12 and higher education. His research focuses on individual/organizational success and educational reform, currently examining issues regarding AI use in education settings. His most recent book (with Yong Zhao), “Duck and Cover: Confronting and correcting dubious practices in education,” (Teachers College Press, 2023), examined education policies that persist and need to change. Recent publications focused on the need to reconsider conceptions of literacy in an AI world, approaches to reforming schools with AI. Dr. Ginsberg was the 2019 co-recipient of Jerome Neuner Award for Excellence in Publication from the American Association of University Administrators. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Administrative, Institutional, and Policy Studies in Education. ## Nicholas Ginsberg Executive Director, Morgan Stanley Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicholas-ginsberg/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Nick Ginsberg is an Executive Director and team lead for the Investment Banking Strats team at Morgan Stanley. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he was the head strategist for the M&A and Financial Sponsors Investment Banking groups at Goldman Sachs. Nick's professional role uses a combination of data science with investment banking to provide bankers and clients with novel and powerful analytics. Nick graduated Dean's List from Johns Hopkins University with degrees in Computer Science and Economics, where he now teaches a course as an adjunct professor on data-driven and quantitative finance. Nick lives in Scarsdale, New York with his wife Rebecca and their twin daughters. ## Joseph Glover Director, Field CTO, Akamai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joseph-glover/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Team or company is hiring: Yes Joseph is the Director, Field CTO for Akamai Cloud. Joseph has been involved with information technology since the early 2000s when he worked for AT&T. More recently, Joseph spent his last 8+ years at Amazon Web Services, demonstrating his ability to consistently contribute to revenue growth and increase customer ROI by spearheading the adoption of cloud-based solutions and evangelizing both AWS and partner solutions at industrial events such as HPC Summit, Cisco Live, and AWS re:Invent. He is currently responsible for Akamai’s North America Cloud Computing Evangelism, engaging in advocacy, community engagement, customer interaction, feedback loop, thought leadership, sales support, and strategy development to help our customers address the rapidly changing Cloud and Edge computing industry and grow Akamai’s market share as we enter the cloud computing space. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Signal/Geospatial Intelligence from The University of Texas at Dallas and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from McMurry University. He also demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and professional development with multiple certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional and AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty. When not at work, you can always find Joseph cooking outdoors and spending time with his wife and two children or on a road bike, somewhere in north Texas, blazing the open plains. Blog - https://www.cloudportabletech.com/ ## Rhea Goel Senior Applied Science Manager, Amazon Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rhea-goel/ Track: Technical Summit Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Rhea Goel is an Applied Science Manager at Amazon, where she leads the development of large-scale machine learning systems for ranking, recommendations, and personalization. Her work focuses on applied AI, production ML, and LLM-powered systems. ## Sameer Goel Co-founder, PitCrew Agents Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sameer-goel/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No As our Solutions Specialist, Sameer brings an unparalleled 30 years of experience as a seasoned professional and serial entrepreneur to the team at PitCrew. Equal parts strategist and executor, Sameer operates at the critical intersection of client engagement and core business operations - including sales, revenue, legal, and finance. His ultimate motivator is simple: engineering truly delightful, frictionless experiences for our customers. What sets Sameer apart is his consultative, deeply diagnostic approach. He spends his days embedded with clients, looking past superficial requests to uncover what they actually need to scale, rather than just what they think they want. With an MBA from Queen's School of Business, Canada and three decades of building both high-growth consumer products and robust enterprise solutions, Sameer possesses a rare, 360-degree perspective on business architecture. He doesn't just hand over a strategy; he rolls up his sleeves to implement the exact, tailored solutions that drive long-term business success. ## Tuhina Goel Director, AI Product Marketing, Nutanix Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tuhina-goel/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Tuhina Goel is a product marketing leader with over two decades of experience taking enterprise products to market and driving growth. With a background in software engineering and product management, she combines technical depth with customer insight to turn complex technologies into clear, compelling stories and effective go-to-market strategies. At Nutanix, she leads global AI product marketing and is passionate about making AI understandable and actionable, helping organizations see how the right AI foundation translates into real, measurable business outcomes. ## Casey Golden North American Leader, Retail & Consumer Goods, CI&T Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/casey-golden/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Casey Golden is the North America Leader for Retail and Consumer Goods at CI&T, where she helps some of the world’s most recognizable brands turn AI and digital innovation into real business outcomes. With deep expertise across both retail operations and retail technology, she specializes in bridging strategy and execution, guiding organizations through complex transformation with a focus on speed, scalability, and measurable impact. Casey is known for cutting through hype and bringing a pragmatic, results-driven lens to AI, data, and commerce, helping companies not just keep up with change, but get ahead of it. ## Robbie Goldfarb Co-Founder & CTO, Forum AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robbie-goldfarb/ Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Robbie Goldfarb is an entrepreneur and technology leader known for working on some of the industry's most consequential challenges at the scale of billions of users. As cofounder and Chief Technology Officer of Forum AI, he's focused on ensuring the next generation of technology and AI systems cement human values at their foundation. Prior to starting Forum AI with Campbell Brown, Robbie led teams combating misinformation at Facebook, developing systems that helped safeguard integrity during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple elections, and other critical moments. He worked on youth safety at Instagram, helping build out the platform's infrastructure to curb online hate, and later developed first-of-its-kind AI safety measures at Meta's frontier lab. Earlier in his career, Robbie helped scale startups from zero to one, with a focus on affordable education and news. He runs Revise Ventures, an investment firm focused on supporting companies that bridge innovation with ethical design. ## Koosha Golmohammadi Global Head of Applied AI/ML - Corporate Tech (Compliance and Risk), JP Morgan & Chase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/koosha-golmohammadi/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Koosha Golmohammadi is Head of Applied AI/ML in Corporate Technology at JPMorgan Chase, where he leads the development and deployment of Machine Learning, generative AI, and agentic AI solutions to improve operational efficiency and decision-making across compliance, oversight, and risk. Previously, he led AI and advanced analytics initiatives in the insurance industry. Koosha holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Alberta and an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan. He is a frequent keynote speaker and expert panelist on enterprise AI, applied AI/ML, and operational data science. ## Grace Gong VC & Podcaster, Smart Venture Media Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/grace-gong/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Member of the Press: Yes Grace Gong is the founder of Smart Venture Media and the host of two well-known VC podcasts: Smart Venture Podcast (SVPpro.com) and Venture with Grace, a daily show. She is an angel investor in the AI sector, a super angel & venture scout for Alumni Ventures, Advisor at Berkeley SkyDeck. She is also the founder of Smart Ai Summits. Her podcasts have featured high-profile guests such as C-level executives and VPs from companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Sephora, Dunkin' Donuts, Chipotle, Adidas, Pepsi, Instagram, Deloitte, Reddit, DoorDash, Pinterest, Cisco, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Snowflake, Nebius and more. Additionally, she has interviewed Managing Partners from top funds, many of whom have appeared on the Forbes Midas List, as well as unicorn founders from companies like Craigslist, Square, Loom, and Glean. Grace regularly posts about technology, venture capital, and entrepreneurship and has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Finance. She is also a #1 Bestselling author in the VC category on Amazon New Release. Before founding Smart Venture Media, she worked in venture capital and private equity. If you share her interests, feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn @GraceGong. ## Arick Goomanovsky CEO, BAND Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arick-goomanovsky/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Arick Goomanovsky is the CEO and Co-Founder of BAND, an AI infrastructure company bringing us the future of a global agentic economy. A seasoned entrepreneur, he previously co-founded Sygnia (acquired by Temasek) and Ermetic (acquired by Tenable), and has a strong track record of scaling global enterprise software and cybersecurity businesses. Arick served 17 years in the Israel Intelligence Community and is a graduate of the Talpiot program. He holds a B.Sc, degree in Science, M.Sc. in Mathematics, and an MBA from INSEAD, and previously worked at McKinsey & Company, advising global enterprises on business, economics, and strategy. ## Harini Gopalakrishnan GTM & Tech strategy, Industry (Health & Lifesciences), Vespa.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/harini-gopalakrishnan/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Harini Gopalakrishnan is a life sciences technology strategist with deep expertise in AI, data platforms, and digital transformation within the pharmaceutical/bio tech industry. Currently she is the CEO and founder of thehaze.ai and the Industry GTM & Strategy for Vespa.ai, She previously served as Global CTO for Life Sciences at Snowflake and has held leadership roles at AWS, Sanofi, and Cognizant, where she led innovation across genomics, clinical informatics, and real-world evidence. She blends technical depth with industry insight, shaping go-to-market and AI solutions for pharma and was awarded the Gartner “Best Use of Emerging Technology in Life Sciences” for her AI-based RWE platform at Sanofi. Harini holds a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering.She is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and an active voice in the industry and shares insights on the monthly newsletter, “Data , AI and Life sciences" ## Sharon Gorla Lead Engineer, Starbucks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sharon-gorla/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Retail Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Sharon Gorla is an Engineering Leader and Enterprise Architect with more than 16 years of experience building large-scale platforms across retail, eCommerce, and enterprise software. She currently serves as an Engineer Lead and member of Starbucks Technology's AI Champions group, where she has helped modernize customer and in-store platforms while exploring how AI can be thoughtfully integrated into enterprise engineering systems. Throughout her career, Sharon has focused on designing architectures that outlast individual technologies. At Starbucks, she helped architect the modernization of the company's GraphQL orchestration layer for the Next Gen POS initiative, contributed to a patented multi-channel transaction platform, and led enterprise efforts around GraphQL, federation, reusable platform capabilities, and API modernization. She also founded Starbucks' GraphQL Community of Practice, bringing together engineers across 12 teams to share standards, mentor one another, and build a culture of technical excellence. A frequent speaker at industry conferences and engineering events, Sharon enjoys exploring the intersection of platform engineering, software architecture, and AI. Her work centers on semantic APIs, orchestration layers, developer experience, and the architectural principles that remain valuable as technologies evolve from mobile and cloud to today's AI agents and copilots. More than any particular technology, Sharon is passionate about building platforms that put people first. Whether improving the day-to-day experience of developers, enabling frontline employees, or helping organizations navigate change, she believes the best architectures are those that create lasting value for the people who build, operate, and use them. ## Krishnaj Gourab Chief Medical Officer, University of Maryland Rehabilitation and Orthopaedic Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/krishnaj-gourab/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Krishnaj Gourab serves as Vice President and Medical Director for Post-Acute Care Services at the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) and as Chief Medical Officer of the University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute. He serves on the Governing Board of Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital and is a voluntary Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. As Medical Lead for iHarbor, the University of Maryland Medical System's innovation center, Dr. Gourab partners with data scientists and engineers to develop and deploy AI-enabled digital health solutions that address real-world clinical and operational challenges across the health system. These include patient safety and quality, optimal discharge planning, and utilization management. He also co-chairs the UMMS AI and Data Literacy Committee that promotes the responsible and safe adoption of clinical AI solutions. His current work focuses on applying natural language processing to unlock insights from free-text clinical notes, integrating them with structured data, and building systems that advance institutional clinical and operational goals. Dr. Gourab is subspecialty board-certified in Clinical Informatics, holds a master’s degree in software engineering, and has postgraduate training in AI. He is faculty in Health Informatics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches interoperable clinical decision support. He has been an invited speaker on topics related to AI, informatics, physiatry, and post-acute care at various national forums. ## Ankit Goyal Principal Staff Software Engineer, AI Platform, LinkedIn Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ankit-goyal/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ankit Goyal is a Principal Staff Software Engineer on the LinkedIn AI Platform team, where he directs the architectural strategy for the hyperscale AI, Generative AI, and autonomous agent infrastructure powering over 1 billion global members. His work focuses on solving the core scaling bottlenecks of distributed ML systems, bridging the gap between high-performance datacenter silicon and application software. Over his tenure, he has modernized the enterprise’s core Kubernetes cluster architectures, advanced the transition from InfiniBand to RoCE networking for dense GPU clusters, and engineered low-latency, dynamic job scheduling brokers for autonomous systems. An active contributor to the open-source infrastructure community, his expertise sits at the intersection of large-scale distributed frameworks and specialized hardware efficiency. ## Siobahn Grady Associate Professor & Founding Director, IAIER, North Carolina Central University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/siobahn-grady/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Dr. Siobahn Day Grady is an associate professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University and the founding director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research (IAIER). In 2018, she became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University — a pioneering milestone that continues to shape her commitment to expanding opportunity and advancing innovation in computing and higher education. As founding director of IAIER, Dr. Grady leads initiatives that connect artificial intelligence, digital education, and workforce readiness. Within the institute’s first year, she secured national partnerships with major technology organizations, launched a campus-wide seed grant program, and hosted public engagement events that deepened trust, technical capacity, and institutional agility. IAIER’s approach reflects her belief that emerging technologies should be accessible, human-centered, and responsive to the needs of all learners and communities. Dr. Grady’s research focuses on artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, algorithmic bias, and creating effective systems that meet the needs of all humanity. She applies machine learning to address real-world challenges — including misinformation, autonomous systems, and healthcare bias — and explores how public understanding of AI shapes its adoption and impact. She serves as the faculty fellow lead partner for e-Learning Excellence at NCCU and also holds multiple Quality Matters certifications, including Master Reviewer, Peer Reviewer, and Facilitator. She is widely recognized for her leadership in digital pedagogy, instructional design, and institutional change. Dr. Grady is an alumna of the AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador initiative, and her statue — originally part of the largest exhibit of women’s statues in the U.S. — is now permanently housed at North Carolina A&T State University’s College of Engineering, honoring her enduring legacy. In 2025, she was inducted into the NC A&T Graduate College Hall of Fame, recognizing her contributions to STEM, education, and national academic leadership. A dedicated advocate for student access and success, she has established six merit-based, STEM-focused endowed scholarships across every HBCU in the University of North Carolina System. She serves on several advisory boards, including the Winston-Salem State University Foundation and the National Girls Collaborative Project, and is a life member of both the NCCU and WSSU alumni associations. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Alpha Zeta Omega Chapter. With a leadership philosophy rooted in innovation, service, and strategic collaboration, Dr. Grady continues to build systems and institutions that prepare learners for a just, technologically empowered future. ## Isaiah Granet Co-Founder, CEO, Bland Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/isaiah-granet/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Telecom Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Isaiah Granet is the CEO and co-founder of Bland, where he’s building production-grade voice AI for real customer conversations. A Y Combinator alum (S23), he has raised $65M to build reliable, enterprise-scale voice systems. Before founding Bland, Isaiah founded San Diego Chill, a nonprofit providing one-on-one ice hockey mentoring for children with developmental disabilities. For this work, he was named a CNN Heroes Young Wonder. ## Kayla Graves Software Engineer, SilverRock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kayla-graves/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Insurance Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Kayla Graves, Software Engineer at SilverRock, is an AI-focused engineer specializing in production-grade machine learning systems and decision intelligence. She works on building and scaling AI-driven solutions such as the Screech decision engine, with a focus on model governance, traceability, and measurable business impact. Kayla is passionate about transforming complex data into actionable insights and creating clear, well-structured technical documentation that enables cross-team collaboration. Her work bridges software engineering and applied AI, ensuring that models are not only accurate, but also reliable, explainable, and aligned with business goals. ## Mark Green VP for Institutional Effectiveness, Technology and Innovation, Holy Family University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-green/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Mark D. Green, Ed.D., is Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness, Technology & Innovation at Holy Family University, where he leads AI strategy, data infrastructure, and digital transformation for a higher education organization managing thousands of students and multimillion-dollar operations. His expertise is in what most organizations struggle with: moving from AI experimentation to AI implementation that actually works. Combining a background in natural language processing, data analytics, and human-centered design, he has built AI systems that automate workflows, improve decision-making, and deliver measurable outcomes, from predictive models for student success to operational tools that have fundamentally changed how work gets done. Green's doctoral research at Boston College, "Reimagining the Academy: Ethical AI, Institutional Strategy, and Human-Centered Digital Transformation," examines how organizations adopt AI without losing sight of mission, ethics, or the humans the technology is meant to serve. The methodology he developed, using design thinking to move teams from AI paralysis to AI strategy, has been delivered as workshops at EDUCAUSE, the Middle States Commission, and Ellucian Live, and transfers across sectors facing the same challenge: closing the gap between AI promise and AI practice. He also teaches "AI & the Humanities," a course exploring artificial intelligence through ethics and critical inquiry, because AI literacy demands more than technical fluency. Green holds an Ed.D. from Boston College and an M.S. from Florida State University. He writes at Designing Tomorrow's University on Substack and serves as a Peer Reviewer for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Connect: linkedin.com/in/markdgreenjr ## Spence Green CEO, LILT Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/spence-green/ Track: Roundtable Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Spence Green is Lilt’s Co-Founder and CEO. Prior to founding Lilt, Spence was a graduate student at Stanford University. He received a PhD and MS in Computer Science from Stanford and a BS from the University of Virginia. He has published papers on machine translation, language parsing, and mixed-initiative systems and given talks on translator productivity. ## Rob Greenberg Principal Product Manager, Red Hat Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rob-greenberg/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter My name is Rob Greenberg, Principal Product Manager for Red Hat AI, and I came over to Red Hat with the Neural Magic acquisition in January 2025. Prior to joining Red Hat, I spent 3 years at Neural Magic building and delivering tools that accelerate AI inference with optimized, open-source models. I've also had stints as a Digital Product Manager at Rocketbook and as a Technology Consultant at Accenture. ## Steve Greenfield General Partner, Automotive Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steve-greenfield/ Track: Automotive Industry: Automotive Job Function: Finance Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Steve Greenfield is General Partner of Automotive Ventures, an early-stage automotive technology and mobility VC fund that helps entrepreneurs raise growth capital and accelerate their businesses, and delivers outsized returns to investors in the fund. Steve has more than 25 years of experience in the automotive technology space. He started his career in 1999 selling software to car dealers and has overseen more than $1 billion in automotive technology acquisitions. Steve served as TrueCar’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, and AutoTrader.com’s Vice President of Product Management and Business Development, overseeing the acquisitions of vAuto, Kelley Blue Book, HomeNet Automotive, VinSolutions, and DealerScience. Earlier in his career, Steve served as Manheim’s Director of International Development, spearheading Manheim’s overseas investments, including establishing new joint ventures in Dubai, Istanbul and Beijing. ​ He is the author of two books: "The Future of Automotive Retail," and "The Future of Mobility." He is also the author of the Weekly "Intel Report." For fun, he likes to ride his three motorcycles on the racetrack and hang out with his fourteen rescue cats. ## Jessica Grega Manager, Global Ethics and Compliance, Bunge Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jessica-grega/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Legal Job Function: Regulatory & Compliance Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Missouri Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Jessica is a manager in Global Ethics & Compliance at Bunge, where she plays a role in the implementation, maintenance, and development of the company’s compliance program. Among her responsibilities, Jessica performs internal investigations, aids in developing ethical guidance to key stakeholders, manages projects geared toward program improvement, and works to develop strong compliance communication. As a member of Bunge's AI working group, Jessica is focused on the evolving governance and compliance framework for AI technologies. Her focus areas include participating in developing a governance framework and the implementation of GenAI technologies, as well as identifying key stakeholders and improving risk management, communication, and training. ## Gevorg Grigoryan Co-Founder and CTO, Generate Biomedicines Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gevorg-grigoryan/ Track: Keynote Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Invited Keynote Panelist Gevorg Grigoryan Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer Generate:Biomedicines Since co-founding Generate:Biomedicines, Gevorg Grigoryan, PhD, has served as Chief Technology Officer, playing a foundational role in establishing the company’s scientific vision and technological backbone. As an architect of The Generate Platform™, Gevorg has led the integration of machine learning and protein science to enable the on-demand generation of novel therapeutics across a wide range of biologic modalities. Under his scientific leadership, Generate:Biomedicines has advanced a growing pipeline of preclinical programs and clinical assets, all rooted in a generative approach to biology. Prior to founding Generate:Biomedicines, Gevorg was a tenured professor at Dartmouth College, where his interdisciplinary research across computer science, chemistry, biology, and physics contributed major insights into the principles of protein structure and function. His academic work was instrumental in demonstrating the feasibility of generative design and continues to inform the scientific direction of the company. Gevorg has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals including Nature, Science, and PNAS. His research has earned recognition from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. He holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and dual bachelor’s degrees in Biochemistry and Computer Science. In his role at Generate:Biomedicines, Gevorg remains focused on driving innovation at the intersection of computation and biology and enjoys working with brilliant scientists on some of the toughest challenges in molecular and therapeutic science. ## Jeremy Groeteke Global Head of IT and Digital Strategy, Syngenta Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeremy-groeteke/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Agriculture Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Jeremy Groeteke is Global Head of IT & Digital Strategy at Syngenta Group and CIO for its Vegetables & Flowers division, leading technology across Production & Supply, R&D, and Commercial. With 25+ years at Syngenta, Corteva, and DuPont Pioneer, he works at the intersection of agronomy, AI, and enterprise operations. Grounded in the Nebraska family farm where he grew up and remains closely engaged, Jeremy brings a rare dual perspective — global tech executive with deep roots in production agriculture. He is a frequent keynote speaker on AI in agriculture and has contributed to Harvard Business Review on the future of agtech. ## Aditya Grover CTO and Co-Founder, Inception Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aditya-grover/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Aditya Grover is co-founder & CTO of Inception, and a faculty member at UCLA. Aditya has a decade of experience helping pioneer foundational technologies at the intersection of generative AI and reinforcement learning, including node2vec, decision transformers, and on-policy self distillation, as well as Inception's Mercury models, which are the world's fastest LLMs. Aditya’s work has been recognized with several honors, including an outstanding paper award at NeurIPS, the MIT Innovators Under 35 Award, the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, the AI Researcher of the Year Award by Samsung, the Kavli Fellowship by the US National Academy of Sciences, the GOLD Award for Distinguished Young Alumni by IIT Delhi, the NSF CAREER Award, and the ACM SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award. Aditya received his postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley, PhD from Stanford, and bachelors from IIT Delhi, all in computer science. ## Che Guan Principal Data Scientist, AllianceBernstein Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/che-guan/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Che Guan is currently a Vice President and Principal Data Scientist of Data Science at AB. He is actively engaged in research and development on natural language processing. Before joining AB in 2021, Guan worked in multiple different positions, including principal data scientist at Raymond James, quantitative strategist at a start-up fund and data scientist at J.P. Morgan. Throughout his career, he has gained extensive experience in applying machine learning, optimization techniques and statistics to various projects in the financial industry. Guan holds an MS in data science from University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MS in statistics and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Connecticut, where he focused on forecasting applications. ## Remy Guercio Strategic Projects, Tailscale Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/remy-guercio/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Remy Guercio is part of Tailscale’s Strategic Projects team, a small senior group that works across Product, Marketing, Sales, and Engineering to advance priority initiatives that span the company. His role blends strategy and execution, with a focus on moving ideas from concept to launch and rollout. Remy has been pivotal to Aperture, Tailscale's recently launched AI gateway, from the beginning and continues to play a central role today as the team lead, focused on helping organizations adopt AI with stronger security, auditability, and governance, so teams can move fast without losing visibility or control. Remy brings experience across growth, product marketing, and go-to-market leadership, and has focused on AI-related work since 2019. Before Tailscale, he led Growth at Dynaboard (acquired by Figma), held leadership roles at Lambda across marketing and cloud, and worked in product marketing at Cloudflare. ## Alexander Guerra Perales Chief Strategy Officer, Banco Azteca / Elektra Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alexander-guerra-perales/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Finance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Alexander Guerra is the Chief Strategy Officer for Digital Channels at Banco Azteca / shopinbaz. Elektra is one of the largest retail groups in Latin America serving the base of the pyramid with innovative models of financial inclusion and tech development. Alexander specializes in unlocking profitable growth for digital platforms through pricing strategy, monetization architectures, and platform economics. Over the past decade, he has led global revenue initiatives across SuperApps, marketplaces, and fintech products. He is also a consultant on Platform and Pricing Strategy for start-ups and big corporations. Before joining Elektra, Alexander was a Lead Manager at Uber Technologies where he was responsible for building the SuperApp strategy globally and rolling out multiple revenue management tactics for profitable growth. His current consulting work focuses on helping companies to build, join or buy a platform and design strategies that make these business models profitable in the short-to-mid term. He has been keynote speaker in multiple conferences such as Financial Brand Forum, MAU Vegas, App Growth Summit, Business of Apps Summit and more. Alexander obtained a MSc in Management and Finance from University College London at UCL School of Management and also has studies at HEC Paris, MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School. ## Josh Guice Principal Architect, Liatrio Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-guice/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Josh Guice is a Principal Architect at Liatrio, where he helps lead Innovation and spends his days on the big questions. What actually creates value as AI becomes capable of doing more and more? What is the human role in that equation? He chases them by building, which yields both clarity and the next question. Over two decades of being early to what's next: DevOps before it had a name, cloud before it was common, and now the edge of AI. Previously AWS, startup CTO, Rackspace, and Nike. In his spare time he's out in nature, or at his desk resurrecting old fountain pens. ## Adam Gunnett VP of Business Intelligence & Strategy, Busy Beaver Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/adam-gunnett/ Track: Business Summit Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Adam Gunnett is Vice President of Business Intelligence & Strategy at Busy Beaver Building Centers, where he leads IT, data, marketing, and strategic technology initiatives across the company’s 19-store retail footprint. Over the past decade, Adam has helped transform Busy Beaver into a more modern, data-driven retail organization, leading initiatives in AI, ecommerce, business intelligence, customer experience, and store execution. He is known for bridging technology and business strategy in a practical way, focusing on solutions that create measurable impact in real-world retail environments. Adam was named 2025 Pittsburgh CIO of the Year – Tech Trailblazer and is a frequent speaker on leadership, AI in retail, and practical digital transformation. ## Ben Gunther Director of Projects, eSEOspace Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-gunther/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No As a project director and strategist, Ben has guided companies through complex digital transformations—integrating design, technology, and customer experience to maximize impact. Since the early days of eSEOspace in 2020, Ben has played a key role in shaping its growth and methodology, helping clients achieve significant increases in organic traffic, qualified leads, and meaningful reductions in customer acquisition cost. In addition to his expertise in web strategy, Ben leads and consults on software development projects, working closely with engineering teams to architect scalable systems, streamline workflows, and deliver custom digital solutions. He is passionate about unlocking growth opportunities by building smarter websites, frictionless user experiences, and innovative technology that drives long-term success. ## Yi Guo Professor & Associate Chair for Data Science, University of Florida Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yi-guo/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Dr. Guo is Professor, Associate Chair for Data Science, and Division Chief (Preeminent Scholar) of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida. He also serves as the Chief Data Scientist and Director of the Cancer Informatics Shared Resource for the UF Health Cancer Institute, Co-Director of the UF CTSI Biomedical Informatics Program, as well as the Associate Director of the Office of Data Science Research for the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network. Dr. Guo has a multidisciplinary background in the analysis of real-world data, including electronic health records (EHRs) and administrative claims, with expertise spanning randomized and observational study design, statistical and machine learning methods, causal inference, and target trial emulation. His work is unified by an overarching research focus on generating rigorous, AI-enabled real-world evidence to support healthcare decision-making for disease prevention, treatment, and population health management. Within this theme, his research centers on three core methodological areas: (1) EHR-based phenotyping and AI-driven risk prediction, focused on identifying clinical subpopulations and individuals at elevated risk using machine learning methods; (2) causal modeling and target trial emulation, aimed at estimating treatment effects and elucidating causal relationships from real-world clinical data; and (3) trustworthy clinical AI using real-world data, with emphasis on model evaluation, transportability across health systems, bias and confounding assessment, and the explicit alignment of predictive modeling with causal inference for clinical and policy decision-making. ## Kshitij Gupta Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kshitij-gupta/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kshitij Gupta, MSc in Applied Computing from the University of Toronto, is a Machine Learning Engineer at Meta. His work focuses on production machine learning and AI systems, including recommendation systems, semantic retrieval, embedding-based search, ranking infrastructure, feature pipelines, and evaluation frameworks. Across consumer technology, life sciences, emissions modelling, and security infrastructure, Kshitij has focused on turning research ideas and fast-moving prototypes into reliable production systems. His perspective is shaped by environments where quality is not just a model score or a demo result, but an engineering responsibility carried through architecture, deployment, monitoring, and ownership. At Ai4 2026, Kshitij will present "Cheap to Write, Expensive to Trust: Architecting Production Systems with LLMs." The talk examines what it takes to use LLMs in real software without handing them unchecked authority. He will discuss how teams can preserve trust by separating deterministic cores from generative shells, adding verification gates and evals, and keeping guarantees owned by humans rather than inferred from model behaviour. ## Saurav Gupta Senior Director, AI Transformation, Eli Lilly & Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/saurav-gupta/ Track: Product Management Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Saurav (Rav) Gupta, MBA, MS, is Senior Director of Product Management and AI Transformation at Eli Lilly and Company, where he leads product strategy, roadmap, and delivery of AI-enabled commercial platforms across one of the world's largest pharmaceutical organizations. With 18+ years of product management and business transformation experience across pharma, medical devices, insurance, and connected health — including roles at Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and Liberty Mutual — Rav has built a career at the intersection of strategic product leadership, enterprise AI adoption, and large-scale business transformation across some of the most complex and regulated industries in the world. At Lilly, his product work is grounded in a singular focus — getting patients to therapy faster and keeping them there. He owns the platforms and AI-enabled workflows that power patient enrollment, access, affordability, and omnichannel engagement across multi-billion dollar therapeutic franchises, touching millions of patient and provider interactions annually. He leads Lilly's agentic AI build for commercial operations — deploying AI into real patient services and access workflows to reduce friction, automate routine touchpoints, and surface the right intervention at the right moment in the patient journey. At the heart of that work is the craft of product management itself — translating ambiguity into prioritized roadmaps, aligning organizations around what to build and why, and delivering platforms that drive measurable outcomes in highly regulated environments. Over the past few years, AI has fundamentally changed how he approaches that work — from accelerating customer research and requirements to sharpening prioritization decisions and moving faster from insight to execution. Rav has developed a practical, hands-on point of view on where AI genuinely amplifies a PM's impact and where human judgment, stakeholder trust, and product intuition remain irreplaceable. He holds an MBA in Marketing, Strategy & Innovation from Boston University, an MS in Engineering from Northeastern University, holds 15+ patents in digital health systems and technology, and serves as an NSF SBIR/STTR panel reviewer supporting early-stage healthcare technology innovation. ## Vikul Gupta CTO, QualityAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vikul-gupta/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Vikul Gupta is a visionary technology leader driving innovation in digital engineering and AI transformation at QualityAI. As CTO for QualityAI North America, he has led the creation of next-generation AI and automation platforms that enhance software delivery and accelerate digital modernization for global clients. Under his leadership, QualityAI's NextGen Center of Excellence has grown into a 150-member global innovation hub, delivering cutting-edge solutions across cloud, DevOps, and GenAI. Vikul’s initiatives have earned industry recognition, including the CEO Award (2025) for exceptional impact on company growth and innovation. Before joining QualityAI, Vikul held technology leadership roles at Cognizant and HP Software, where he launched award-winning digital platforms, secured patents in AI-driven quality engineering, and drove large-scale digital transformation initiatives. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from the National Institute of Technology, Surat, and is a Certified SAFe 5 Agilist ## Nitin Gupta Head of AI & Digital, YASH Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nitin-gupta/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Nitin Kumar Gupta is a global AI leader and the driving force behind enterprise AI transformation at YASH Technologies, where he leads AI & Digital Services worldwide. Grounded in design thinking, Nitin's visionary approach is embodied in NEUPAC™ — AI Governance platform to Govern, Optimize, and Scale AI — which powers YASH's "AI First" strategy, helping enterprises move beyond automation into intelligent, autonomous operations. Nitin's expertise spans the most critical dimensions of enterprise AI adoption today, including Shadow AI, Responsible AI, FinOps for AI, Auditability, AI Compliance, ROI from AI, and Sovereign AI. He advises global organizations on scaling AI securely and responsibly, developing the governance frameworks that enable innovation while ensuring risk, compliance, and trust are managed at enterprise scale. With over three decades of experience spanning technology management, product development, business consulting, and large-scale digital transformation, Nitin brings a deep, cross-industry perspective to AI leadership across multiple domains. ## Amit Gupta Vice President, Kognitos Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amit-gupta/ Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 51-100 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Amit Dinesh Gupta has spent last 24 years on both sides of finance transformation: two decades building the traditional BPO model, and now unwinding it. A Chartered Accountant by training, he held senior roles at Accenture, Genpact, and Wipro, the firms that built outsourced Finance & Accounting into an industry. He helped global clients design shared services, run them at scale, and drive radical transformation programs. He is now VP of Sales, Agentic Transformation at Kognitos, working on next-gen AI-Native Finance Ops, this is what replaces the arbitrage based BPO industry. For 30 years BPOs have sold the same thing: more people, more seats, a bigger bill every year. AgenticBPO breaks that math. SOPs become deterministic, auditable agents in days. Exceptions teach the system instead of filling a seat. Clients see 60-70% automation of their most labor-heavy processes and payback inside year one. Incumbents will not bring this to their clients, because it does not trim their revenue, it cannibalizes it. So it is arriving without them. Amit is already running this model with enterprise finance teams today, taking processes off the seat-based bill and putting them on agents, and unlocking that value quarter by quarter while the industry is still calling it early. ## Nishant Gupta Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead, Meta Superintelligence Lab Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nishant-gupta/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Nishant Gupta is a Staff Software Engineer and Researcher at Meta, where he specializes in building large-scale distributed systems and AI infrastructure that power production-scale intelligent systems. His work sits at the intersection of distributed computing, systems architecture, and agentic AI, with a focus on designing reliable, scalable, and operationally resilient infrastructure for autonomous software systems. Within Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), Nishant works on agentic infrastructure - platforms that enable AI agents to operate safely and effectively within complex distributed environments. His work focuses on evaluation and auditing of AI-driven decision systems, reliability and safety for autonomous workflows, human oversight mechanisms, feedback-driven system optimization, and measuring real-world production impact beyond offline benchmarks. Prior to his work on AI infrastructure, Nishant led the development of Meta's next-generation elastic compute infrastructure, helping manage approximately 30% of Meta's global compute capacity across tens of millions of servers spanning around 20 geo-distributed data centers. His work significantly improved fleet-wide utilization while maintaining strict service-level objectives, contributing to infrastructure efficiency at one of the world's largest computing platforms. He also partnered with engineering leadership across Ads, Instagram, WhatsApp, Finance, and Infrastructure to define multi-year strategies for improving global compute efficiency. His research focuses on bridging theoretical advances with production engineering. He is the lead author of Dynamic Idle Resource Leasing to Safely Oversubscribe Capacity at Scale, which introduced a production system for leasing idle datacenter capacity while preserving reliability and strict SLO guarantees through rigorous simulation, controlled experimentation, and real-world safety validation. His publications have received more than 90 scholarly citations. Nishant is passionate about designing systems that remain reliable under uncertainty. His work explores how distributed services and AI agents coordinate, communicate, and make decisions while maintaining correctness, observability, fault tolerance, and operational safety. Throughout his career, he has led initiatives that: Architect highly available distributed platforms operating at massive scale Build production-ready agentic infrastructure for autonomous AI systems Design resilient systems with strong observability, graceful degradation, and operational reliability Translate cutting-edge research into practical engineering patterns adopted in production He is an active international speaker on AI infrastructure, distributed systems, production AI, and agentic engineering, regularly presenting at leading developer conferences and industry events. Nishant earned his Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where his research focused on scalable distributed systems and machine learning. Collaboration: - Keynotes and conference presentations - Technical workshops and executive briefings - Advisory engagements on AI infrastructure, distributed systems, and production AI - Partnerships with AI platforms, developer tools, and engineering organizations Contact: nishantgupta@g.ucla.edu ## Satyandra Gupta Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, GrayMatter Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/satyandra-gupta/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Satyandra K. Gupta is Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at GrayMatter Robotics. He also holds Smith International Professorship at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California and serves as the founding Director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing. His research interests are physical artificial intelligence, computational foundations for decision-making, and human-centered automation. He has published more than five hundred technical articles in journals, conference proceedings, and edited books. He also holds twenty-eight US patents. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Solid Modeling Association (SMA), and Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He is a former editor-in-chief of the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. He has received numerous honors and awards for his scholarly contributions. Representative examples include a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2001, Invention of the Year Award at the University of Maryland in 2007, Excellence in Research Award from ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Division in 2013, Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee in 2014, ASME Design Automation Award in 2021, Distinguished Alumni Award from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2022, Lifetime Achievement Award from ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Division in 2024, Eli Whitney Productivity Award from SME in 2025 and William T. Ennor Manufacturing Technology Award from ASME in 2025. He has also received eleven best paper awards at international conferences. He currently serves as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute and a member of A3 Robotics Technology Strategy Board. He also served as a member of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board (NMMB). ## Keith Gutfreund Head of Engineering & Systems Architecture, Kirk Tech Solutions Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/keith-gutfreund/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Keith Gutfreund Head of Engineering & Systems Architecture, Kirk Tech Solutions Keith Gutfreund is a strategic technology executive and systems architect who specializes in bridging the gap between hardware telemetry, resilient cloud architecture, and high-value, rapidly deployable enterprise AI applications. With a rare cross-domain background spanning both Electrical and Software Engineering, Keith has spent over four decades leading global technical strategies, steering large-scale engineering organizations, and securing critical intellectual property in highly regulated sectors. Currently, as Head of Engineering and Systems Architect for Kirk Tech Solutions, Keith directs the end-to-end execution of a next-generation, cloud-connected IoT medical device platform for Sleepnet Corp. In this role, he aligns domestic software development, offshore UI/UX teams, and international hardware manufacturers to transform complex device telemetry into secure, scalable, and cost-optimized AWS serverless ecosystems. Beyond IoT, Keith is pioneering Kirk Tech Solutions' expansion into vertical B2B markets using Flat Claw—a practical AI framework that utilizes Large Language Models (LLMs) as reasoning engines over unstructured legacy data, complex spreadsheets, and technical schematics. His work demonstrates how heavy industries, such as industrial equipment manufacturing and data center construction, can automate high-stakes estimations and unlock massive operational ROI without the multi-year runway of training foundational models from scratch. Keith’s elite engineering pedigree includes foundational roles during the dawn of modern computing and web-scale infrastructure at Bendix Research Labs, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and AltaVista, where he developed patented distributed collaboration and early message-passing systems. He later spent 24 years at Elsevier and RELX, serving as Senior Architect and Disruptive Technology Director for Elsevier Labs. There, he directed an information retrieval collaborative of over 600 global technologists, co-created an award-winning 3D brain navigation tool featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and architected data privacy systems that became shared reference models across dozens of global publishers. A former Peace Corps Volunteer and an Outstanding Graduate Student in Computer Science from Boston University, Keith balances deep technical execution with a commitment to mentoring the next generation of technical leaders. ## Wesley Haar Co-founder & Chief AI Officer, Monks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/wesley-haar/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Wesley ter Haar is Chief AI & Revenue Officer at Monks, the global, purely digital, unitary operating brand of S4Capital plc., which combines an extraordinary range of global marketing and technology services to accelerate business possibilities and redefine how brands and businesses interact with the world. Wesley sits on the boards of S4Capital, SoDA (The Digital Society) and The One Club for Creativity. Under his ongoing leadership for more than 20 years, Wesley has sought to wage war on mediocre digital production, and has played a leading role in evolving Monks from a humble production house into an end-to-end marketing and technology services partner that is building AI-first brands for the intelligence-optimized economy. Employing people in 32 countries, the Monks team works across time zones and around the world to achieve unparalleled creative quality recognized by many Cannes Lions, FWA Awards, three-time Webby Production Company of the Year, The One Show inaugural AI Pioneer Organisation, Adweek’s first-ever AI Agency of the Year, and inclusion on the Ad Age Digital A-List. Wesley has spoken around the world at conferences including Cannes, Adobe MAX, CES, Advertising Week NY, Advertising Week LATAM, FIAP and more. Always looking to bring creative triumphs to justice, Wesley was the inaugural president of Cannes Lions' Digital Craft jury and served on the Cannes Titanium Jury, which celebrates game-changing creativity. Business Intelligence has recognized Wesley in its 2024 Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Awards program as AI trailblazer. In 2018, ter Haar earned a coveted spot on the Ad Age’s 2018 Creativity All-Stars list and was inducted into the ADCN Hall of Fame. ## Stephanie Hall Technology & Innovation Lead, Zero Abuse Project Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stephanie-hall/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 11-50 employees State: Missouri Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Stephanie Hall, M.S., is the Technology & Innovation Lead at Zero Abuse Project, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending child abuse through training, technology, and survivor-centered solutions. She leads the organization’s work in AI adoption, governance, digital strategy, and emerging technology, with a focus on helping child protection professionals respond to AI-enabled exploitation and online harm. Stephanie works closely with investigators, prosecutors, educators, and frontline professionals through Zero Abuse Project’s Internet Crimes Against Children Training and Technology program and its Child Advocacy Studies program. She also develops practical AI tools, simulations, and training models designed for sensitive, high-stakes environments. She is passionate about ethical AI, safety by design, and ensuring that organizations understand their responsibility within the broader ecosystem of AI-enabled harm. She writes the biweekly LinkedIn newsletter *Mission/Shift*, where she explores responsible AI, nonprofit innovation, emerging technology, and online safety. With more than eight years of nonprofit experience, Stephanie specializes in responsible AI, digital transformation, online safety, and technology strategy. She holds a Master of Science in Human and Social Services with a specialization in Nonprofit Administration from Walden University and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Missouri State University. Mission/Shift: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/mission-shift-7359245468414976003/ Portfolio: https://stephaniehall.ai/ ZAP Speaking Topics: https://rb.gy/43gmgc Meeting Link: https://zeroabuseproject.fillout.com/stephanie-hall ## Earle Hall President & CEO, AXES.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/earle-hall/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Earle G. Hall is President and CEO of AXES.ai, creator of the world’s first cloud-native Intelligent Management System for land-based gaming. AXES replaces traditional legacy casino management systems with a real-time, blockchain-secured platform connecting gaming machines, financial transactions, player activity and operational endpoints. Its ecosystem delivers real-time fintech, cashless payments, regulatory compliance and AI-powered predictive intelligence. AXES has pioneered predictive responsible-gaming research using wagering telemetry and artificial intelligence to identify behavioral change before traditional indicators reveal potential harm. Hall is a founding member and sitting board member of the Artificial Intelligence Research Hub—AiR Hub—at the UNLV International Gaming Institute. AiR Hub brings together industry leaders, researchers and policymakers to study the adoption, governance and responsible use of AI across global gaming. Its work includes the 2026 *State of AI in Gaming* report, which forms the foundation of Hall’s Ai4 presentation. He is Co-Chair of the AI & Cybersecurity Policy Committee of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Chair of the International Gaming Standards Association’s Emerging Technologies Committee, an Emeritus Chairman of IGSA and an Emeritus Board Member of the Government Blockchain Association. Hall is an internationally recognized human-behavior researcher and speaker whose multidisciplinary work spans psychology, leadership, neuroscience, behavioral change and natural medicine. His decades of independent study have shaped his research into how artificial intelligence and real-time wagering data can identify behavioral change and support predictive responsible gaming. A two-time TEDx speaker, he was named one of *Global Gaming Business* magazine’s “25 People to Watch.” For more than three decades, Hall has led organizations across AI, gaming, fintech, blockchain, 3D digitization and enterprise systems. As President of Inspeck, he pioneered the development and commercialization of 3D digitization technology used in major film productions including *The Matrix*, *Pirates of the Caribbean* and *X-Men*. At AXES.ai, Hall leads a global intelligent-management ecosystem operating across more than 40 countries and processing billions of wagering and transactional data points to support predictive analytics, anti-money-laundering controls, operational optimization and player protection. Hall is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and holds a master’s degree in public administration. He taught graduate-level public administration for approximately a decade, holds an honorary doctorate and is completing a PhD focused on human behavior and natural medicine. In 2024, he received the United States President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for more than 4,000 hours of volunteer service advancing AI, blockchain, responsible gaming and anti-money-laundering initiatives. ## Lena Hall Akamai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lena-hall/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Jesse Hall Staff Developer Advocate, LiveKit Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jesse-hall/ Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Jesse Hall is a Staff Developer Advocate at LiveKit and a full-stack developer who specializes in teaching TypeScript developers how to build AI-powered web applications using real-time communication technologies. He creates practical articles, videos, and interactive talks that break down complex voice AI and agent concepts into clear, production-ready takeaways. ## David Hallac CEO, Viaduct Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-hallac/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist David Hallac is the Founder and CEO of Viaduct, an AI-powered manufacturing intelligence platform that helps discrete manufacturers improve production throughput, reduce warranty costs, and improve quality through advanced analytics on connected asset data. In 2025, Viaduct became part of Sumitomo Rubber Industries, a move that has strengthened Viaduct's resources and global reach while David continues to lead the company's strategy and product direction. David's background is in Electrical Engineering, where he focused on large-scale optimization for time series sensor data coming from cars, airplanes, and other large machines. His Ph.D. research involved developing mathematical models for finding patterns in complex data and implementing these methods in high-performance solvers that were directly used by Fortune 500 companies across various IoT verticals. At Viaduct, David continues to develop new methods for analyzing connected asset data, with applications spanning predictive equipment maintenance, quality monitoring, and asset safety. He received his B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, both in Electrical Engineering. ## Russell Halper Founder & Managing Director, Insight Kitchen LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/russell-halper/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Russell Halper is the founder of Insight Kitchen, a services firm dedicated to helping companies find the right recipe for success with AI. His experience spans a broad range of industries, including Retail, CPG, Technology, Industrial, Logistics, and Energy. Prior to founding Insight Kitchen, Russell was a Partner at End-to-End Analytics, which was eventually acquired by Accenture. At Accenture, he served as a Managing Director, ultimately leading the AI West practice. Russell holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. ## Rosie Halpin Product at Tines, Tines Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rosie-halpin/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Amir Hameed Senior Vice President - Global Technical Solutions, RingCentral Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amir-hameed/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Systems Engineering/Network Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Amir Hameed is a professional engineer with over 25 years of UC/CC domain expertise in presales leadership roles in companies including Avaya, Sonus, Nortel Networks, and 8x8. As the current Senior Vice President of WW Solution Sales & Engineering at RingCentral, Amir and his organization work with partners and prospects to support customers' digital transformation strategies worldwide as they migrate their business communications to the Cloud. Amir resides in Toronto, Canada. ## Sammy Hamilton VP of AI, Heven Aerotech Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sammy-hamilton/ Track: Aerospace & Defense Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Samantha Hamilton is an applied AI leader with more than a decade building AI systems for defense and national security. Her background spans software engineering, machine learning, and AI program leadership, with a focus on delivering capabilities that reach operational end users. She previously led AI/ML teams at BigBear.ai, building and deploying solutions for the DoD and Intelligence Community. Samantha now serves as VP of AI at Heven AeroTech, where she owns the AI and autonomy stack for a hydrogen-electric drone platform capable of 8+ hours of flight on a single fill. Her team builds the onboard intelligence - computer vision, autonomous navigation, and edge decision-making - that enables unmanned systems to operate without a human in the loop. Her work is focused on one of the industry's hardest unsolved problems: getting AI out of the lab and onto aircraft that operate in contested, GPS-denied, and communications-limited environments. ## Sarah Hammer Managing Director, AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sarah-hammer/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Sarah Hammer is a financial services executive, professor, and former government official. Over the course of her career, she has held senior positions in trading, portfolio management, portfolio analytics, investment strategy, risk management, and institutional client management at JPMorgan, PIMCO, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, Tudor Investment Corporation, and BlackRock. Previously, Ms. Hammer served as a senior government official, holding the posts of Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Acting Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. At the U.S. Treasury, she led the Offices of Financial Institutions Policy, Critical Infrastructure Protection and Compliance Policy, Insurance, and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. As Secretary of Banking and Securities, she led statewide regulatory oversight of approximately 290,000 depository institutions, asset managers, and financial advisors representing roughly $3.5 trillion in assets under management. She also led the Department through the 2023 banking crisis, instituting statewide emergency protocols and managing the influx of depository activity due to stablecoin companies withdrawing deposits from Silicon Valley Bank. Ms. Hammer has also held a series of roles in academia, as an Executive Director at the Wharton School and Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Ms. Hammer has provided expert testimony to the U.S. Senate Banking and House Financial Services Subcommittees. At the invitation of the Acting Chairman, she has presented twice to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She has served as an invited speaker at roundtables on AI convened by the U.S. Treasury Roundtable and the Securities Exchange Commission. She is a licensed attorney, member of the American Law Institute, member of the Economic Club of New York, member of the American Inns of Court, and Harry S. Truman Scholar. She is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee (BWC) and Co-Chair of the BWC Working Group on AI. She is Co-Chair of the International Expert Consortium on AI and Co-Editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook on Generative AI and author of the chapter on AI in finance. She is an advisor to the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) and previously served as an advisor to the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Ms. Hammer has published in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law and The Wall Street Journal. She was selected for 50 Women to Watch by The Corporate Counsel Business Journal, received Special Recognition from the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, and received an award from TIME for her educational course on digital assets. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School, a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an MSt from the University of Oxford. While in law school, she worked for the Honorable Michael M. Barylson, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; Justice Jane Cutler Greenspan of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania; and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. ## Jake Hammock Chief Information Security Officer, Assistant CTO and Director of Security & Infrastructure, City of Seattle Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jake-hammock/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Government Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Jake Hammock is the Chief Information Security Officer, Assistant Chief Technology Officer and Security & Infrastructure Director at the City of Seattle, where he leads the Security & Infrastructure Division delivering citywide cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, cloud operations, IT service management, telecom and radio systems, fiber, and network services. He directs programs for incident response, identity and governance, enterprise architecture, and system and network operations, aligning investments to resilience, public safety, and civic administrative priorities across the nation’s 17th largest municipality through Welcoming City programs. Jake’s career spans executive roles in government and industry. He served as Director of Trust and Vice President of Information Security at NICE inContact, leading board-level cybersecurity and privacy programs during a period of accelerated high growth. He was the Chief Technology Officer for a top 10 global fintech by peak market cap, patenting and deploying technologies used in production today, and later CTO for an energy-sector solutions provider, where he architected AI-driven cybersecurity platforms and advised enterprise energy and public-sector clients. A former U.S. Army Military Intelligence and Cyber Warfare Officer, he commanded Cyber National Mission Force units and served in national security leadership assignments within the Intelligence Community. He is a combat veteran, holds an M.Sc. in Cybersecurity Technology and patents spanning telecommunications, environmental platforms, and decentralized technologies, and he remains active in advancing secure AI, quantum-resilient encryption, data governance, and critical infrastructure protection. ## Chris Han Co-Founder & President, ThinkingAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-han/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Chris Han is Co-Founder of ThinkingAI. At ThinkingAI, Chris is building the Agentic Engine, a platform that lets enterprises run growth and operations autonomously—moving beyond dashboards and analytics to systems that close the loop and act on their own. He pioneered the company's positioning around Agentic Growth: using autonomous agents to drive measurable business outcomes, backed by sovereign, bring-your-own-model infrastructure that keeps customer data private and compliant by design. ThinkingAI's technology powers some of the world's leading gaming and consumer companies, including SEGA, Krafton, Habby and Ceuntury Games, and the platform is expanding into e-commerce, social, and other high-growth verticals. Chris brings a global operator's perspective to enterprise AI, having scaled teams and revenue across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he focuses on how AI-native companies can globalize—taking products built for one market and making them work everywhere. He speaks regularly on the shift from data analytics to autonomous operations, and on building trust around AI infrastructure across jurisdictions. ## Faisal Hanif Product Management, Upscale Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/faisal-hanif/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Faisal Hanif is a Product Management leader at Upscale AI, where he helps shape next-generation AI networking platforms for enterprise and cloud-scale AI infrastructure. His work focuses on AI fabrics, open networking, and intelligent orchestration that simplify deploying and operating large-scale GPU clusters. Prior to Upscale AI, Faisal led full-stack AI initiatives at Cisco, helping bring AI infrastructure solutions spanning GPUs, networking, and storage to market. A frequent industry speaker and published author, he shares insights on AI networking, open infrastructure, and the evolving economics of large-scale AI systems. ## Eric Hankinson VP of Technology, Outdoor Equipped Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/eric-hankinson/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Eric Hankinson is Vice President of Technology at Outdoor Equipped, one of the largest third-party Amazon sellers in the United States. He leads technology strategy across software engineering, data, and operations, with a particular focus on AI-driven tooling, agentic workflows, and the systems that make a high-volume ecommerce business run. Eric has spent his career at the intersection of ecommerce operations and applied technology, and he is a frequent collaborator with peers in the AI and seller-tools communities. ## Karl Hanson Co-founder and CPO, Tonic.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/karl-hanson/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Karl Hanson is Co-founder of Tonic.ai and currently leads its development simulation environments for agent training and evaluation. Karl's path to synthetic data ran through Palantir, where he was part of the early commercial leadership team. He co-founded Tonic.ai in 2018, and today its solutions are trusted by companies like Comcast, eBay, Vanguard, and Fidelity Investments. ## Susan Harker MBA Director, California State University, Monterey Bay Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/susan-harker/ Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: California Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals ## Evan Harrison CEO, Kiss The Ground Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/evan-harrison/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Evan Harrison is the Chief Executive Officer of Kiss the Ground, the leading nonprofit promoting Regeneration and healthy soil as a viable solution for human and planetary wellness. Since joining in July 2022, Harrison has accelerated the organization's mission and growth via education, strategic storytelling and partnerships with brands like Anthropologie and Spindrift. In that time, Kiss the Ground has nearly doubled awareness of regenerative agriculture, while reaching more than a million individuals monthly. Drawing on his background building audiences in the media industry, including as founding President of Digital at iHeartRadio and leading roles at AOL Music and Univision, Harrison has launched transformative initiatives for Kiss the Ground, such as a $500,000 direct-to-farmer grants program and an award-winning content series; all geared to drive this nonprofit's goal of reaching a tipping point in regenerative agriculture awareness by 2030. ## Kathryn Harrison Global Vice President, Strategy & Business Operations, Concentrix Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kathryn-harrison/ Track: Generative AI: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Whitney Harriss VP of Customer Experience, Accelevents Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/whitney-harriss-du5oti/ State: North Carolina ## Whitney Harriss VP of Customer Experience, Accelevents Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/whitney-harriss/ State: North Carolina ## Robert Hartman Product Marketing Manager, AI Factory with NVIDIA, Dell Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-hartman/ Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Robert Hartman is an accomplished technology marketing leader, currently serving as Senior Product Marketing Manager at Dell AI Factory. At the forefront of Dell’s AI portfolio, Robert specializes in driving the adoption of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA and cutting-edge Generative AI solutions that transform business operations. Over a career spanning more than 20 years, he has established himself as an expert in servers, networking innovations, and semiconductors. His particular strength lies in clearly articulating the business value of disruptive technologies, helping organizations maximize investments and achieve significant productivity gains. Throughout his time at Dell, Robert has contributed to groundbreaking product launches, including the AI-accelerated PowerEdge XE servers. His marketing efforts have catalyzed customer success in data centers, cloud infrastructure, and the rapidly growing AI landscape. Prior to this, his expertise extended to roles at HPE and AMD, where he advanced innovation in networking and embedded technology. Robert’s vision aligns with fostering business transformation powered by AI insights. His engaging communication style and strategic insight make him a trusted force in the field, translating complex solutions into impactful results. Whether leading AI-focused initiatives or launching innovative hardware, Robert thrives at the intersection of technology and business outcomes, continually shaping the future of enterprise solutions in the age of intelligent innovation. ## Mona Hassanzadeh Head/Director of Data Science & AI, Meridian Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mona-hassanzadeh/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Mona Hassanzadeh, Ph.D. Head/Director, Data Science & AI, Meridian I’m a passionate leader in data science and innovation with over a decade of experience applying AI to solve complex business challenges. As Director of Data Science & Innovation at Meridian, I lead high-impact teams in developing advanced analytics solutions that drive operational excellence and elevate member experiences. I hold a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, with deep expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence. Before joining Meridian, I served as Director of Advanced Analytics at CIBC, where I led enterprise AI initiatives focused on risk mitigation and strategic optimization. My academic journey includes a postdoctoral fellowship in Advanced Modeling and Optimization, where I explored predictive modeling for environmental systems. I’ve also had the privilege of teaching machine learning at the University of Waterloo, and I remain committed to fostering equity, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace. My work is driven by a belief in the power of data to create meaningful, measurable impact—and I’m excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. ## Michelle Hawley Editorial Director, VKTR Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michelle-hawley/ Track: AI Agents: Strategy Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Michelle Hawley serves as Editorial Director at Simpler Media Group's VKTR, an enterprise AI-focused publication that debuted in late 2023. In this role, she leads editorial strategy, manages day-to-day operations and guides the site's growing network of contributors. Michelle is also the host of VKTR TV's The Inference. Her diverse background spans both creative and technical writing, with experience ranging from luxury automotive content for Alfa Romeo to career advancement columns for The Ladders. She has managed editorial teams, mentored writers and developed content strategies for national and international brands, including WebFX, L2T Media and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Based in Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley, Michelle combines her passion for storytelling with deep technical expertise to help organizations navigate the evolving digital landscape. ## Michael Hayden Program Chair, Master of Information Systems Management, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michael-hayden/ Track: Education Industry: IT / Computer Technology Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Co-Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Michael Hayden is Program Chair of both the Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) and Bachelor of Business Information Systems (BABIS) programs and Assistant Professor for the School of Business and Technology at the University of Arizona Global Campus His professional background includes over 30 years of experience in education, information technology, network administration, security/cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and business management. He founded several companies focused on addressing customers’ data-intensive decisions in technology, network security, IT management, finance, shipping, and purchasing. He works with many entrepreneur centers, veteran and women’s leadership organizations, and supports student teams to develop technology ventures. Michael is the Faculty Advisor of the UAGC Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Drone. Aviation, and Aerospace (DAA) Clubs. Michael has founded and scaled multiple technology-driven businesses, empowering data-centric decisions across sectors like finance, security, logistics, and IT management. ## Xinwei He Founder and CEO, TraceRoot.AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/xinwei-he/ Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Founder and CEO @ TraceRoot.AI | Founding Engineer @ Kumo.AI | Stanford CS MS ## Pierce Healy VP, AI Products, Pendo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pierce-healy/ Track: Product Management Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Pierce Healy is the Senior Director of AI Products at Pendo, where he leads AI and agent product strategy. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Zelta AI, a New York City-based startup acquired by Pendo in 2024, and earlier led teams of consultants and data scientists at McKinsey & Company. He has spent the last several years shipping AI features to enterprise product teams and thinking hard about what actually makes them work in production. ## Gal Helemski Cofounder & Chief Product (CPO), PlainID Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gal-helemski/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Gal Helemski, Cofounder & Chief Product (CPO). Gal Helemski is co-founder and CTO/CPO at PlainID and a highly recognized and acclaimed cyber security expert. She plays a key role at PlainID as a strategic leader, visionary and evangelist while overseeing product development, including leading the product architecture and strategy. For the last 20+ years, Gal has defined solutions for customers and created and defined project specs, technical documentation, presentations and training focused on identity and access management. As an early member of Identity startups, including the CyberArk team, Gal has been extremely influential in the identity space for most of her career. She earned a bachelor of science degree in physics and computer science from Bar-Ilan University after serving six years in the Israeli Defense Force’s prestigious Mamram computing unit. ## Hoda Helmi Director of AI and Decision Science, Corteva Agriscience Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hoda-helmi/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Matt Henderson CEO, Coral Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-henderson/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Matt Henderson is the co-founder and CEO of Coral, an open-source data layer for AI agents. Previously, Matt was CEO of Stripe Europe, leading the company's international operations across product and engineering. Earlier in his career he was a product director at Amazon and Google, and co-founded the ML analytics startup Rangespan, acquired by Google. He is also an angel investor in over 100 startups. ## Justin Hendrix CEO and Editor, Tech Policy Press Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/justin-hendrix/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Member of the Press: Yes Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. He spent over a decade at The Economist in roles including Vice President of Business Development & Innovation. He is an adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a lecturer at Cornell Tech, and serves on the editorial board at Just Security. ## Jonathan Herman CEO and Chief AI Strategist, Strong Interactive Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonathan-herman/ Track: Energy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Jonathan Herman is an award-winning tech founder, AI strategist, and Web3 advisor focused on the convergence of artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and blockchain. As Founder & CEO of Strong Interactive and AirNode.ai, he helps organizations harness emerging technologies to solve complex business challenges while navigating security, governance, and regulatory considerations. Recognized by Crunchbase among the world's leading innovators in Semantic Web (Top 5 Globally), Jonathan has spent more than two decades helping startups, Fortune 500 companies, sports organizations, and public-sector leaders develop technology strategies that create competitive advantage and unlock new business models. Jonathan currently advises organizations on AI strategy and secure AI deployment, with a focus on critical infrastructure and regulated industries including nuclear energy, healthcare, and financial services. His work includes developing sovereign, air-gapped AI solutions that enable organizations to leverage advanced AI capabilities while maintaining strict control over sensitive data and mission-critical systems. A frequent speaker and panel moderator, Jonathan has presented at conferences and events including the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA Anderson School of Business, Council on Foundations, New York Law School, Florida Alternative Investment Association, and Miami NFT Week. His presentations translate rapidly evolving technologies into practical business strategies, helping executives understand not only where AI is headed, but how to implement it responsibly and effectively today. More at JonathanMHerman.com ## Johannes Hermann CTO, Frontier Medicines Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/johannes-hermann/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Johannes Hermann, CTO of Frontier Medicines is an early pioneer in AI-driven drug discovery, with over a decade of leadership experience across healthcare and pharmaceuticals. At Frontier, he is building Frontier's Covalent AI platform — purpose-built AI systems powered by the company's proprietary Covalent Ground Truth (CoGT™) dataset to discover breakthrough drugs against historically undruggable targets. Previously, Johannes served as global head of Data Science at Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Technology, integrating AI into digital surgery, patient rehabilitation, and personalized treatment. At Janssen Pharmaceuticals, he led Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics across the full pharmaceutical value chain. He began his career at Roche as a data scientist and drug designer, and holds a PhD in quantum and molecular mechanics from the University of Düsseldorf, with postgraduate work at the University of Bristol and UC San Francisco. ## Catalina Herrera Field CDO, Dataiku Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/catalina-herrera/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders State: Texas Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Catalina Herrera is a data and AI leader driving enterprise transformation at scale. As Field CDO at Dataiku, she partners with Fortune 100 companies and global tech leaders to operationalize AI and analytics. With 15+ years of experience spanning data science, SaaS, and advanced analytics, she has a deep track record of turning cutting-edge tech into real business impact. Recognized among the Top 30 Women in AI Advancements in Texas, Catalina is also a passionate advocate for responsible AI and women in STEM. ## Alan Hester President, Nividous Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alan-hester/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees State: New Jersey Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Alan Hester is President of Nividous Software Solutions and a recognized voice in the evolution of agentic AI and intelligent automation. With more than two decades of experience at the intersection of emerging technology and enterprise strategy, Alan focuses on how autonomous AI systems are reshaping decision-making, operational models, and organizational design. He works with executive leaders to move beyond experimentation and toward scalable, governance-aligned AI ecosystems. Known for translating complex AI concepts into actionable enterprise strategy, Alan speaks frequently on the rise of agentic systems and their transformative impact on the future of work. ## Melanie Hill Head of Advanced Concepts (Innovation & Strategy), Ace Hardware Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/melanie-hill/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Retail Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees State: Illinois Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Melanie Hill is a transformation architect and enterprise strategist known for guiding organizations through pivotal moments of change—where brand, innovation, and leadership intersect. As Head of Innovation & Strategy (Advanced Concepts) at Ace Hardware, Melanie leads enterprise-wide growth initiatives that combine consumer insight with operational transformation. She has launched new business platforms, strategic alliances, and private-label brands—including Loud Mouth BBQ, Ace’s first national food brand—while embedding a culture of insight-driven decision-making and data-powered strategy across marketing, merchandising, and digital operations. She is currently helping shape Ace’s evolving AI strategy, guiding how the organization can leverage AI to enhance consumer experiences, strengthen decision-making, and accelerate innovation across the enterprise. Prior to Ace, Melanie spent nearly a decade at Weber, where she helped modernize one of America’s most iconic brands for the connected era. She built Weber’s global Internet of Things (IoT) and connected products division from acquisition through global scale, and led the launch of Weber Connect, winner of the CES Best Connected Home Product Award in 2020. Her work bridged product innovation, digital experience, and brand storytelling to evolve Weber from a grill manufacturer into a global lifestyle and technology brand. Earlier in her career at Procter & Gamble, Melanie led marketing strategy for the Cascade brand, overseeing large-scale media investments and driving record e-commerce growth through data-driven category management. Beyond her corporate roles, Melanie serves as Board Chair of the National Runaway Safeline, the federally designated crisis hotline for America’s homeless and at-risk youth. She also serves on the Advisory Council for Audira Labs, a leadership development organization focused on executive coaching and organizational strategy. Melanie holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. She continues to expand her expertise through executive education in big data, emerging technologies, and innovation. ## Rebecca Hinds Head of the Work AI Institute, Glean Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rebecca-hinds/ Track: Executive Summit Industry: Software Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Rebecca Hinds (rebeccahinds.com) is the Head of the Work AI Institute (workai.institute), a first-of-its-kind research center that conducts actionable research to help leaders and organizations navigate the changing world of work. A leading expert on work transformation and the future of work, she is also a sought-after keynote speaker represented by United Talent Agency (UTA). She has presented at leading global conferences, including Dreamforce, Google Cloud Next, HubSpot INBOUND, SXSW, Ai4, and CloudFest, and delivered talks for organizations including Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Deloitte, Google, ExxonMobil, Citi, and IBM. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at universities around the world, including Stanford and UC Berkeley. Rebecca is the bestselling author of Your Best Meeting Ever (Simon & Schuster), which became an instant national bestseller in 2026 and was called “required reading” by Adam Grant. She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, where she received the prestigious Stanford Graduate Interdisciplinary Fellowship, one of the university’s highest honors for graduate students. She was also inducted into Cap and Gown, Stanford’s women’s leadership honor society. A multi-time founder, Rebecca co-founded Stratio, a semiconductor company developing infrared sensing technology, while at Stanford. Stratio was recognized by the Kairos Society as one of the 50 most innovative student-run businesses in the world. In 2022, Rebecca founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, which conducted cutting-edge research on how work is changing. Her award-winning research and insights are regularly featured in publications including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., and TIME. She has also published in leading academic outlets, including Organization Science and CSCW. Rebecca is a co-instructor of the 2025 CNBC Make It course How to Use AI to Be More Successful at Work and a columnist for Inc. and Reworked. She also serves on the advisory boards of the Remote Work Institute and the Doodle Time Institute. A former competitive swimmer, Rebecca competed on Stanford’s Pac-12 championship-winning swim team and was a semifinalist at the 2008 Canadian Olympic Swimming Trials. ## Jason Hiner Editor-in-Chief, The Deep View Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-hiner/ Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 11-50 employees State: Kentucky Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Jason Hiner is the Editor-in-Chief of The Deep View. He's an award-winning journalist who has spent his career analyzing how tech has reshaped the world. He covered AI for over a decade at ZDNET and CNET and watched it evolve from research labs to enterprise infrastructure to a daily reality for over a billion people. He came to The Deep View for the opportunity to cover AI every day and build a next-generation media company. ## Spencer Hitchner AI Strategy Lead, US Industries, Avanade Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/spencer-hitchner/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Massachusetts Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Spencer T. Hitchner, AI Tech Strategy Lead, US Industries | Avanade Advisory_x000D_ Spencer Hitchner leads AI strategy and program design for Avanade's US Industries practice, helping organizations move from AI experimentation to measurable impact. He has led AI transformation engagements across healthcare and other industries including financial services, retail and manufacturing, with a focus on redesigning the structures and incentives that drive how work actually gets done. Spencer brings both strategic depth and real-world practitioner insight to every stage. He holds an MBA from Boston University. ## Monica Ho Chief Marketing Officer, SOCi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/monica-ho/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Other Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Monica Ho is Chief Marketing Officer of SOCi, where she has spent the past eight years building the marketing engine behind the agentic workforce for multi-location brands. She leads SOCi's marketing and communications organization, shaping the company's presence in the fast-evolving localized marketing category and helping establish its leadership in AI-driven local search, social, and reputation management. Under her leadership, SOCi has developed the industry's first third-party validated local visibility measurement and research, the Local Visibility Index (LVI), along with the SOCi100 and SOCi AI 100, which recognize the most visible brands based on that annual research. Monica also launched ReImagine, SOCi's flagship industry event, now in its seventh year. Monica brings more than 25 years of experience in marketing, advertising, and research, with deep expertise in sales, strategy, and data analytics. Before SOCi, she served as Global CMO at GroundTruth, formerly xAd, Inc., where she helped grow the company from an early-stage startup into an award-winning global brand. Her leadership has earned industry recognition, including being named one of Women We Admire's Top Women Chief Marketing Officers for 2026 and a Top 50 Marketer in the 2024 OnCon Icon Awards. Beyond SOCi, Monica advises digital marketing and technology startups across New York, Texas, and California. She also serves as Board President for NAMI Central Texas, a nonprofit providing free mental health support, resources, education, and support groups to the community. ## William Ho Executive Director, Morgan Stanley Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/william-ho/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No William Ho is an Executive Director and Head of the Quantitative Research and Model Review team within Risk Management at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. His team is responsible for serving as a central advisory function for model performance, overseeing models and tools governance, and shaping Generative AI governance framework, use case oversight and AI enablement initiatives. William is a member of the firm’s Generative AI governance committee, where he helps design practical governance framework that supports the responsible deployment of AI while balancing innovation, regulatory expectations and risk management. William holds a Master's degree in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Stony Brook University. ## Gregory Hodgkinson CTO, R&D and Innovation, Prolifics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gregory-hodgkinson/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Greg Hodgkinson is CTO and Head of R&D and Innovation at  Prolifics, where he is helping enterprises reinvent how value gets delivered in the age of AI. He established and grew the Prolifics Innovation Center into the leading edge of the business — building it into an engine for AI-first enterprise transformation. His work focuses on how AI agents, intelligent automation, and AI-enabled engineering are reshaping the way organizations modernize systems, accelerate delivery, and create competitive advantage. Greg leads initiatives spanning agentic enterprise architectures, AI-powered modernization factories, engineering acceleration platforms, and next-generation delivery models designed to dramatically improve speed, quality, and business agility. He works with global enterprises across industries to modernize legacy estates, unlock enterprise data for AI, and create practical pathways toward AI-transformed value streams. Known for turning emerging technology into practical execution, Greg has a track record of building high-impact teams, innovation programs, and enterprise platforms that convert disruptive ideas into scalable business capability and measurable outcomes. With more than 30 years of experience in enterprise technology and digital transformation, Greg has worked across every major shift in enterprise architecture from distributed systems and SOA through cloud, DevOps, and now AI-first operating models. Before joining Prolifics through the acquisition of 7irene, a UK-based SOA platform company he co-founded, he built products focused on enterprise integration, distributed runtime platforms, and collaborative engineering. He holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. ## Derek Holt CEO, Digital.ai Software, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/derek-holt/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: DevOps Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Derek Holt is Chief Executive Officer of Digital.ai, a leading enterprise software company helping Global 2000 organizations transform how they operate, innovate, and deliver business value in the age of AI. Under his leadership, Digital.ai is accelerating the adoption of AI and agentic technologies across enterprise operating models—from software planning to cybersecurity, testing, and delivery— helping organizations move faster, operate more intelligently, deliver business outcomes and improve resilience at scale. With customers in more than 40 countries and trusted by 53% of the Fortune 100, Digital.ai serves many of the world’s largest enterprises across highly regulated and mission-critical industries. Derek is also leading Digital.ai’s transformation into an AI-first enterprise, embedding AI across product innovation, go-to-market, operations, finance, legal, human resources and corporate execution to drive growth, efficiency, and operating leverage. His work and public commentary have made him a recognized voice on how AI is reshaping enterprise business processes, leadership models, and the economics of modern organizations. Prior to joining Digital.ai, Derek served as President and COO of K4Connect, a venture-backed IoT software company focused on transforming the senior living industry through technology and connected systems. Earlier in his career, he was part of the founding executive team at Startup America Partnership, a public-private partnership with the White House focused on accelerating entrepreneurship, innovation, and regional startup ecosystems across the United States. Derek began his career at IBM Software Group, where he held leadership roles spanning software development, strategy, services, and sales. During his tenure, he worked with Global 5000 organizations on large-scale digital transformation initiatives focused on agility, operational modernization, and the adoption of emerging technologies. He holds a BS in Computer Science from The Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he was named a Fuqua Scholar ## Josh Holt Principal Product Leader, Optimizely Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-holt/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Josh Holt is a Senior Product Leader at Optimizely, where he sits at the intersection of AI and experimentation. He focuses on making it easier for teams to design, run, and learn from experiments by bringing cutting-edge AI capabilities into the platform. ## Darshan Honale Founder & AI Operator-Investor, Rivargo & i2VC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/darshan-honale/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Darshan Honale is the Founder of Rivargo and i2VC, where he works at the intersection of enterprise AI deployment, operational transformation, and early-stage technology investing. His work focuses on helping organizations move beyond AI experimentation and pilot programs toward scalable, production grade implementations that drive measurable business outcomes. Darshan has worked across industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and enterprise software, with a particular focus on the operational realities of AI adoption inside traditional organizations. He regularly advises founders, operators, and investors on AI strategy, deployment readiness, and the challenges of integrating AI into existing workflows and enterprise systems. In addition to his operating work, Darshan is actively involved in venture investing and ecosystem building through i2VC, a platform connecting industry operators, domain experts, and investors around emerging technology opportunities. He is a frequent speaker and moderator on topics including enterprise AI, operator-led innovation, AI infrastructure, and the future of applied AI in traditional industries. ## Bryan Hong Director of People Ops & AI Services, Astranis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bryan-hong/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: HR Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Bryan Hong is the Director of People Ops & AI Services at Astranis Space Technologies, a venture-backed space startup manufacturing microgeostationary satellites to connect the unconnected. After joining as the founding Head of Talent and scaling the company through early hypergrowth, Bryan expanded his scope to lead People Operations & Systems while stepping into engineering to architect internal AI infrastructure. Today, he leads the end-to-end deployment of production AI solutions across People, Finance, and Legal - reclaiming hundreds of hours of manual effort and turning back-office G&A into the primary driver of company-wide AI transformation. ## Brooke Hopkins CEO / Founder, Coval Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brooke-hopkins/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Brooke Hopkins is the founder of Coval, the operations platform for scaling voice and chat agents. Through simulation, evaluation, and human-in-the-loop workflows, Coval turns real customer interactions into actionable insights - ensuring AI agents operate reliably at scale. Previously, Brooke led the evaluation job infrastructure team at Waymo, where her team built developer tools for launching and running large-scale simulations. It was there that she identified striking parallels between self-driving systems and conversational AI: both succeed or fail on edge cases, long-tail behavior, and rigorous evaluation. With Coval, Brooke is helping cross-functional teams replace slow, manual testing with automated simulation and observability, expanding test coverage, accelerating development, and enabling agents to be deployed with confidence in real production environments. ## Ryan Horjus Vp of Deployments, Hydra Host Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-horjus/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Sales Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Ryan Horjus VP of Sale Deployments, HydraHost I lead sale deployments at HydraHost, where I work across GPU infrastructure procurement, cluster deployment, and enterprise business development. Over the past several years, I've directed large-scale GPU cluster builds — most recently leading NVIDIA B300 procurement and allocation strategy through direct engagement with NVIDIA's NCP account team, alongside close vendor management with Various OEMs on capacity and fulfillment. My work spans the full infrastructure stack, from negotiating vendor contracts and financing structures to designing the network architecture that ties large GPU clusters together. I also manage the commercial and regulatory complexity behind these deployments, including colocation contract structuring and cross-border service delivery. At AI4, I'm bringing a practitioner's view of what it actually takes to stand up enterprise-scale AI infrastructure — where vendor allocation, technical design, and deal structure all have to come together under real-world constraints. ## Christopher Horne Teaching Associate Professor, North Carolina A&T State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christopher-horne/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Christopher K. Horne, P.E., is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University, where his teaching and research focus on artificial intelligence in engineering education, electric circuits, engineering problem solving, and emerging instructional technologies. His current research examines how students use generative AI tools to solve technical problems, how reliably large language models reason through engineering concepts, and how educators can design learning experiences that require students to verify rather than simply accept AI-generated solutions. His work includes the development and evaluation of AI-supported instructional methods for undergraduate engineering courses, including applications in algebra-based engineering problem solving, RL and RLC circuit analysis, and retrieval-augmented AI tutoring systems. Dr. Horne’s research emphasizes both the potential and limitations of generative AI. His studies address hallucinations, incorrect reasoning, overconfident responses, student verification, metacognition, and self-regulated learning. He teaches courses in electric circuits, engineering problem solving, MATLAB, and artificial intelligence applications in engineering and has presented his work at IEEE, ASEE, and other engineering education and technology conferences. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Horne is the founder and principal engineer of eMuWave, PLLC, a licensed multidisciplinary infrastructure engineering firm providing structural, MEP, fire protection, telecommunications infrastructure, forensic engineering, and expert-witness services. His combination of academic research and professional engineering practice gives him a practical perspective on the responsible use, evaluation, and verification of AI in engineering education and professional decision-making. ## Jill Hosmer-Jolley Faculty, California State University Monterey Bay Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jill-hosmer-jolley/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Education Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Jill Hosmer Jolley is a business faculty member, researcher, and consultant working at the intersection of human-centered AI, organizational ethics, and the future of work. She believes technology should serve people—not the other way around—and has built her academic and consulting practice around helping leaders, educators, and students make AI decisions that are principled, practical, and genuinely good for the humans involved. Jill currently teaches MBA students at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business, focusing on non-authoritative power and influence; at California State University, Monterey Bay, where she emphasizes responsible leadership, AI literacy, and social venture formation; and formerly at Yale Executive Education, where she presented a Human Capital Strategy course. As Principal Investigator on a CSU AI Educational Innovations Challenge grant, she is building open-access curriculum that fosters critical thinking and ethical AI literacy across disciplines—work grounded in her Human-Centered AI Culture and Integration Competency (HC-AIC) framework, which reframes AI adoption as a question of organizational moral infrastructure rather than technical capability. Her research also explores the rise of B Corps benefiting society, and she regularly speaks to companies about revenue generating social venture ideas to benefit society without requiring charitable donations. Jill is also passionate about neurodiversity-informed approaches to innovation and employee development. Jill began her career in banking and spent fifteen years at Charles Schwab, most recently as Northeast Regional Director, before moving into construction management, consulting and higher education. She earned her MBA at Simmons University in 1998, and her PhD from National University in 2018, with a dissertation documenting successful workplace practices supporting neurodiverse employees. Today, Jill continues researching both AI decision making relative to integration and employee management as well as neurodiversity and management theory. Her AI work centers on helping students and faculty use AI to improve educational and employment outcomes—especially for people too often left out of the design conversation. In her spare time, she fosters Labrador retrievers and travels North America with her husband, who works in the entertainment industry. She is a proud mother of 3 successful adults! ## Gregg Hough Chief Commercial Officer, harpin AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gregg-hough/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Customer Service Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Gregg Hough is Chief Commercial Officer at harpin AI, leading the go-to-market organization across sales, marketing, and client success. Founder and CEO of The CX Experts, he brings nearly 30 years in the contact center industry and an operator-first approach ("client down, not product up") to AI-driven customer experience transformation. ## Tyler Howard Director, RSM US LLP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tyler-howard/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Tyler Howard Director, Technology Consulting, RSM US LLP Chicago, IL Tyler.howard@rsmus.com +1 847 687 2225 Summary of experience Tyler brings over 10 years of experience supporting clients through complex technology transformation initiatives across a variety industries such as healthcare, financial services and consumer products. As the firm's AI strategy leader for Application Development, Tyler leads teams in defining best practices, building delivery playbooks, and developing cross-functional solutions that accelerate AI adoption. He designs and drives AI training and enablement plans that create lasting capability moving teams from AI awareness to active, effective usage through structured change management. Tyler partners with clients to design and deliver custom, end-to-end AI solutions that go beyond user-facing agents to drive enterprise-wide capability. His work focuses on building scalable, integrated AI systems that embed intelligence across operations, workflows, and platforms to transform AI from a point tool into a foundational capability. His work spans the full lifecycle of technology transformation from standing up governance structures and delivery frameworks to aligning cross-team efforts around shared AI-enabled outcomes. Tyler brings a practitioner's perspective to every engagement, translating complex technology strategy into actionable programs that deliver measurable impact for clients and internal teams alike. ## Joel Hron Chief Technology Officer, Thomson Reuters Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joel-hron/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Joel Hron is Chief Technology Officer at Thomson Reuters, where he leads Product Engineering and AI R&D across Legal, Tax, Audit, Trade, Compliance, and Risk. In 2025, he was named to the Forbes CIO Next List and recently joined both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC Technology Councils. Joel is driving the next wave of innovation in professional technology by combining human expertise with advanced AI to solve complex knowledge-work challenges. Since joining Thomson Reuters in 2022 through the acquisition of ThoughtTrace, where he served as CTO, he has helped reshape the company’s technology strategy and accelerate its AI transformation. While leading TR Labs and AI, Joel’s teams launched seven generative AI products in 18 months, including AI assistants for legal research, tax research, and contract drafting. These solutions are redefining how professionals work — compressing expert tasks from days to minutes while maintaining the trust, accuracy, and rigor required in regulated industries. Joel is passionate about modernizing legacy systems and building technology that delivers real-world impact. He builds high-performing teams grounded in trust, transparency, and customer-first thinking, pairing ambition and creativity with accountability for outcomes. His vision for AI is not to replace professionals, but to scale their expertise. He believes AI should elevate judgment, expand access to trusted knowledge, and empower professionals to focus on higher-value work. Before becoming CTO, Joel led Thomson Reuters global AI strategy and helped lay the foundation for its most ambitious product launches. His career has taken him across continents, including time in London, Africa, and Switzerland. He recently returned to his hometown of New Orleans with his family. Joel holds a master's in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's in engineering from Texas Christian University. He believes the pace of AI demands continuous learning — and that curiosity matters more than credentials. ## Roger Huang Author, Bitcoin Magazine Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/roger-huang/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Roger Huang was one of the first writers in 2014 to write about the intersection of Bitcoin in remittance payments and drug policy. Since then, he’s been a HODLer of Bitcoin, and he’s built several mini-projects with them for fun and consulted for several Bitcoin-only companies. He’s written for Forbes and TechCrunch and is the author of a book on Bitcoin + China (Would Mao Hold Bitcoin) ## Charles Hudson Senior Director Software Engineering, Johnson Control Fire Solutions Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/charles-hudson/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Chuck Hudson is Senior Director of Global Software Engineering Fire Solutions at Johnson Controls, where he leads global engineering organizations responsible for embedded software, cloud platforms, connected services, developer tooling, quality engineering, UI/UX, and full-stack application development. With more than 30 years of experience, he has led the delivery of large-scale software platforms across IoT, robotics, mobile, cloud, and enterprise technologies, helping organizations transform how software is designed, developed, and delivered. Throughout his career, Chuck has held engineering leadership roles at Johnson Controls, iRobot, Lookout Mobile Security, and Control4, as well as founding a successful automation company that was later acquired. His teams have delivered innovative products used by millions of customers worldwide, including cloud-connected robotic platforms, enterprise IoT solutions, and mission-critical life safety systems. Chuck is a recognized technology leader, inventor, author, and educator. He is the holder of multiple patents, has authored technical publications and an O'Reilly book on software APIs, and frequently speaks on software engineering, innovation, AI, and technology leadership. He has a passion for translating emerging technologies into practical engineering strategies that deliver measurable business value. In addition to his industry leadership, Chuck has served as an adjunct professor for more than 15 years, teaching graduate courses in artificial intelligence, business analytics, digital transformation and technology strategy. His work bridges academia and industry, helping prepare the next generation of technology leaders while remaining deeply engaged in solving today's engineering challenges. His current focus is on how generative and agentic AI are fundamentally reshaping the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), software engineering organizations, and the future of product development. Drawing on real-world experience leading global engineering teams through AI adoption, Chuck shares practical lessons, emerging best practices, and forward-looking perspectives on how engineering leaders can successfully navigate this transformation. ## Carter Huffman CTO, Modulate Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/carter-huffman/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Carter Huffman is the CTO and co-founder of Modulate, the frontier AI company turning real-time voice conversations into actionable intelligence that prevents fraud, protects communities, and improves customer experiences. A physicist and machine learning expert trained at MIT and with past experience at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Carter leads the development of Modulate’s purpose-built Voice Intelligence Engine, which analyzes emotion, behavior, and intent in voice — not just words — to reveal insights traditional AI misses. ## Chris Hume Chief Business Officer, Legion Intelligence Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-hume/ State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Joe Hutchings Senior Director - IT Business Applications, Winland Foods Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joe-hutchings/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: North Carolina Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Joe Hutchings is an enterprise technology leader with 20+ years of experience driving digital transformation, business applications strategy, analytics, and process modernization across manufacturing, life sciences, consumer products, and food industries. As Senior Director of IT Business Applications at Winland Foods, Joe leads Intelligent Automation and AI initiatives focused on unlocking business value, improving operational efficiency, and enabling teams to solve complex problems through practical, scalable technology solutions. His background spans enterprise platforms, data analytics, ERP modernization, M&A integration, and cross-functional technology leadership. ## Rachel Ibarra VP of Data & Innovation, Cardinal Group Management Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rachel-ibarra/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Rachel Ibarra is the Vice President of Data and Innovation at Cardinal Group Companies, a national vertically integrated real estate firm based in Denver, Colorado. As the chief architect of the organization's data and AI strategy, Rachel is the technical engine powering Cardinal's operational evolution. Partnering closely with operations and human resources, she leverages intelligent systems and centralized automation to remove friction, enabling teams to elevate the human experience. A passionate data champion, she focuses on transforming vast internal data assets into durable competitive advantages. Before leading Cardinal's AI and Data initiatives, Rachel built a track record of delivering sustainable, scalable business intelligence and data warehousing solutions in highly matrixed environments. She previously served as the Director of Business Intelligence at RE/MAX and drove complex enterprise tech strategies as a consultant at Slalom and RevGen Partners. Based in Denver, Colorado, she is a mother of two who spends her weekends offline, traveling, reading, and exploring the outdoors with her family. ## Karen Ivy Department Head, Technology Professions, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/karen-ivy/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: Arizona Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $200M-$500M Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Dr. Karen Lynne-Daniels Ivy, Ph.D. is the Department Head of Technology Professions for the University of Arizona Global Campus. She is a transformational leader, technology strategist, innovator, and change agent transforming organizations and people to what they can become. In her work, she specializes in the development and delivery of technology solutions, strategies, business transformation, and educational development. She is also co-founder of the media tribute company, Visionary Expressions, LLC. Dr. Ivy’s professional experience includes over 30 years of business, technical, and leadership contributions in the Aerospace, Manufacturing, Commercial Consumer and Office, Health Care, and Information Technology industries. This included Technology Leadership support to Lockheed Martin Space and Aeronautics missions and Honeywell Aerospace missions. She is an accomplished Senior Leader in the Information Technology Services industry with expertise in leadership, strategic development and oversight, service delivery, program management, and technology and innovation transformation. She has received the award and recognition of U.S. Fulbright Specialist for her focus on education. This prestigious awarded is granted by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and World Learning! The Fulbright Program is a United States Cultural Exchange Program with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. The Fulbright Specialist Program is a unique opportunity for U.S. academics and established professionals to engage in two- to six-week, project-based exchanges at host institutions across the globe. This is a prestigious award, and Dr. Ivy is honored to be chosen to represent the United States! Dr. Ivy is a recipient of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. The Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest level of the President’s Volunteer Service Award, bestowed by the President of the United States, recognizing individuals who have demonstrated exceptional dedication to community service and made significant contributions to society. Dr. Ivy’s recognition highlights her commitment to educating and inspiring youth in technology and leadership, both in the United States and globally. Her goal is to inspire others to achieve their ultimate goals in their educational and career endeavors, and to explore their passion to the fullest! ## Geetesh Iyer Founding Product Manager, WisdomAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/geetesh-iyer/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Geetesh Iyer is a product and AI leader building the future of agentic analytics at WisdomAI. As Founding Product Manager, he leads product for WisdomAI's Adaptive Context Engine, a sophisticated multi-agent platform that empowers both humans and agents with the right ammunition to perform accuracy-centered analytics in the age of generative AI. Previously at Apple, he built the company's first GenAI-powered analytics platform, scaling it to thousands of users and bringing conversational analytics, knowledge agents, and intelligent decision-making to the enterprise. Earlier in his career, Geetesh built experimentation platforms at Amazon, led ad-tech and analytics products, after starting off as a data scientist across big tech companies, with much of his foundational experience shaped in Analytics and Data. Outside of technology, he is also an acomplished Singer-Songwriter and traveling musician who has toured across the United States and performed on major stages. ## Joseph Izzo Chief Medical Information Officer, San Joaquin General Hospital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joseph-izzo/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Joseph Izzo, MD, serves as Chief Medical Information Officer at San Joaquin General Hosiptal, a California public healthcare system, and is a practicing physician board-certified in Emergency Medicine, Addiction Medicine, and Clinical Informatics. His work sits at the intersection of healthcare, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital innovation, with a focus on the safe, practical adoption of emerging technologies in clinical care. Dr. Izzo has led enterprise AI governance initiatives, clinical technology strategy, and cybersecurity efforts while continuing to build and evaluate healthcare software and AI applications. He is a researcher and national speaker on clinical AI, local large language models, healthcare cybersecurity, and responsible innovation. His professional interests center on creating practical pathways for healthcare organizations to safely adopt and scale emerging technologies while balancing innovation, cybersecurity, governance, and patient safety. ## Jim Jacob Executive Director - Digitalization, Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, Cummins Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jim-jacob/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Jim started his career at IBM with mainframe and mid-range implementations in the APAC region before moving to Electronic Data Systems for AS400 based financial and manufacturing total systems solution implementations. Jim then switched career paths to business with a move to KPMG UK working in business development, strategy, and sell-side M&A consulting. With this dual-career blend, Jim was given an opportunity to join Toshiba–Tokyo leading the Hi-Tech center of excellence in East Europe and Middle East. After Toshiba, Jim joined 3M-UK to head East European and Middle East IT operations based out of Dubai, UAE. After 5 International assignments leading various technical operations, he was assigned to the 3M Head Quarters in St. Paul, MN as Master Black Belt (MBB) for Corporate Strategy, M&A and eBusiness. Jim’s MBB re-entry was in business development as the leader of 3M’s Emerging Business Opportunities where he led 5 business startups and successfully implemented them. Jim was assigned to several other assignments while at 3M in Corporate Development, Electronics Business strategy, ERP Strategy, Intelligent Transportation strategy, Acquisition Integrations and Supply Chain Strategy. Jim’s last assignment at 3M was Global Leader for 3M’s Digitalization and Advanced Analytics initiative for both Supply Chain and Manufacturing where he led the implementation of 12 flagship solutions delivering significant results in automation, digitalization and Digital Twin advanced analytics which greatly enhanced 3M operations effectiveness. Jim received his B.S. in Micro Electronics and Computer Science from University of California and an Executive MBA in business from London Business School. In addition, Jim has specialization in eBusiness from Harvard University, telecommunications from City and Guilds of London, and ULSI Technology with Toshiba and Electronic Data Systems. Jim enjoys Rugby, American Football, Cricket, and the outdoors. ## Rohit Jain CIO, Harvard Business School Alumni Association Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohit-jain/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Rohit is the CIO for Harvard Business School Alumni Association NC and serves on the Advisory Board. In addition to his CIO responsibilities, Rohit is an investor / advisor at the Harvard Business School Angels, advisor at the Harvard New Venture Contest and a Mentor at the Innovation Lab, Harvard University. He serves on the Harvard Business Review Advisory board and is frequently quoted in Forbes. He is an alum of Harvard Business School. He is also the Vice President of Technology, Applications and Analytics at iRhythm (Nasdaq: IRTC) a digital healthcare company redefining the way cardiac arrhythmias are clinically diagnosed by combining wearable biosensing technology with deep machine-learning capabilities. Rohit has previously held leadership positions at IBM, Stanford University and Upwork (Nasdaq: UPWK) where he enabled a very successful IPO. Dhobighat.com, a precursor to today' s social media companies, was a successful start-up that he co-founded. ## Priyambada Jain Senior Data Scientist, BlackRock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/priyambada-jain/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Priyambada Jain, MS, is a Senior Data Scientist and Vice President in AI Labs at BlackRock. She leads initiatives focused on building generative AI-based investment agents and enterprise grade AI systems for financial decision support. Her work sits at the intersection of large language models, agentic AI architectures, structured data reasoning, natural language processing, and applied machine learning for high-precision financial environments. Priyambada specializes in designing AI systems that combine foundation models, smaller task-specific models, retrieval based architectures, quantitative methods, and human-in-the-loop workflows. Her current focus includes improving how AI systems process complex financial datasets such as tables, time-series signals, and domain-specific knowledge sources, with an emphasis on reliability, interpretability, evaluation rigor, and production readiness. She is particularly interested in how financial institutions can move beyond generic AI applications toward controlled, domain-aware systems that reduce model risk and support responsible decision making. Priyambada holds an MS in Applied Data Science from the University of Southern California. Her research background includes work at USC’s Information Sciences Institute, where she applied natural language processing and knowledge graph techniques to entity extraction and data-driven analytics. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed venues including AAAI and IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing. She also contributes to the broader AI community through invited talks, conference participation, and initiatives focused on building measurable, responsible AI products. ## Pratik Jain Founder/CEO, Auvern.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pratik-jain/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Pratik Jain Founder/CEO - Auvern.ai Pratik Jain is Founder and CEO of Auvern AI, a company building the Agent Operations Plane for enterprise AI. His work focuses on helping organizations safely deploy, govern, observe, and scale AI agents across business-critical workflows. At Auvern, Pratik is pioneering the emerging discipline of Agent Operations (AgentOps)—the infrastructure layer that enables enterprises to manage AI agents through governance, identity, memory, observability, policy enforcement, and operational controls. He believes that organizations will soon manage more AI agents than human employees and that a new category of infrastructure is required to ensure these agents operate safely, transparently, and in alignment with business and regulatory requirements. His current research and product development focus on Enterprise Agent Governance, Agent Identity, Agent Memory Systems, AI Observability, Agent FinOps, Organizational Knowledge Graphs, and Trusted Autonomous Systems. Through his work, he is helping define how enterprises transition from isolated AI experiments to production-scale AI workforces capable of augmenting human decision-making while maintaining security, accountability, and compliance. With more than 20 years of experience leading product, engineering, cloud, and AI initiatives, Pratik has built and scaled enterprise platforms serving millions of customers and supporting highly regulated environments across banking, payments, and financial services. His experience operating at the intersection of technology innovation, risk management, and regulatory compliance provides a unique perspective on the challenges enterprises face as they move from AI pilots to enterprise-wide deployment of autonomous systems. Pratik holds an MBA from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is pursuing graduate studies in Artificial Intelligence at The University of Texas at Austin ## Lizbeth James NA Head - Data & AI Enbalement, Mars Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lizbeth-james/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Lizbeth James is a Digital Transformation and AI Executive at Mars with over 20 years of experience spanning connected commerce, marketing, retail media, shopper intelligence, and enterprise technology transformation. Having held leadership roles across Mars, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and other global brands, she has built and scaled digital commerce organizations, modernized marketing technology ecosystems, and driven growth through data, analytics, and innovation. Today, Lizbeth leads Data & AI Enablement for Mars North America, where she develops autonomous agent solutions, Generative AI applications, advanced analytics, and Shopper Intelligence capabilities that help businesses automate decision-making, accelerate insights, and unlock growth opportunities. A Walmart Connect Client Advisory Council member and Executive Member of the Digital Shelf Institute, she is a recognized leader in applying AI to transform marketing, retail, and connected commerce at scale. ## Mo Jamous CIO, Former U.S. Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mo-jamous/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist I am a visionary global technology executive with 23+ years of experience driving large-scale transformation, innovation, and digital modernization across financial services. I’ve held CIO roles and senior leadership positions at various companies—leading multi-billion-dollar portfolios, managing thousands of technologists, and architecting award-winning digital platforms that reach millions worldwide. I am dedicated to creating organizations at the intersection of technology and humanity—unlocking growth, value, and sustained impact through innovation, collaboration, and purpose-driven leadership. ## Roman Jankowski Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer, US Department of Homeland Security Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/roman-jankowski-je5mji/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Government Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: District of Columbia Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Individual Contributor: Can be a senior role, but no direct reports nor P&L management Roman Jankowski was appointed as the Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on January 20, 2025. In this capacity, he leads efforts to uphold privacy protections, promote transparency, and ensure compliance with federal privacy and FOIA laws across the department. Prior to this role, Mr. Jankowski served as Senior Investigative Counsel at the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, where he focused on advancing transparency and accountability across federal, state, and local government operations. Mr. Jankowski brings a wealth of experience from his prior tenure at DHS, where he held key positions from 2013 to 2021. His roles included Chief of Staff of the Privacy Office, Senior Advisor, Privacy Office Advisor, and Disclosure Team Lead at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). During his time at DHS, he played a pivotal role in developing and implementing policies to safeguard privacy and manage disclosures effectively. In addition to his DHS experience, Mr. Jankowski has contributed to federal policy development at the Department of Defense (DoD), where he worked on critical DoD issuances and DoD management instructions and directives. Mr. Jankowski earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from the University at Buffalo. His extensive public service and commitment to transparency underscore his dedication to protecting individual privacy and promoting government accountability. ## Roman Jankowski Chief Privacy Officer / Chief FOIA Officer, Department of Homeland Security Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/roman-jankowski/ Roman Jankowski was appointed as the Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on January 20, 2025. In this capacity, he leads efforts to uphold privacy protections, promote transparency, and ensure compliance with federal privacy and FOIA laws across the department. ## Srinivas Jayanthi Chief Technology Officer, Dataflix Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/srinivas-jayanthi/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Srinivas Jayanthi (JV) is a seasoned technology leader, entrepreneur, and author with over twenty five years of experience in driving enterprise-scale digital transformation across various industries including financial services, automotive and healthcare. As Chief Technology Officer at Dataflix, JV is a forward-looking technology leader focused on driving AI-led transformation and enterprise data strategy. He is known for building and scaling high-performance teams that deliver impactful, business-aligned innovation. Through their proprietary AI Framework, JV partners with C-suite leaders and organizations to navigate the complexities of adopting AI, helping them initiate and accelerate their transformation journeys with clarity, structure, and measurable outcomes. He co-founded Ivory Software Services, a middleware engineering services firm that was later acquired. His career includes prominent senior technology leadership roles at organizations such as JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Standard & Poors, Bottomline Technologies, and First Republic Bank. He also served as a Principal Architect at BEA Systems before it was acquired by Oracle. In addition to his leadership roles, JV is the co-author of the book, Building Next Generation Web Services, published by Wiley. ## Tanvi Jayaraman Clinical Lead, Health AI, Oura Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tanvi-jayaraman/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Consumer Electronics Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Tanvi Jayaraman, MD, is the Clinical Lead of Health AI at Oura, where she bridges medicine, artificial intelligence, and product strategy to advance responsible, trustworthy tools for everyday health. Her work ensures that Oura’s guidance—whether member- or clinician-facing—meets rigorous clinical standards while remaining intuitive and human-centered. Before joining Oura, Dr. Jayaraman helped global diagnostics and pharmaceutical clients scale AI from pilots to production while at Bain & Company, and previously contributed to Apple's clinical team and helped shape early concepts for next-generation digital health tools. She has advised digital-health startups on clinical, regulatory, and genAI product strategy. At Stanford School of Medicine, she served as Women’s Clinic Lead at the Arbor Free Clinic and was one of two inaugural fellows in Stanford Health Care’s Healthcare Leadership & Administration fellowship, partnering with the Office of the CEO on system-level initiatives. Her academic work spans clinician well-being and value-added medical education. She co-founded and staffed the Stanford Front Line COVID-19 Consult Service, an evidence synthesis program that rapidly answered clinicians’ questions during the pandemic. Earlier, as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Calabria, Italy, Dr. Jayaraman investigated barriers to care for survivors of intimate partner violence—work that informs her patient-first approach to technology and health equity. ## Morgan Jeffries Medical Director for AI, Geisinger Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/morgan-jeffries/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Morgan Jeffries, MD serves as Medical Director for Artificial Intelligence at Geisinger Health System, where he combines active clinical practice as a neurologist with leadership in AI governance, safety, and workforce education. He earned his undergraduate degree in biology and philosophy from Vanderbilt University and completed his medical training at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His research experience includes work on eye movement and visual attention at Columbia and on brain control of motor prosthetics at the University of Pittsburgh. He is board certified in both neurology and clinical informatics. Dr. Jeffries's current work focuses on responsible AI deployment in healthcare, including governance frameworks, safety protocols, and preparing clinical teams for AI-augmented practice. He's particularly interested in how AI can complement rather than replace clinician expertise—handling time-consuming synthesis and retrieval tasks while preserving the pattern recognition, clinical reasoning, and human connection that define expert medical practice. ## Craig Jellick VP of Engineering, Obot AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/craig-jellick/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Craig Jellick is the Director of Engineering and founding engineer at Obot AI. Previously, Craig was a founding engineer and Director of Engineering at Rancher Labs, leading core product development through its acquisition by SUSE and successful SUSE IPO. He has over 15 years of experience building and scaling engineering organizations, with a focus on cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, and enterprise software. ## Greg Jennings Vice President of Engineering, AI, Anaconda, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greg-jennings/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Greg Jennings is Vice President of AI Engineering at Anaconda, where he leads teams responsible for the company's AI services, model catalog, and AI governance stack. His work focuses on extending the trusted supply chain principles that made Anaconda the standard for open-source Python into the era of AI models and agents. Greg holds a Master of Engineering in Materials Science from the University of Virginia. ## Robert Jett Global Chief Privacy and Data Protection Officer, Bunge Global SA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-jett/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Legal Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Robert S. Jett III (“Bob”) leads the Global Privacy Office at Bunge as its first Global Chief Data Protection and Privacy Officer. In this role he leads Bunge’s global data protection and privacy efforts working with local privacy and business leaders as well as supporting key business initiatives related to digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and data management. Bob has more than 35 years of experience as a legal advisor and in-house counsel with multi-national organizations in the manufacturing, insurance and financial services industry and has worked closely with colleagues on issues related to Information Technology, Data Protection and Privacy, Cybersecurity Incident Response, Artificial Intelligence, Information Security and Corporate Compliance functions. This has included the creation, implementation and maintenance of global compliance, incident response and data protection and privacy programs and managing a global privacy office for several global companies. He currently co-leads the Corporate AI Working Group at Bunge supporting all Artificial Intelligence initiatives at Bunge. He holds a B.A. in both international relations and political science from Hobart College. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is an active member of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC); the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP); Executive Committee of the Privacy & Law Section of the Georgia Bar Association; Past President of the Global Leadership and Development Department Advisory Board of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and a member of the Maryland State Bar Association. ## Liwei Jiang Ph.D. candidate, Researcher, University of Washington Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/liwei-jiang/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Liwei Jiang is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, advised by Prof. Yejin Choi. She was previously a graduate student researcher at NVIDIA and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2). Her research focuses on humanistic, pluralistic, and coevolutionary AI safety and alignment, where she spearheads research on moral and pluralistic value reasoning in language models and develops data-, algorithm-, and system-level solutions to socio-technical challenges in AI safety, security, and large language model alignment. Her work has received Best Paper Awards at NeurIPS 2025, NAACL 2022, and CHI 2024, as well as Outstanding Paper Awards at EMNLP 2023 and the AIA Workshop at COLM 2025, and has been featured in The New York Times, Nature Outlook, IEEE Spectrum, Wired, and other major media. She co-organizes workshops including MP2 (NeurIPS 2023) and SoLaR (NeurIPS 2024; COLM 2025), and co-leads the Guardrails and Security for LLMs tutorial at ACL 2025. ## Xiaowei Jiang CEO & Chief Architect, Tacnode Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/xiaowei-jiang/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Xiaowei Jiang is the CEO and Chief Architect of Tacnode. He has extensive experience building large-scale data and stream processing systems at Microsoft, Meta, and Alibaba, where his team introduced FlinkSQL to the Apache Flink community. His work focuses on data system architectures for real-time decision-making and multi-agent AI applications, and he has published research on decision coherence and emerging system categories for AI-driven infrastructure. ## Nirmal Jingar Sr. Engineering Manager, Wayfair Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nirmal-jingar/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Massachusetts Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions Nirmal Jingar is a Senior Engineering Manager at Wayfair, where he leads teams building AI systems for supply chain and logistics. He has over a decade of experience designing and operating large-scale platforms that support complex commercial operations. At Wayfair, a Fortune 500 e-commerce company, Nirmal works on systems that process large volumes of data to support decisions across inventory, fulfillment, and logistics. His work focuses on improving efficiency, strengthening demand forecasting, and enabling faster, more reliable supply chain decisions. Nirmal has also published research through IEEE, focusing on practical applications of machine learning in supply chain systems. His work connects academic approaches with real production challenges. He is a regular speaker at industry and technical conferences, where he shares lessons from building and scaling AI systems in production. He is known for making complex ideas easy to understand and useful for both engineers and business leaders. ## Brian Joe CPO and Cofounder, Impart Security Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-joe/ Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Nitay Joffe Operating Partner, Team8 VC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nitay-joffe/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Nitay Joffe is a Partner at Team8, focused on building and investing in SW & AI Infrastructure. As a post-exit founder and technical leader, he brings over two decades of experience building and scaling enterprise software companies. Nitay co-founded ActionIQ, the enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) that pioneered a new category in marketing technology. As CTO, he architected the platform end-to-end, scaled the company from inception to hundreds of employees, and helped grow it into a category leader serving Fortune 500 clients. ActionIQ raised $145M from Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and was acquired in 2025. Nitay was a pioneer during the formative Big Data wave, where he was an early engineer on Facebook's data infrastructure team. He also held engineering roles at Google and Microsoft, joining Microsoft via the acquisition of the groundbreaking NLP search engine startup, Powerset, which was a groundbreaking NLP search company that created an early version of conversational AI like ChatGPT. ## Justin Johnson VP of AI & Engineering, Renaissance Benefits Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/justin-johnson/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Insurance Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Justin Johnson is VP of AI & Engineering at Renaissance Benefits, where he leads engineering and company-wide AI transformation initiatives. He brings nearly 20 years of experience building and scaling software systems and is deeply involved in how AI is reshaping modern engineering workflows—from code generation and testing to release automation and team productivity. Prior to Renaissance, Justin served as VP of Engineering at 2U following its acquisition of Trilogy Education, and previously held senior engineering leadership roles at Bank of America and Lowes.com, giving him deep experience applying AI-driven tooling across large, complex, and regulated environments. Justin is also an instructor in Overclock Accelerator’s AI Engineering & AI Operations programs, where he teaches engineers and non-engineers how to use modern code models and agentic workflows to move from manual development to AI-assisted execution. His work focuses on pragmatic, production-ready AI adoption—integrating models into real-world stacks and teams to improve velocity, quality, and reliability without sacrificing sound engineering fundamentals. ## Joel Johnson Deployed Engineer, LangChain Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joel-johnson/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Joel Johnson (Deployed Engineer; MS Computer Science (AI), MBA -- Stanford University) ## Chris Johnson Principal AI Technologist, Phase2 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-johnson/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Chris Johnson is the Principal AI Technologist at Phase2, where he leads the firm's approach to building with and building on AI. He has spent more than 25 years in software development and continues working in a hands on development and organizational leadership capacity. He helps Phase2's teams adopt AI across the board. Using it to build and power internal applications, completing work for clients, and including it as part of the solutions being created. His current focus is lowering the barrier to AI adoption by helping ensure that safety and security are maintained. ## Justin Jose Head of Business Development, Fluence Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/justin-jose/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Head of Business Development at Fluence Cloud ## Samleo Joseph VP, Research Development & Innovation (RDI), JP Morgan Chase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/samleo-joseph/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Samleo Joseph is Vice President of Research, Development & Innovation at JPMorgan Chase, where he leads strategic innovation programs shaping the future of enterprise systems. As an Industry 5.0 thought leader, he believes the next era of AI is not about full autonomy. Instead, it is about human value at scale, built on systems that are trusted, inclusive, and resilient. His career spans the full arc of intelligent machines, starting with physical AI robots and moving to virtual agents that orchestrate across the enterprise. As a researcher at CUNY and IBM Research, he developed assistive robotics to help blind individuals navigate independently. Building machines that people literally trusted with their physical safety shaped his human-centered approach to AI and his conviction that the best intelligence is rooted in empathy. Across his career at Fortune 100 companies, Dr. Joseph has led firmwide strategic programs transforming AI, product, and big data across multiple lines of business. His corporate expertise includes scaling massive innovation operating models, advancing agentic AI architectures, establishing trustworthy AI governance frameworks, and engineering complex hybrid-cloud intelligence systems. Dr. Joseph holds M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the City University of New York, where he also taught as an adjunct professor. He has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed papers on robotics and cyber-physical systems, including works published in IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, and holds multiple U.S. patents. Having built robots where failure carried real-world consequences, he brings a rare perspective on what it takes to build systems worthy of trust. ## Dhrumil Joshi Founder and Director, Clustral AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dhrumil-joshi/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dhrumil Joshi, M.S., is the Founder & Director of Clustral AI Labs Pvt. Ltd., where he builds governed AI for regulated industries. A senior AI engineer with 6+ years shipping production Generative AI at Fortune-100 firms, he now designs and ships every layer of Clustral himself — from the models to the compliance backbone. He works where AI meets the enterprises that can't afford to get it wrong. ## Ken Judy Senior Patner, Stride Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ken-judy/ Track: Workshop Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ken Judy is a Senior Partner at Stride, based in New York, where he combines hands-on software development with strategic leadership to help organizations move from AI pilots to measurable business outcomes. With more than two decades spanning roles from developer to CEO, he has led modernization efforts at major media and publishing companies, developed a Plan-Do-Check-Act framework for responsible AI code generation, and applied Roslyn compiler technology to reverse engineer complex .NET legacy systems. A CTA Certified Coach and contributor to peer-reviewed publications on agile practice, he guides technical leaders through practical AI adoption, grounded in values of transparency, accountability, and sustainable craft. His writing has been featured in InfoQ and the Agile Alliance Blog. Ken lives in Brooklyn, NY. ## Hardik Kabaria Co-founder and CEO, Vinci Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hardik-kabaria/ Track: World Models Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Hardik Kabaria believes the next great frontier of artificial intelligence is not language, images, or code. It is physics. Kabaria is the founder and CEO of Vinci, a frontier lab building the systems required to make physical reality continuously computable. Unlike traditional research labs, Vinci is not operating on a multi-year path to relevance—its systems are already embedded inside production engineering workflows, running on flagship programs where physical accuracy directly impacts cost, yield, and performance. His work is grounded in a simple observation: while software has become programmable, physics has remained episodic—accessed through discrete simulations, approximations, and human-mediated workflows. Under Kabaria’s leadership, Vinci is building the first system in what is emerging as continuous physics infrastructure—where physics is no longer simulated, but continuously computed. At its core is a physics foundation model—a deterministic, solver-grounded system capable of reasoning directly over physical systems without reliance on customer data. This represents a structural shift in how physical systems are designed, understood and operated. Rather than running simulations as isolated events, engineers operate inside a persistent system that computes physical behavior directly on manufacturing geometry with solver-grade determinism. Entire classes of approximation, including meshing and model reduction, are removed. Physics becomes an always-available layer of computation embedded within the engineering process itself. The system is expanding beyond its initial semiconductor wedge—thermal conduction and thermo-mechanical behavior—into a broader set of physical domains, including fluid dynamics, electromagnetics, and radiation. The direction is not the addition of new solvers, but the unification of physical reasoning into a single, continuously computable system. Kabaria’s work sits at the intersection of computational physics, geometry, and large-scale systems design. His focus is not on accelerating existing tools, but on replacing the underlying interaction model between engineers and physical systems. Before founding Vinci, Kabaria was Vice President of Software at Carbon, where he led the development of computational systems that powered one of the world’s most advanced digital manufacturing platforms. Earlier in his career, he worked on core challenges in engineering computation, including automated mesh generation for complex geometries—experience that informed his view of the structural limits of simulation-based approaches. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where his research focused on scaling computational methods for complex physical systems. ## Ash Kaduskar Head of Artificial Intelligence, First Citizens Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ash-kaduskar/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist None ## Kanav Kahol Chief AI Officer, Kagen.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kanav-kahol/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dr. Kanav Kahol is the Chief AI Officer of Kagen.AI and Successive Digital, where he leads the architecture, productisation, and global enterprise delivery of agentic AI platforms. He has spent two decades at the intersection of three rare disciplines - academic biomedical engineering, public-health innovation in the Global South, and enterprise-scale AI engineering in North America - translating frontier research into systems that work in the real world, from a village dispensary in rural Punjab to the data centres of Tier-1 global banks and Fortune 500 manufacturers. ## Naga Harivadana Kalapatapu AI Researcher, DePaul University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/naga-harivadana-kalapatapu/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Naga Harivadana Kalapatapu is a Doctoral AI Researcher at DePaul University, advancing the design of artificial intelligence agents through principles drawn from cognitive neuroscience and biological models. Her work focuses on translating brain-inspired structures, such as connectome-driven architectures and adaptive learning, into scalable, real-world AI. Bridging research and industry, she has led the development of AI solutions spanning machine learning systems, large-scale modeling, and deployment pipelines, applying them to high-impact domains such as healthcare and finance. Naga is recognized as a Top Advisor by Women in Data Science (WiDS) and as a Women Impact Tech Leader of Impact 2025 awardee, reflecting her leadership in building inclusive and forward-thinking AI ecosystems. ## Shruti Kamath Sr Director, AI and Machine Learning, Mozilla Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shruti-kamath/ Track: Software: Productivity & Collaboration Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Shruti Kamath is Senior Director of Machine Learning and AI at Mozilla, where she leads AI across Firefox. She defines Firefox's AI strategy and leads the engineering and applied science teams building intelligent browser experiences, including Firefox Smart Window and generative AI capabilities. Her team's Firefox Mobile "Shake to Summarize" feature received a special mention in TIME's Best Inventions. Over the past decade, Shruti has led machine learning, engineering, and applied science organizations at Mozilla, Zillow, PayPal, and Chewy, building AI systems that power search, information retrieval, personalization, recommender systems, generative AI, and large-scale ML infrastructure for consumer products at global scale. She began her career on Amazon's first deep learning team, has published research at NAACL and ACM RecSys, and holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Columbia University. ## Kris Kaneta Chief Product Officer, Norstella Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kris-kaneta/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes As Chief Product Officer, Kris oversees the overall strategy and development of Norstella’s product portfolio. He works closely across each brand’s leadership team to direct the product lifecycle for all data, workflow, and SaaS solutions. Previously, Kris served as the Chief Product Officer for MMIT, leading product development in support of client’s market access and drug commercialization objectives. He also served as the Chief Marketing Officer for TeleTracking Technologies, and has held leadership positions with GE HealthCare, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Kris has an MBA from Duke University with a concentration in decision sciences, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Illinois Wesleyan University. ## Hemachandran Kannan Director - AI Research Centre, Woxsen University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hemachandran-kannan/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Hemachandran Kannan is the Director of the AI Research Centre, Vice Dean of the School of Business, and Area Chair of analytics at Woxsen University. With over 17 years of academic, research, and industry engagement experience, he is a distinguished expert in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Video Recommendation Systems, and Autonomous Robotics. He has led numerous high-impact projects, including the development of AI-powered healthcare, agriculture, education, and smart infrastructure systems. A passionate academician and innovator, Dr. Kannan is the principal investigator of multiple patented technologies such as the Nano-based Necrobotics Deployment, Unified Healthcare Intelligence System (UHIS), and Quantum AI-Driven Smart Airport Management System. Dr. Kannan serves on the advisory boards of renowned global organizations including AptAI Labs (USA), Agzistence Pvt. Ltd, and Richfield, South Africa. He is an ambassador for the AI Accelerator Institute and DeepLearning.AI, and an active UNESCO Expert. His dedication to nurturing future innovators is evident through his role as an ATL Mentor of Change under NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission. A prolific contributor to academia, he has authored and edited over 20 books and delivered keynote lectures at several national and international conferences. His work consistently bridges the gap between research and real-world applications, especially in AI-driven societal transformation. ## Mark Kanner Senior Director of Data Science, UnitedHealthcare Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-kanner/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Mark R. Kanner, PhD, is a Senior Director of Data Science at UnitedHealthcare in the fraud and abuse detection space. He brings a diverse background spanning healthcare, people analytics, and supply chain/manufacturing, with experience as both a technical contributor and a data science leader. Mark focuses on translating AI capabilities into real business impact, ensuring strong stakeholder engagement and measurable value creation. In healthcare, he has driven the development of novel anomaly detection techniques to identify provider fraud, enhanced payment integrity models, and led cross-functional teams deploying solutions in Provider Operations. Beyond fraud detection, Mark has applied advanced analytics to workforce challenges, including attrition and retention modeling, as well as to improving medication adherence outcomes. He holds a PhD in Physics from the CUNY Graduate Center. ## Miguel Kanto Professor, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/miguel-kanto/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Moderator Miguel Kanto is a Professor at the University of Arizona Global Campus for the BS Information Technology and the BS Computer Science Technology programs. Miguel holds a Master of Science in Information Technology Management from Western Governors University and is pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in Education at the University of Arizona Global Campus. Miguel is researching innovative ways to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into educational settings to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. ## Somya Kapoor CEO, IFS Loops Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/somya-kapoor/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Somya Kapoor is CEO of IFS Loops, formed when TheLoops joined IFS in 2025. She leads the development and deployment of Digital Workers, autonomous AI agents that execute complete workflows in manufacturing, energy, utilities, and construction. Unlike AI co-pilots that suggest, or generic platforms that require assembly, Digital Workers operate autonomously within existing enterprise systems with complete governance, auditability, and integration with systems of record. Somya has been building AI solutions since 2016, with previous leadership roles at SAP and ServiceNow. She co-founded TheLoops to solve the problem most enterprise AI initiatives fail to address: moving from pilots to production-scale deployment in mission-critical environments. Her approach is grounded in practicality: narrow use cases over transformational moonshots, hours saved over strategic value, platform buying over custom builds. This discipline has enabled IFS Loops customers to deploy Digital Workers in 4-6 weeks and achieve measurable ROI in 30-60 days—timelines unheard of in enterprise AI. Under her leadership, customers including Kodiak Gas Services, Kitron, and Ependion are operating Digital Workers in production, delivering results that include $3M in annual ROI and 90,000+ hours returned to workforce capacity. Somya is a speaker at enterprise AI conferences, a recurring voice on practical AI deployment, and a passionate advocate for women in technology and AI leadership. ## Ari Karampour AI Strategist | Localization Technology & Automation, Indeed Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ari-karampour/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ari Karampour is an AI strategist, technology leader, and speaker specializing in enterprise AI, automation, and workflow transformation. She began her career as a software developer before moving into technology leadership roles across development, engineering, digital platforms, and enterprise support, leading teams that built scalable applications, enterprise platforms, and business-critical technology solutions. She later founded her own technology consultancy, helping organizations translate complex business challenges into practical, secure, and scalable technical solutions. Today, Ari leads AI strategy, localization technology, and automation initiatives at Indeed, where she focuses on applying AI, orchestration, and workflow automation to transform language operations. She is passionate about simplifying complex technical concepts into practical, human-centered AI strategies that help organizations build trusted, scalable AI systems. ## Frank Kartmann Vice President of Big Data & Cloud Architecture, Deutsche Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/frank-kartmann/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: North Carolina Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $500M-$1B Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions Frank Kartmann Frank Kartmann has the role of Vice President of Big Data & Cloud Architecture at Deutsche Bank. He is based out of Frankfurt, in Germany. Headquartered in Germany, Deutsche Bank has several locations in the USA, like New York, Cary and others and is very active in the US finantial market. ## Jason Kehl Senior Vice President, Engineering, Redwood Software Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-kehl/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jason Kehl is Redwood’s SVP of Engineering, leading the development of scalable and efficient automation solutions to support forward-thinking enterprises in orchestrating their mission-critical processes. A seasoned engineering leader with over two decades of experience driving innovation in cybersecurity, Jason has deep expertise in machine learning and AI. Prior to joining the Redwood team, he served as SVP of Engineering and Data Science at Vectra AI, the leader in AI for cybersecurity. There, he spearheaded the development of industry-leading, AI-driven threat detection solutions for over 10 years. Jason was also an early engineer at IronPort Systems, which innovated machine learning applications for email and web security threats with a global footprint of data and coverage. Following IronPort’s acquisition by Cisco, he became the leader for most of Cisco’s cloud-based security solutions. He also led global engineering for the Security group at Juniper Networks, overseeing critical products like SRX. Jason holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. ## Christine Keung General Partner, J2 Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christine-keung/ Track: Aerospace & Defense Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Title - General Partner Professional Overview Christine Keung is a General Partner at J2 Ventures. Christine’s career has taken her through a diverse range of experiences in both the public and private sectors. Christine has had the privilege of working in federal, state, and municipal government roles, as well as holding leadership positions at tech giants like Dropbox and Figma. On the investment side, Christine has been involved with Bridgewater Associates, Atomic VC, and a single-family office. Christine’s journey started as an early member of Dropbox's security team, where she tackled emerging challenges in data regulation and privacy. Later on, Christine served as Chief of Staff, overseeing legal, policy, and security operations. Along the way, she has trained security professionals at the SANS Institute and contributed research to Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and Berkman Klein Center. During the pandemic, Christine joined a COVID-19 task force at the U.S. Small Business Administration, launching the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided $800 billion in critical loans to small businesses. Following that, Christine served as Chief Data Officer for the City of San Jose, where she secured over $1 million to enhance city services through data analytics. Christine is proud to be the first person in her family to earn a high school and college degree. Christine got my MBA from Harvard Business School, where she met Alex, and earned her B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College. Education B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College MBA from Harvard Business School ## Mikayel Khachatryan Co-Founder & CEO, Wirestock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mikayel-khachatryan/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Before founding Wirestock in 2019, Mikayel was involved with several photo editing and social products, focusing on monetization and product development, which developed a deep understanding of how creative tools scale and how creator economies function. That combination of economic vision and product experience is what led him to see the structural opportunity at the intersection of the creator economy and AI data demand. Not just as a marketplace problem, but as an infrastructure problem worth solving from the ground up. This inspired him to found Wirestock. Wirestock builds premium, human-crafted visual training data for foundation model development, spanning video, image, 3D modalities and more, including Pretraining, SFT, RL, and RLHF pipelines. Our global network of contributors in photography, videography, illustration, graphic design, 3D, and other creative disciplines earn consistent, predictable income through the paid creative projects that power this work. ## Simba Khadder Head of AI Product, Redis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/simba-khadder/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Simba Khadder is Redis' Head of AI Products, leading the Redis Iris suite and Redis Feature Form, the context layer for production AI agents and ML models. He joined Redis through its acquisition of Featureform, where he was Founder & CEO, and now leads the feature store product and spearhead Iris, a real-time context engine that gives agents memory and context by connecting documents, databases, events, and live APIs into one unified interface for agents. ## Hershey Khan Founder & CEO, Ignite AI LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hershey-khan/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes With over two decades of experience in leading AI and data transformations, I bring a wealth of expertise in driving innovation and strategic initiatives that propel business growth and operational excellence. My career journey, marked by leadership roles at Capgemini, Clairvoyant and EXL, has equipped me with a profound understanding of the technological landscape and a strong track record of delivering impactful solutions. At Clairvoyant, as the EVP of Data and AI services, I played a pivotal role in the company’s evolution from a startup to a data powerhouse, culminating in its $100M acquisition by EXL. I spearheaded the Data Managed Services practice, with a particular focus on architecting and operationalizing production-grade platforms. My efforts in scaling team, securing substantial contracts, and driving revenue growth were pivotal to Clairvoyant’s success. ## Rafi Khardalian CEO, Actualyze AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rafi-khardalian/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Rafi is the co-founder and CEO of Actualyze AI, the company building the foundation for enterprise AI: a platform that connects to an organizations’s existing inference, across public providers and self-hosted models, and gives platform, security, and finance teams a single place to see what’s running, who has access, what it costs, and where data is going. He’s spent his career on the layer underneath. Founding member and CTO of Metacloud through its acquisition by Cisco. Executive leader of large-scale distributed infrastructure programs at Cisco, the kind of platforms that quietly run underneath enterprise software at global scale. Enterprise AI is hitting the same wall every previous infrastructure shift has hit: adoption races ahead of the operational layer, and the bill comes due when finance, security, and compliance start asking questions the tooling can’t answer. Actualyze AI exists to answer them, and Rafi has built the operational layer for one shift before. ## Ramanpreet Singh Khinda Staff Software Engineer, LinkedIn Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ramanpreet-singh-khinda/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ramanpreet Singh Khinda Staff SWE @LinkedIn 🌟 ex-Google | Snap 🌟 Upcoming Speaker @Droidcon | DevFest | Ai4 | GHC (Braindate Host) 🏆 Hackathon Winner @IIT Delhi | Google 🧑‍⚖️ Judge/Mentor @Major League Hacking (MLH) | Hack-Nation | GTM AceMakers | VentureMiner 🎯 Mentor/Coach @LinkedIn Possibilities in Tech | Grow with Google Ramanpreet Singh Khinda is a Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn, where he leads the architecture and development of next-generation, privacy-first infrastructure that empowers developers and advertisers to build responsibly in an evolving regulatory landscape. Over the past decade, Raman has driven high-impact innovations across leading organizations including Google, Snap, Open Garden, and Samsung, contributing to some of the most widely used developer SDKs in the world. His work blends AI, privacy engineering, and mobile systems design, advancing the future of user trust and data ethics at scale. Beyond his technical leadership, Raman is deeply committed to mentorship and inclusive growth in technology. He serves as a long-term mentor in LinkedIn’s Possibilities in Tech program — a four-year initiative supporting students from historically underrepresented communities through mentorship and scholarships to selected students from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Yale, and Columbia, among others. He has also volunteered as a career coach with Grow with Google program, helping early-career professionals navigate and thrive in the tech industry. Raman is a frequent hackathon judge and mentor with Major League Hacking and university programs including Cornell, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, University of Washington, and others where he champions innovation and ethical AI among student developers. A believer in mindful leadership, Raman integrates Sikh-inspired principles of humility, stillness, and selfless service (seva) into his approach to engineering and mentorship — fostering cultures that value both excellence and empathy. ## Foaad Khosmood Professor and Chief Architect of Digital Democracy, Cal Poly / CalMatters Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/foaad-khosmood/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Foaad Khosmood, Ph.D., is Forbes Professor of Computer Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, visiting scholar at Imperial College, and research director at the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy (IATPP). He is the chief architect and primary investigator on CalMatters' Digital Democracy project, an Emmy award winning, AI-enabled tool to help journalists discover and report on state legislatures. ## Philip Kiely Developer Advocate, Baseten Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/philip-kiely/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Philip Kiely is the author of Inference Engineering and is an early employee at Baseten. Outside of work, you'll find Philip practicing martial arts, reading a new book, or cheering for his adopted SF sports teams. ## Craig Kierst SVP Sales Strategy and Growth, ClearChoice at The Aspen Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/craig-kierst/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Craig Kierst is Senior Vice President of Sales Strategy & Growth for ClearChoice at The Aspen Group, where he leads commercial strategy and growth initiatives focused on transforming the patient experience. With more than 15 years at The Aspen Group, Craig has helped drive innovation across healthcare, leveraging AI, automation, and omnichannel engagement to improve patient access, increase conversion, and deliver measurable business outcomes. ## Kevin Kiley CEO, Airia Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-kiley/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Sungho Kim CEO, Hyundai Global Software Center Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sungho-kim/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Kim, Sungho is the CEO of Hyundai Global Software Center in San Jose, Silicon Valley, USA and a computer science professor with over 20 years of experience in autonomous driving, connected vehicles, and intelligent mobility systems. He previously served as CIO of Hyundai Truck & Bus / Hyundai Motor Company and has led global projects on self-driving technologies, AI-driven vehicle systems, and connected car platforms. Dr.Kim holds a PhD in Computer Science and has taught and conducted research across the United States, Korea, and Kazakhstan. Experience Feb. 2023 – Now: CEO, Hyundai Global Software Center Jan. 2023 – Now : Professor, Computer Science in PSU California / Konkuk University Foundation Jun. 2012 – Dec. 2022: CIO, Hyundai Truck & Bus / Hyundai Motor Company R&D Center Jul. 2007 – Jun. 2012: Account Manager for Nissan, LG Corporation, Adj. Prof. Kyunghee University Mar. 2003 – Oct. 2005: Professor, Kazakhstan National University (KOICA – Korea International Cooperation Agency) Education Feb. 2017: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Graduate School of Korea University Feb. 2014: M.S. in Computer Information and Communication Engineering, Korea University Feb. 2012: M.B.A. in International Economics, Sogang University Feb. 2007: B.S. in Computer Science, Yonsei University Patents Kim, S. (2021). Method for Complying with Driver Mobile Phone Regulations Using a Driver Communication Assistance Infrastructure System. Republic of Korea Patent. Kim, S. (2017). Driver's Communication Assistance Infrastructure System and Method for Abiding by Driver Mobile Phone Regulations Using the Same. United States Patent. Books Kim, S. (2024) Computer Information Systems, App Development Using iOS iCloud Kim, S. (2023) Software Engineering, Theory of Computation Kim, S. (2013) Introduction to Data Analytics: Business Analytics Kim, S. (2008) Connected Car Challenges: iPhone-Based Automotive Innovation Publications and Research Contributions (2026) ESG Risk Prediction in Textile Manufacturing; Human-in-the-Loop AI for Robustness & Fairness; Multimodal Predictive Analytics (2025) AI Impact on Fashion Industry; Autonomous Driving Systems; AutoML vs Expert Models; Sensor Fusion; Explainable AI; Neurofeedback & BCI (2024) Soft Robotics; Closed-Loop BCI; Supply Chain Optimization; Big Data Analytics; Voice Commerce; Recommendation Systems (2022) AI Chatbots; Fraud Detection; Agile AI Development (2021) Edge Computing; Requirements Engineering; Digital Predictive Systems (2020) Supply Chain Optimization; Retail Demand Forecasting (2019) Autonomous Driving Sensor Fusion; Explainable AI (2018) Business Analytics; Industrial AI Modeling (2017) Connected Vehicles; Telematics; Intelligent Transportation Systems; Mobility Analytics (2015) Smart Manufacturing AI; Automotive Machine Learning; Automotive Economics; Mobility Systems (2013) Business Analytics Foundations; Early Predictive Systems (2012) Connected Car Analytics; Introduction to Machine Learning ## Nanhee Kim Associate Professor, California State University, Chico Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nanhee-kim/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Nanhee Kim, MFA, is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design in the Department of Media Arts, Design, and Technology at California State University, Chico. She also has a background in visual communication and architecture, which informs her interdisciplinary research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, communication design, spatial storytelling, and human-centered design. Her work focuses on translating AI-generated insights into meaningful public experiences through visual communication, immersive environments, and design frameworks. She is particularly interested in environmental communication, cultural heritage, and the role of AI in supporting public understanding and engagement. ## Mike King Deputy CIO, UTMB Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mike-king/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Mike King, MS, CHCIO is an Associate Vice President and Deputy Chief Information Officer at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), where he provides executive leadership for enterprise infrastructure, operations, and technology services supporting the institution's academic, research, healthcare and innovation missions. He is a proven executive leader which thrives on improving efficiencies, being an advocate for change, developing strategies, and increasing service delivery quality. ## Ilya Kirnos Co-Founder & CTO, SignalFire Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ilya-kirnos/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Ilya is the co-founder and CTO of SignalFire. Prior to SignalFire, he was a Software Engineer at Google (2004-2012). During his time at Google, Ilya held several technical leadership positions. He was a Technical Lead for Gmail Ads and was responsible for predicting consumer purchase intent and consumer Gmail monetization. Ilya was also a Technical Lead for AdWords Performance and Scalability where he managed responsiveness and uptime of the AdWords frontend. Ilya was also the founder and Technical Lead for Google Prediction Markets, where he led the engineering team from conception to product launch. After Google, Ilya joined CardSpring, a payment platform company backed by Accel and Greylock Partners. At CardSpring, Ilya led platform backend development. CardSpring was acquired by Twitter. Ilya started his software engineering career at Bell Labs and Oracle. He graduated from Princeton University with a B.S.E. in Computer Science and a minor in Applied Mathematics. ## Sheilah Kirui Senior Developer Advocate, Akamai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sheilah-kirui/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Tolgay Kizilelma Director of MS in Cybersecurity Program, Dominican University of California Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tolgay-kizilelma/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tolgay Kizilelma, PhD, Director of MSC Pgm, Dominican University of California Dr Kizilelma is a business-driven IT, Cyber, GRC leader with three decades of experience covering Higher Education, Healthcare, Government, and Private sector. He is the founding Director of the MS in Cybersecurity program and teaches online Cybersecurity GRC courses as an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity in the Barowsky School of Business at Dominican University of California. He is an adjunct at Saint Mary’s College of California teaching for their MSBA and PMBA programs. Tolgay also held multiple CISO roles at University of California. He is an accredited ISACA trainer and has more than 50 industry certifications, a B.S. degree in computer engineering, an MBA, and a Ph.D. focusing on information security. He also volunteers for various non-profit organizations as a board member focusing on education, awareness, training, and community outreach efforts. At ISACA Sacramento, he held Government Advocacy Relations and Academic Relations Director roles and now is serving as the president. His contribution to the cybersecurity community was recognized with the 2022 C100 Award –Top 100 CISOs by CISOs Connect. His current research interests are cybersecurity, privacy, IT risk, compliance, business analytics, and educational IT programs. ## Rohan Kodialam Co-founder & CEO, Sphinx AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohan-kodialam/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Rohan Kodialam is the Co-founder & CEO of Sphinx AI. His background is in AI research. At CSAIL, Rohan's work focused on embedding complex hierarchical data modalities into transformer architectures. He then joined Citadel as a quantitative researcher specializing in alternative data strategies and later led AI R&D efforts to develop agentic models for alpha generation. In co-founding Sphinx AI, Rohan aims to unlock new paradigms for intelligent systems to learn from data, and to drive lasting value through informed decision-making across industries. ## Hamid Kohan Founder / CEO, Practice AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hamid-kohan/ Track: Legal Industry: Software Job Function: Operations Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Hamid Kohan, CEO of Law Practice AI, is a serial entrepreneur, public speaker, and award-winning author, with a track record of scaling law firms of all sizes. He has a rich background in both the computer software and legal industries. His journey began early, earning his engineering degree from Chico State University at just 17 years old. Immediately recruited to Silicon Valley, he dove into the tech world, working with several high-profile companies. By 21, Hamid had completed his MBA in business marketing, further fueling his career in technology and business management. In his early career, Hamid played a significant role in pioneering technology. At Grid Systems, he worked as Senior Manager of Product Development, collaborating with a team that developed the world’s first-ever laptop computer. From there, he joined SUN Microsystems in 1984 as Senior Engineering Manager. During his time at SUN, Hamid was part of a core team working with future tech leaders like Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) and Carol Bartz (Yahoo CEO), contributing to the company's growth from 200 employees to over 13,000 in just eight years. Following this success, he held senior roles at Hitachi Computers and Tandem Computer (now HP Computers), where he directed business and technology development. In 1999, Hamid shifted his focus to Los Angeles, taking the helm as Division President of Emblazed Technology (Webradio), a publicly traded company. Under his leadership, the company saw a 300% growth in just 12 months and reached a valuation of $1 billion. His ability to drive growth and expand businesses led him to co-found CAPLUCK Inc. in 2004, where he launched Cap60, now a leading data management system provider serving clients across 40 states and recognized as the largest provider of services to nonprofit organizations in the U.S. In 2016, Hamid Kohan leveraged his extensive experience in business and technology to enter the legal industry, founding Legal Soft. The company specializes in providing practice management solutions tailored to the unique needs of law firms. Legal Soft started by working with a handful of local law firms, quickly achieving significant growth. Under Hamid's leadership, many of these firms saw over 100% growth, rapidly expanding their practices. Today, Legal Soft works with law firms across the U.S., offering expertise in practice areas such as personal injury, employment law, immigration, and business law. In early 2023, Hamid launched Practice AI, an all-in-one platform that automates demand letters, case summaries, client intake, document collection, and litigation support, specifically for lemon law and personal injury law firms. ## JPS Kohli Founder and Group CEO, SkillUp Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jps-kohli/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees State: Washington Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter JPS Kohli is the Founder and Group CEO of SkillUp Group, a global AI workforce transformation company helping enterprises build measurable AI capability at scale. With more than 30 years of experience in digital learning, workforce development, and enterprise transformation, including leadership roles at Microsoft, JPS has spent his career helping organizations prepare their people for every major wave of technology change. Today, he leads SkillUp's mission to move organizations beyond AI awareness and course completion toward demonstrable workforce capability. Under his leadership, SkillUp has evolved from delivering learning at scale to enabling evidence-based AI upskilling through hands-on projects, real-world application, AI-assisted workflows, and measurable business outcomes. SkillUp partners with leading enterprises, governments, universities, and technology companies worldwide to help organizations assess AI readiness, build workforce capability, activate learning through real projects, and drive enterprise-wide AI transformation. A frequent advisor to executive leadership teams, JPS works with organizations navigating one of the most significant workforce shifts in history: moving from teaching people about AI to enabling them to perform with AI. His work focuses on helping leaders answer the questions that matter most: Are employees actually becoming more capable? Can they apply AI effectively in their roles? And how do organizations measure the return on their AI upskilling investments? At AI4, JPS will present "Moving Beyond Completion to Capability: Proving AI Upskilling Actually Works," sharing practical frameworks and real-world lessons on why traditional learning metrics are no longer enough and how organizations can validate AI readiness through evidence-based learning, applied skills, and measurable business impact. JPS is a recognized keynote speaker and thought leader on AI workforce transformation, evidence-based learning, and the future of enterprise capability. He regularly advises Fortune 500 companies, higher education institutions, and public sector organizations on building AI-ready workforces that can adapt, innovate, and deliver measurable business value. ## Kevin Kohut VP, Enterprise Architecture, First Horizon Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-kohut/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $500M-$1B Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions Over the last two years I’ve focused on applying agentic AI to accelerate enterprise architecture, streamlining capability mapping, standards curation, roadmapping, and solution governance while improving rigor and consistency. In parallel, I’ve led work on Responsible AI governance and security guardrails, helping teams adopt AI safely and compliantly. I also design and deliver hands-on training so architects, product teams, and executives can use AI effectively and responsibly in day-to-day workflows. I have experience in several business domains, but recently have been specializing in Enterprise Architecture for banking, across Payments, Commercial Banking, Digital Banking, and legacy systems modernization. I design target architectures and roadmaps that migrate legacy platforms to secure, cloud-based, API-first services—improving resiliency, time-to-market, and regulatory alignment. Focused on scalable integration, event-driven patterns, and controls that stand up to audit. ## Cobus Kok Vice President, Product Management, Priceline Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cobus-kok/ Track: Product Management Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes COBUS KOK VP, AI EXPERIENCES Jacobus (Cobus) Kok is Vice President, Product for AI Experiences at Priceline, where he leads the development of Penny, the company's AI travel assistant. Since joining Priceline in 2015, he has advanced innovation across Finance, Risk Management, Payments and Checkout before taking on AI product development. Under his leadership, Penny has grown from a simple chatbot into a leading multimodal, agentic AI travel assistant serving millions of customers throughout their journeys. Before leading Checkout and Payments, Cobus served as Director of Consumer Risk Management, where he oversaw the fraud prevention team and implemented advanced machine learning screenings to reduce risk. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Buro, an Apple Authorized Reseller which was acquired by Digicape, and Limbik, a strategic branding and design agency. Cobus is a recognized voice in AI and travel technology, with perspectives featured in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He also has served on customer advisory boards for Affirm and Spreedly and as an Economics Teaching Fellow at Yale University. He holds a Master of Advanced Management from the Yale School of Management and an MBA from the University of Cape Town. He earned undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Value and Policy Studies from Stellenbosch University. Based in New York, Cobus is an avid runner, gardener and traveler. ## Philip Kolterman CIO & SVP of Digital Transformation, Brinks Home Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/philip-kolterman/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Telecom Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Philip Kolterman; Chief Information Officer & Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation Philip joined Brinks Home™ in 2021 with multiple years of experience in technology, management, and computer engineering. Philip and his team work to identify opportunities and execute programs designed to create a successful balance between operational excellence and the ideal customer experience. Ultimately, he and his team aim to grow sales and reduce operational costs while perfecting the customer and employee experience. Philip attended Iowa State University for computer engineering and holds a Master of Science in Technology degree from South Dakota School of Mines. Outside of the office, Phillip enjoys exploring Colorado’s Tex-Mex scene and staying involved with the Peak-to-Peak Rotary Club. ## Naresh Kommula Lead IT Architect, McKesson Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/naresh-kommula/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions Lead IT Architect with 20+ years of enterprise experience across pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and distribution sectors in Europe and the US. Specializes in ERP solutions, Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), AI-driven contract intelligence, and data governance within regulated environments. Passionate about harnessing AI to transform enterprise operations and contract intelligence at scale. ## Charishma Bhavani Koneru Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Block Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/charishma-bhavani-koneru/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Charishma Bhavani Koneru is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Block, where she drives AI-powered automation for Cash App. An experienced machine learning practitioner in the fintech industry, she has built and deployed production AI systems across Block and SoFi, applying machine learning, generative AI, and distributed systems to solve complex customer and operational challenges at scale. Her work focuses on transforming complex financial operations into reliable AI-powered products that translate advances in AI into scalable production systems and deliver measurable customer and business impact. Beyond her engineering work, Charishma mentors engineers, supports women in technology, and actively contributes to the broader AI community through technical speaking and knowledge sharing. She holds an MBA in Finance and Analytics from Tulane University and a dual degree from BITS Pilani in Mathematics (M.Sc.) and Computer Science Engineering (B.E.). ## Rajan Koo Chief Technology Officer, DTEX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rajan-koo/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Rajan Koo is the CTO and head of DTEX’s Insider Investigations & Intelligence (i3) team. He is responsible for developing, implementing, and operating technologies to prevent insider risks from becoming insider threats. Rajan has played a pivotal role in establishing DTEX’s privacy-first approach to insider risk management. He has also led several high-profile insider threat investigations that have resulted in successful prosecutions and exonerations. As a Chartered Professional Engineer with over 20 years of cybersecurity and insider risk experience, Rajan has been awarded patents for his work in R&D (including DTEX’s unique pseudonymization features) and has led technical reviews for multi-billion dollar industrial automation projects. ## Venkata Harikishan Koppuravuri Author, Director of Cloud Engineering, Manulife Johnhancock Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/venkata-harikishan-koppuravuri/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Venkata Harikishan Koppuravuri (Known as Hari Kishan) is a well recoginzed AI tranformation executive, speaker, researcher, author, focused on enterprise Voice AI and AI Governance. He has led large scale enterprise level Agentic initiatives for global organizations across insurance, healthcare, financial and digital platforms. He authored "The Thinking Voice" exploring the evolution of VoiceAI, autonomous conversational systems, and the future of human-AI interaction in enterprise environments. Over the course of his career, he has built and scaled enterprise AI ecosystems focused on real time decision intelligence, autonomous voice agents, low latency AI architectures and production grade Agentic AI deployments. He is particularly known for building production grade AI ecosystems capable of supporting real time enterprise operations in highly regulated and high scaled environments. Hari Kishan has led the design and deployment of next generation AI architectures involving autonomous Voice agents, RAG based implementations, Hybrid SLM- LLM orchestration, Agentic workflows, real time analytics, intelligent routing systems, and adaptive customer engagement platforms. His work combines executive level tranformation strategy with deep engineering execution, enabling enterprises to move AI beyond experimentation into scalable operational adoption. In parallel to his industry leadership, he is an active speaker, researcher, advisor, author focused on the future of enterprise AI and intelligent systems. He frequently speaks on how organizations can integrate AI into core business operations while balancing innovation, governance, long term operational resilience. Hari Kishan also holds multiple advanced certifications across multiple cloud platforms. Through his leadership, research, public speaking, he continues to advocate for scalable, responsible and human centered AI systems that redefine how organizations operate and engage in the era of intelligent automation. ## Karan Kothari Principal Engineer, Lightning AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/karan-kothari/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Manos Koukoumidis CEO and Co-Founder, Oumi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/manos-koukoumidis/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees State: Washington Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Emmanouil (Manos) Koukoumidis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Oumi, whose Compounding AI operating system enables enterprises to build, deploy, and continuously improve domain-specialized AI models they own. Previously, Manos led Google Cloud's Generative AI team responsible for the work that became Gemini before its transition to Google DeepMind. Earlier, he led AI initiatives at Meta and Microsoft, including the development of conversational AI. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he pioneered early work in edge AI. His research has received more than 12,000 citations, and he has held research positions at MIT, Microsoft Research, SMART (Singapore), and CERN. ## Gregory Koytiger Vice President, Head of Artificial Intelligence, Synthesize Bio Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gregory-koytiger/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Greg Koytiger is the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Synthesize Bio where he leads the development of Generative AI algorithms for Genomic data. He received his PhD from Harvard University, did his postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and for the past ten years has been leading teams at the intersection of AI and healthcare. His work has spanned drug discovery in oncology, training LLMs to understand biomedical text, and clinical outcome prediction using large scale real world evidence datasets. In his work at Synthesize Bio, Greg leads development of hybrid large language model and latent diffusion generative modeling to model complex biological systems and their response to therapeutic intervention to advance drug discovery and personalized medicine ## Erin Kraemer Sr. Principal Technical Product Manager, AWS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erin-kraemer/ Track: Keynote Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Erin Kraemer is a Sr. Principal Technical Product Manager with AWS Agentic AI. She has been actively engaged with software development at Amazon for nearly 25 years. In 2022, she became the founding product leader for Amazon's internal developer experience team, Amazon Software Builder Experience (ASBX), where she led the transformation of how Amazon's own engineers build software with AI. Prior to ASBX, Erin spent 20 years working in technical roles in Amazon's retail businesses, growing from an entry-level web developer to serving on an executive level leadership team. Today she focuses on how organizations build the trust required to let AI agents operate on their behalf. ## Sundar Krishnan Director AI/ML, Optimum Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sundar-krishnan/ Track: Telecom & Connectivity Infrastructure Industry: Telecom Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Sundar Krishnan is an accomplished AI and data science leader with over 15 years of experience driving enterprise-scale innovation and measurable business impact. As Director of AI & Machine Learning at Optimum, he leads strategic initiatives that enhance operational efficiency, accelerate decision-making, and enable sustainable growth across complex, revenue-generating environments. He partners closely with executive leadership to shape technology strategy, build high-performing teams, and deliver responsible, production-grade AI systems aligned with core business objectives. Prior to this, Sundar held leadership roles at CVS Health & Comcast, where he managed AI and engineering teams to develop solutions that improve business outcomes. His expertise spans customer analytics, machine learning systems, and workflow automation, with a consistent focus on bridging business strategy and technical execution. Sundar holds a bachelor’s degree from Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, and a master’s degree from Oklahoma State University. He is the author of "Applied Data Science Using PySpark", "ROI of AI Ethics" and actively contributes to the AI community as a speaker, mentor, and thought leader, sharing practical insights on scaling AI, governance, and responsible innovation. ## Suku Krishnaraj COO and President, PromptQL Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/suku-krishnaraj/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Suku Krishnaraj Chettiar is the President and COO at PromptQL, driving the next wave of growth with AI transformation. Prior to Hasura, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Sumo Logic, where he played a pivotal role in driving the company’s growth from $10M to $300M ARR, culminating in a successful IPO. A seasoned executive, Suku has held leadership positions at industry giants such as HP, CenturyLink, and SolarWinds. With deep expertise in product strategy and GTM, he specializes in scaling high-growth technology ventures and driving transformative business success. ## Vinu Krishnaswamy Director, Solutions Architecture, Turing Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vinu-krishnaswamy/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: AI & Data Services Job Function: Engineering Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Chris Kudla CEO, Mind Children Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-kudla/ Track: Social Impact of AI Cadmium Role: Presenter ## Prashant Kumar CEO, TechBlocks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashant-kumar/ Track: Software: Productivity & Collaboration Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Prashant Kumar, CEO, TechBlocks, is a passionate technology entrepreneur, working tirelessly to assist business owners, executives and technologists realize their vision and maximize their ROI on digital value chains through innovative technology platforms and services. He is the founder and CEO of a portfolio of companies. Some of them are proven successful brands (i.e. TechBlocks, Flex1) with a track record of being the best in their respective domains. Others are stealth start-ups that are on accelerated journeys. These range from a BPO company to an online SaaS platform for HR. His entrepreneurial journey started with TechBlocks; a family that grew from two people to more than 1000 people between 2011 and 2023. He has assisted some of the finest CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs in the US, Canada, Asia and South Africa from Fortune 100 organizations, mid-market companies, and SMBs to start-ups successfully realize some of their most ambitious technology initiatives through TechBlocks and Flex1. We have provided our clients with a team of technologists, strategists, evangelists, and platforms with a single-minded goal of providing solutions that help them realize their desired business outcomes. Additionally, his ventures run as an incubator and accelerator assisting start-ups funded by VCs and large enterprises building products and platforms, following lean engineering principles. Our goal is to bring your ideas to life in the quickest possible timeframe and optimize your digital footprint while keeping you nimble during growth. We have successfully done this for our clients and multiple companies that we have started and funded from ideation to revenue and growth stage. Flex1 is the latest example of that endeavor. We are global, so is our presence and so are our clients. Our focus is on our clients, their clients, and stakeholders. With TechBlocks and Flex1, excellence under constant pressure has become a habit that we are religious about. ## Kalyan Kumar (KK) President - Software Products, HCLTech Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kalyan-kumar-kk/ Track: Keynote Industry: IT / Computer Technology Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Team or company is hiring: Yes Kalyan Kumar (KK) serves as President of HCLSoftware, the software products and IP division of HCLTech, where he leads GTM strategy, Product, engineering, cloud operations, and all shared enterprise functions. He is the architect of HCLSoftware’s XDO Blueprint (Experience, Data, Operations), which guides the transition toward agentic service platforms and outcome-based consumption models. With over 25 years at HCLTech, KK has held multiple leadership roles, including Global CTO and Head of Ecosystems, where he shaped technology strategy, cloud platforms, and partnerships across major ecosystems (AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM-Red Hat, SAP). He founded DRYiCE.AI, advancing AIOps and service orchestration, and launched MTaaS, an early Business Service Management SaaS platform. KK is a member of the Wall Street Journal CIO Network and the CNBC Technology Executive Council, where he actively contributes to industry thought leadership and global perspectives. He also serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on GovTech and Digital Public Infrastructure, and previously on the Global Future Council on Quantum Computing. In addition, KK is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He has co-authored nine books in the domains of business technology, service management, XaaS, cloud-native architectures, process re-engineering, and Vedantic wisdom. Beyond work, KK supports cricket development, is active in multiple sports, and pursues music. ## Ram Kumar Nimmakayala Principal Product Manager, AI, Western Governors University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ram-kumar-nimmakayala/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Education Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Ram Kumar Nimmakayala is a Principal Product Manager – AI & Data Strategy at Western Governors University, one of the largest online universities in the U.S. He leads AI products that support over 190,000 learners and is a frequent invited speaker and panelist on pragmatic, responsible AI for large enterprises. Ram brings 18+ years of experience deploying AI at scale across EdTech, Telecommunications, and Technology sectors—specializing in moving agentic AI from pilot to production with governance built in. ## Subra Kumaraswamy CISO, Visa Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/subra-kumaraswamy/ Track: Cybersecurity Cadmium Role: Presenter Subra Kumaraswamy is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Visa Inc., responsible for cybersecurity, technology controls, and cyber resiliency. His 30+ years of experience have been instrumental in building Visa's Zero Trust Architecture and advancing VisaNet's cyber defense capabilities. Under his leadership, Visa has sustained the highest maturity rating in high-risk sectors, as awarded by Gartner. Before Visa, Subra held cybersecurity leadership roles at Apigee, Intuit, eBay, and Sun Microsystems. He holds multiple patents in user authentication and cloud security and co-authored "Cloud Security and Privacy: An Enterprise Perspective on Risks and Compliance." He is also a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance. ## Sreenath Kurupati CTO, Straiker Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sreenath-kurupati/ Track: Cybersecurity Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Sreenath Kurupati is a seasoned technology leader, entrepreneur, and AI security expert with over two decades of experience driving innovation in cybersecurity, AI, and data science. As the Co-Founder and CTO of Straiker, he is dedicated to pioneering AI-native security solutions. Previously, Sreenath served as Vice President of AI, Data Science, and Security Research at Akamai Technologies, where he led cutting-edge AI-driven security initiatives across all of Akamai’s Application Security Product Portfolio. Before that, he was the Co-Founder and CEO of Cyberfend, a pioneering cybersecurity startup acquired by Akamai. His early career at Intel spanned 15+ years across various leadership roles in computer vision, security, and networking. ## Jonathan Kvarfordt VP, Marketing, 1mind Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonathan-kvarfordt/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Angelik Laboy Torres Sr. Developer Advocate, Retool, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/angelik-laboy-torres/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Angelik Laboy Torres has been programming since she had knowledge of what it was. Whether it was creating wearable technologies to detect stress levels or a non-invasive method to detect types of diabetes, Laboy found intrigue in discovering how to think outside the box. For these, she has been recognized with many accolades such as Intel Excellence in Computer Science, National Award Winner with NCWIT Aspirations in Computing, Yale Science & Engineering Association, Air Force, and the Organization of American States. As time went on, she discovered the power of storytelling through directing VR experiences and as an engineer, has worked for The Walt Disney Studios, HBO Max, Dolby, Inworld AI, and most recently, Retool. Angelik works as a developer advocate helping to expand what it means to be a builder in today's era of AI. ## Paul Lacey Product Marketing Leader, Cisco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-lacey/ Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Paul Lacey leads product marketing and AI engineering teams at Galileo (now a part of Cisco). As a former hardware and software engineer, he focuses on helping teams deploy AI agents with comprehensive observability and guardrails. Prior to Cisco, Paul led marketing teams at several Data & AI companies. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. ## Ashlyn Lackey Director, Innovation Strategy, Prudential Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashlyn-lackey/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Ashlyn Lackey sits on the Emerging Technology Team at Prudential, where she partners with business units to identify compelling technologies and startups for potential collaboration. Her expertise lies in building partnerships between fintech startups and Fortune 100 companies, driving innovation and growth for both parties. Ashlyn graduated from Princeton University with a degree in anthropology and entrepreneurship. Prior to Prudential, she worked at Citi and New York Life Ventures. ## Paul LaForge Vice President & Dean, School of Technology, Western Governors University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-laforge/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: Operations Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Paul LaForge, PhD, serves as Vice President and Dean in the School of Technology at Western Governors University, overseeing AI, Data, Computer Science, and Software Engineering programs. He holds a PhD in Economics, specializing in labor market analysis and platform behavior, and is committed to helping organizations innovate responsibly while building the workforce they need to sustain that innovation. Paul is a strategically minded technology executive and systems thinker who helps organizations scale innovation into durable outcomes. His work is especially focused on how AI reshapes work, skills, and operating models. He brings 20+ years of technology leadership experience, including eight years as a Chief Technology Officer in both venture-backed and established organizations. Across that work, Paul has built, led, and scaled cross-functional teams spanning product, AI and machine learning, software engineering, cloud, and security. His teams have delivered platforms and transformations that improved scalability, reliability, and measurable business outcomes. Paul is known for bringing strategic clarity to complex transformation, connecting technology and innovation investments to real outcomes and strengthening the organizational capabilities that make progress durable. He pairs systems thinking with pragmatic strategy to focus efforts on the highest-leverage opportunities, reduce execution friction, and create the conditions for change to scale. A consistent theme in his work is balancing ambition with discipline, moving quickly, learning continuously, and evolving teams and operating models as roles and skill needs change. ## Bill Lakeland CEO, Spexi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bill-lakeland/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter With over 20 years of experience in geospatial imagery and having previously lead and exited two aerial imagery firms, Bill brings unique experience & perspective to Spexi's leadership role. ## Greg Lambert Chief Innovation Officer, Jackson Walker LLP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greg-lambert/ Track: Legal Industry: Legal Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Greg Lambert is the Chief Innovation Officer at Jackson Walker LLP, where he sets the firm's strategy for integrating AI into the practice and business of law. His team works directly with partners across litigation and transactional practices to turn individual expertise into firm-wide AI playbooks and workflows, spanning tools including Harvey, Lexis Protégé, Westlaw Advantage, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude Enterprise. A longtime voice in legal innovation, Greg co-hosts The Geek in Review podcast and speaks regularly on how law firms adopt, govern, and measure AI in daily practice. He is based in Houston, Texas. ## Paul Lasserre General Manager, AI for Space, Loft Orbital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-lasserre/ Track: Aerospace & Defense Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Paul is a leader at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space infrastructure. As General Manager, AI for Space at Loft, he drives the company’s global strategy, product development, and commercialization of AI-enabled space solutions. In this role, Paul oversees the AI solutions portfolio and AI marketplace, leading partnerships with governments, hyperscalers, and advanced AI companies to build reliable AI architectures in space. Previously, Paul served as the Data and Generative AI Partner Leader at Amazon Web Services, where he built and led high-performing teams both globally and in EMEA that accelerated enterprise adoption of generative and agentic AI. Before AWS, Paul held senior product and technology leadership roles across emerging technologies, most notably as VP of Product for AI at Genesys, where he launched and scaled multiple AI-powered products and partnerships. Paul began his career as a Naval Officer in the French Navy, serving for nearly a decade onboard warships, submarines, and in multinational headquarters. His operational experience includes leadership roles during counter-piracy missions near the Horn of Africa, counter-terrorism operations, and as Director of Operations during the 2011 Libyan campaign. Paul holds a Master in Science from the French Naval Academy and a MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. ## Olav Laudy Head of AI Consulting, Tavant Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/olav-laudy/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Olav Laudy is Head of AI Consulting at Tavant and an accomplished AI leader with more than 20 years of experience across strategy, architecture, and implementation. He advises enterprise organizations on generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, and data transformation, helping translate complex technologies into practical business applications. His experience spans financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, and media and entertainment, with work across NLP platforms, predictive analytics, fraud detection, and business process optimization. Olav holds a Ph.D. in Methodology and Statistics from Utrecht University. ## Logan Lawler Dell Pro Precision AI Strategy, Dell Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/logan-lawler/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Logan Lawler, AI Solutions at Dell Technologies AI Strategy leader with over a decade of experience driving innovation and excellence in enterprise-level solutions. Currently spearheading AI Strategy for Pro Precision sorkstations at Dell Technologies. I am dedicated to revolutionizing the way businesses leverage AI to enhance productivity and performance. I've worked in various roles at Dell for 18 years, including sales, marketing, merchandising, services, and e-commerce. Before joining Dell, I grew up in Missouri and graduated from the University of Missouri (MIZ!). ## Aisha Lawrey Responsible AI Portfolio Lead, Engineering Executive and Professional Education, Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aisha-lawrey/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Aisha K. Lawrey, MPA, is the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Portfolio Lead for Engineering Executive & Professional Education at Johns Hopkins University, where she leads the strategy, growth, and industry engagement for AI-focused executive education programs that prepare professionals and organizations to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly and effectively. Aisha is an executive leader with more than 18 years of experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence, workforce development, higher education, technology, and strategic partnerships. Throughout her career, she has built and led cross-sector collaborations that expand access to emerging technologies, strengthen talent pipelines, and drive organizational innovation. She is passionate about helping leaders translate AI from a technical capability into a strategic advantage while ensuring its implementation is ethical, inclusive, and human-centered. Prior to Johns Hopkins, Aisha served as Head of Global Education Programs for Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she led strategic education and workforce development initiatives that expanded cloud and AI learning opportunities for more than 31 million learners across 200 countries. She partnered with universities, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to accelerate digital transformation and prepare learners for the future of work through scalable education and workforce initiatives. A nationally recognized advocate for STEM and AI education, Aisha serves on the Board of Directors for STEM From Dance, the ASME Scholarship Committee, and the ASEE Engineering for One Planet Advisory Board. She is also an AAAS IF/THEN® STEM Ambassador and a #IamRemarkable facilitator, mentoring and empowering women and underrepresented communities to pursue leadership in STEM and technology. Aisha is an active member of ForbesBLK, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), where she collaborates with leaders advancing innovation, workforce development, and greater representation in STEM and technology. Aisha is a sought-after speaker on responsible AI, the future of work, workforce transformation, strategic partnerships, and leadership. Her work focuses on equipping executives, educators, and organizations with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate rapid technological change while fostering innovation that benefits people, organizations, and communities. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Master of Public Policy and Administration from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey–Newark. ## Troy Leach Chief Strategy Officer, Cloud Security Alliance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/troy-leach/ Track: Agentic Commerce: Navigating the Machine-to-Machine Economy Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Troy Leach is a lifelong advocate for responsible technology that enhances living standards while safeguarding personal data. At CSA, he spearheads corporate strategy, focusing on education, research, and awareness of open controls frameworks for secure cloud, AI, and other emerging technologies. Previously, while working for American Express, Mr. Leach helped establish and then lead the PCI Security Standards Council, setting global standards for payment data protection for nearly 18 years. During his career, Mr. Leach has advised enterprises, security professionals, and regulators worldwide on the latest best practices for security assurance and has been recognized as an expert in payment security by the World Economic Forum and as an expert witness in various U.S. congressional committees. Mr. Leach also enjoys his security advisory role on boards and works with international standards bodies. He holds a Master of Science in Telecommunication & Network Management and Information Security Management from Syracuse University ## Freddy Lecue Head of Frontier AI Models, Wells Fargo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/freddy-lecue/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Freddy Lecue is a leading expert in Frontier AI (Artificial Intelligence) model methodologies, spanning Generative AI, Agentic AI, as well as traditional Machine Learning techniques. He serves as the Head of Frontier AI Model at Wells Fargo, where he spearheads innovation in AI model development and validation. In this role, he drives the firm’s research agenda, elevates modeling standards through specialized training, and establishes best‑practice frameworks that advance and strengthen the robustness, reliability, scalability and validation of next‑generation AI systems. He additionally oversees the AI‑driven transformation of the model lifecycle, reshaping development, documentation, testing, and broader validation workflows. Prior to Wells Fargo, Freddy held AI leadership positions at JPMorgan & Chase, Thales Canada, Accenture Ireland, IBM Ireland and The University of Manchester UK. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is based in New York City. ## Anne Lee Consultant, Consultant Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anne-lee/ Track: Telecom & Connectivity Infrastructure Industry: Telecom Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Anne Lee is retired with over 35 years of experience in the Telecom industry. ## David Lee AVP, Applied AI Research & Development, Cox Communications Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-lee/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Telecom Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter David Lee AVP, Applied AI Research & Development Cox Communications David Lee is AVP of Applied AI Research & Development at Cox Communications, where he co-founded the company's AI team and AI Council. His team delivers change in three ways: (1) building front-of-curve applications that test the effectiveness and impact of AI, (2) providing trusted AI tooling so people across Cox can harness AI in their daily work, and (3) cultivating the internal communities that help employees navigate the AI learning journey. Before launching the AI practice, David led early-stage incubation inside Cox's New Growth team. Prior to Cox, he was the first Global Head of Innovation and Venture at UPS and first Head of Innovation Programs at SunTrust Bank (now Truist). His early career at Bank of America spanned strategy and technology across Wealth Management, Capital Markets, and Card Products. David's TED Talk, "Why Jobs of the Future Won't Feel Like Work," addresses the need to reshape work for an age of intelligent machines. It has more than 2 million views and was named one of the 15 Most Watched TED Talks of 2017. He is a frequent guest speaker on AI and innovation at Emory's Goizueta Business School and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. David is also co-inventor on six patents. ## Kibeom Lee Head of AI/ML, delight.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kibeom-lee/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kibeom Lee leads AI/ML engineering at Delight.ai, AI concierge for customer experience, where he and his team build the AI agents that handle real customer conversations for brands across retail, travel, and on-demand services. He works at the point where machine learning meets production, turning fast-moving model capabilities into systems that companies can actually put in front of their customers and rely on every day. His core interest is what it takes to make AI agents capable and reliable enough to act on their own, a question that sits at the center of how enterprises are adopting AI today. ## Kevin Lee Field CTO & Key Pursuits Leader, NiCE Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-lee/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Telecom Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kevin Lee serves as Chief Technology Officer and Key Pursuits Leader at NiCE, where he leads the company's technology vision and its most strategic customer engagements by aligning platform capabilities, Al strategy, and architectural vision to deliver differentiated outcomes. Kevin joined NiCE in 2021 and has held multiple leadership roles across the company's digital and go-to-market organizations. He founded and scaled the Customer Service Automation team, transforming it into a cornerstone of NICE sgrowth strategy. He has played a pivotal role in many of NiCE's most competitive and high-impact pursuits, shaping both technical and commercial strategy across global opportunities. He is deeply committed to crossfunctional collaboration and continues to serve as a senior technical advisor across NiCE and its customer base. Prior to his current role, Kevin served as Global Head of Digital Sales & Strategy, where he led the growth of NiCE's digital portfolio and helped customers transition into the self-service era. With more than 15 years of experience in cloud and software sales, Kevin brings a comprehensive approach to account strategy, technical storytelling, and executive engagement. ## Trevor Lee Cofounder and CEO, Myko AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/trevor-lee/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Trevor is the co-founder and CEO of Myko. He worked previously on Genius Sheets a financial modeling startup and on a Machine Learning Startup - Smart Highlights and before that he worked at a number of startups including Bungalow and OMNY. Columbia Business School MBA / University of Miami BBA ## Mike Lee Senior Lecturer of Technology & Applied Computing, University of Southern California Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mike-lee/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Mike has built a career at the intersection of media, technology, and entrepreneurship — holding leadership roles at major studios (Fox & Warner Bros.) and pioneering tech companies that shaped the Internet (Netscape). Today, he channels that experience into preparing the next generation of innovators through teaching at USC and building the Global Student Startup Foundation (GSSF). At USC, Mike teaches in the Technology & Applied Computing (TAC) department within the Mark & Mary Steven’s School of Computing & Artificial Intelligence in the Viterbi School of Engineering, focusing on applied artificial intelligence and global student entrepreneurship. He is a recipient of the USC Marshall Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence — voted on by students. Mike is the Founder & Chairman of the Global Student Startup Foundation (GSSF), a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is simple: Talent is global. Opportunity is not. GSSF runs six programs — the Global Student Startup Competition (GSSC), Global AI Cup, GSSF Academy, GSSF Ventures, GSSF Advisory, and GSSF AI Labs — bringing the world's top undergraduate entrepreneurs from USC, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Aalto, Seoul National University, and beyond to compete and collaborate on the world stage at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul. Mike is an active member of the USC University Club Board of Councilors and serves on select innovation and entrepreneurship boards globally. Previously, Mike served as Secretary General of the USC Academic Senate and as CTO of USC Annenberg's Media Impact Project. Before joining academia, he spent over a decade in executive technology roles — VP of Technology at Fox and Warner Bros., Technology Evangelist at Netscape, and CTO/VP at various Internet and software startups. A frequent speaker on AI, digital innovation, and global entrepreneurship, Mike has presented at conferences worldwide. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids. His extended family spans the globe — the students, founders, mentors, and changemakers he has the fortune of meeting through GSSF. #FightOn ✌️ ## Cindy Lee Senior Vice President of Finance Transformation, Duke Energy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cindy-lee/ Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Finance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Cindy Lee is the senior vice president of finance transformation for Duke Energy, where she serves as strategic advisor on enterprise finance change initiatives. Drawing from her experience as chief accounting officer, Lee spearheads efforts to advance finance transformation by standardizing and modernizing finance processes, strengthening financial governance and enhancing the efficiency, quality and transparency of financial information. Lee has a keen understanding of the significance of people and organizational change, recognizing that successful transformation hinges on engaged employees, evolving the operating model, and fostering a culture of continuous upskilling and improvement. Previously, she served as chief accounting officer and controller for five years, overseeing the corporation’s accounting, financial reporting and internal controls. During this time, she led a significant transformation of the controllership function and managed financial reporting and governance for a complex, regulated enterprise. She also collaborated with closely with senior leadership, the Audit Committee and external auditors to maintain the integrity and quality of the company’s financial information. Before becoming chief accounting officer in May 2021, Lee served as Duke Energy’s director of investor relations, where she was responsible for fostering relationships with industry analysts and investors, managing the quarterly earnings calls, monitoring investor market trends and developing communication materials. She also played a key role in delivering Duke Energy’s inaugural ESG Investor Day in October 2020. Lee brings 24 years of experience in the energy industry. She joined the company in 2002 as a senior financial analyst in St. Petersburg, Fla. Prior to her role in investor relations, Lee held various leadership roles with increasing responsibility in asset accounting, financial reporting, and regulated and general accounting, including rate case support. A native of Maryland, Lee earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., and her MBA from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. She has served as chair of the Edison Electric Institute Executive Accounting Committee and is a certified public accountant licensed in North Carolina. An alumna of Leadership Charlotte Class 41, Lee is also an executive sponsor for Duke Energy’s Leadership Development Network, supporting employee growth and organizational change. Lee and her husband, Randy, have a daughter and live in Charlotte. ## Shanea Leven CEO & Co-Founder, Empromptu AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shanea-leven/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Second-time technology founder and senior product leader with over fifteen years of experience in artificial intelligence, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, and autonomous systems. Combines deep technical expertise with proven go-to-market execution — has personally led product strategy, machine-learning initiatives, and business development at Docker, Cloudflare, Google, and eBay, and built two venture-backed companies from concept to scale. Holds two Bachelor of Science degrees (Computer Science from the University of Maryland; Business from Columbia College), bridging technical and commercial fluency. Previously founded CodeSee (acquired by GitKraken in 2024). Currently Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Empromptu, Inc., an AI infrastructure company that reached $2.34M annualized run-rate and 47 signed enterprise customers within five months of commercial launch. ## Irene Levintov Chief of Staff and Systemwide Director of Compliance, University of California, Office of the President Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/irene-levintov/ Track: Risk & Compliance Industry: Education Job Function: Regulatory & Compliance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Irene Levintov, CPA, CHC, is Chief of Staff and Deputy Compliance Officer in the Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services at the University of California Office of the President. She is a senior compliance, audit, and finance executive with more than 15 years of leadership experience across higher education, government, and public accounting. In her current role, Irene advises the Chief Compliance & Audit Officer and leads divisional strategy and operations, and enterprise compliance efforts across the University of California’s ten-campus system. Her work focuses on enterprise compliance across research security, export control, healthcare compliance, and privacy, including leading systemwide assessment and mitigation of institutional risk and coordinating stakeholders across ten campuses and six academic health centers. She also supports systemwide efforts related to responsible use and governance of artificial intelligence. Previously, Irene served as Deputy Controller for San Mateo County, where she oversaw financial reporting for a multi-billion-dollar budget, led the County’s audit division, and advised on financial strategy for major capital programs. She also held senior roles in public accounting leading financial audits and advising organizations on governance, internal controls, and regulatory compliance. ## Lily Li Head of AI Adoption and Solutions, Franklin Templeton Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lily-li/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Lily is Head of AI Adoption and Solutions at Franklin Templeton. She leads the enterprise AI strategy and operating model to scale artificial intelligence as a core business capability. She is responsible for accelerating AI adoption, enablement, and transformation solutions, embedding AI into business workflows to deliver measurable, sustained impact. By establishing value-based product roadmaps and leading enterprise changes, she focuses on value creation across the organization. She also shapes executive and market-facing AI narratives, contributing to leadership forums and client engagements. Lily brings extensive experience in financial services across leading institutions, including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments, Barclays, and DTCC. Renowned for her strategic vision, effective leadership, and entrepreneurial mindset, she has managed large-scale transformations, delivered AI-powered products, chaired global cross-functional teams, and executed innovative strategies. Lily holds a master’s degree in Operation Research from Columbia University, honors bachelor’s degree in dual majors in Mathematics, Financial Economics from University of Rochester. Beyond her corporate leadership, Lily is a recognized ecosystem builder and thought leader in AI and Financial Services. She serves as NY President and Global VP of the Columbia Venture Community, fostering collaboration among startup founders, venture investors, and industry leaders. Lily is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including AI in Finance Summit, Ignites, AI in Financial Services and Future Digital Finance, and is a published author in leading outlets such as the Journal of AI, Robotics & Workplace Automation, International Banker, and the Journal of Digital Banking. ## Sheng Liang Cofounder and CEO, Obot AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sheng-liang/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sheng Liang is cofounder and CEO of Obot AI. Previously, Sheng founded and served as CEO of successful open source software companies, including Rancher Labs and Cloud.com, and served in executive roles at SUSE and Citrix. He started as an engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he worked on the Java Virtual Machine. Sheng has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Science and Technology of China and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University. ## Paige Liao Software Engineer, MachFlow AI (POMO) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paige-liao/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Paige Liao is a Software Engineer at Pomo, an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform helping brands make smarter marketing decisions through data and AI. Combining a software engineering background with hands-on experience in influencer marketing and growth campaigns, Paige works at the intersection of technology and marketing. She focuses on building scalable AI systems for trend intelligence, social listening, creator discovery, and marketing automation, enabling brands to uncover opportunities and act on them faster. ## Ilyse Liffreing Editorial Lead/ Head of Growth, The Trade Desk Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ilyse-liffreing/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Ilyse is one of the founding members and Managing Editor of The Current, a platform that shares the advertising industry’s strongest voices of the open internet through journalistic articles, podcasts, videos and events. She is also the co-host of The Big Impression, where marketing leaders from Fortune 500 brands and leading agencies talk shop. Ilyse has a history of working at some of the industry’s leading trade publications, including Ad Age, Digiday and Campaign U.S. ## Roy Lim CEO, Robotemi Global Ltd. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/roy-lim/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes After earning three Bachelor’s degrees and a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Mr. Lim Long Hei Roy began his career as a programmer in the United States, where he gained four years of hands-on experience in software development and automation technologies. In 2011, Mr. Lim returned to Hong Kong to join Tung Hing Automation, where he restructured the company’s technical operations, increased R&D investment, and spearheaded its transition toward advanced automation. Under his leadership, Tung Hing developed several innovative products, including a patented pressure-controlled polishing system and AI-driven manufacturing robots, which solidified its reputation for technological excellence. In 2012, Mr. Lim founded L2F Inc., a high-tech system integration firm specializing in advanced automation solutions. Within three years, L2F’s revenue grew seventeenfold through major contracts with Tesla, SpaceX, and Apple. In 2017, L2F was acquired by Middleby Corporation—the largest food machinery company in the U.S.—for nearly HK$100 million, after which Mr. Lim was appointed Chief Representative for the Asia-Pacific region. Building on his passion for robotics and healthcare innovation, Mr. Lim invested in HandyRehab, a rehabilitative robotic hand achieving up to 90% recovery in stroke patients’ mobility. In 2018, he founded Robocore, a robotics solutions company that has become a global leader in service and healthcare robots. Robocore’s acquisition of Israeli robotics firm Temi enabled the development of an integrated ecosystem of open-platform robots, universal elevator interfaces, and management systems, resulting in sales of over 15,000 robots across 33 countries. In 2025, Robocore Temi raised US$30 million in a Foxconn-led round, bringing its total funding to over US$140 million. Mr. Lim currently serves as Vice President of the Young Industrialist Council of Hong Kong, Vice Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Alliance, Vice Chairman of the Youth Executive Council of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, an Executive Committee Member of the Hong Kong Automation and Technology Council, and a panel member of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Board. ## Pete Limon Program Chair/BSCDST-Bachelors of Science in Cyber & Data Security Technology, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pete-limon/ Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Co-Moderator Dr. Pete Limon is a cybersecurity educator, published scholar, instructional designer, and industry-certified professional with more than 18 years of experience in programming, cybersecurity, networking, and technology education. He has taught and developed curriculum for higher education institutions, including DeVry University and the University of Arizona Global Campus, delivering workforce-focused instruction in cybersecurity, secure programming, network defense, cyber operations, and emerging technologies. Dr. Limon earned his Doctor of Computer Science (DCS) in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance from Colorado Technical University and holds a Master of Science in Cyber Operations from the University of Arizona, along with graduate degrees in software engineering, information systems, and business administration. His multidisciplinary background enables him to bridge technical expertise with strategic leadership and workforce development. Most recently, Dr. Limon designed and developed a comprehensive Artificial Intelligence and Ethical AI Workforce Readiness Program. Created for universities, corporations, government agencies, healthcare organizations, and private-sector employers, the course prepares learners to effectively and responsibly utilize artificial intelligence technologies in professional environments. The program includes hands-on skill builders, practical labs, simulations, and real-world case studies that provide experience using Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI platforms, machine learning applications, and AI-powered business tools. Participants learn prompt engineering, AI-assisted decision-making, workflow automation, data analysis, content generation, and responsible implementation of AI technologies. A key component of the curriculum is ethical AI adoption. Learners explore topics such as AI governance, privacy, cybersecurity risks, algorithmic bias, legal compliance, intellectual property concerns, and responsible decision-making. The course demonstrates how AI is transforming industries including healthcare, cybersecurity, information technology, business operations, education, law enforcement, government services, finance, and human resources. Designed as a scalable workforce development solution, the program is available for licensing and customization by colleges, universities, training organizations, corporations, and government agencies seeking to upskill employees and prepare future professionals for an AI-driven economy. In addition to his curriculum development work, Dr. Limon is a published author with IGI Global Scientific Publishing. His 2025 book chapter, “Examining the Relationship Between Faculty Engagement and Student Achievement,” explores educational motivation theories and the ethical use of artificial intelligence to enhance student engagement, confidence, and personalized learning. Dr. Limon's research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity workforce development, cyber operations, and educational technology. His mission is to develop innovative learning solutions that prepare individuals and organizations to succeed in an increasingly AI-powered world. ## Kytu Lin Founder & CEO, GNTC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kytu-lin/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kytu Lin is the Founder and CEO of GNTC, the company behind EntryDesk, and the founder of Dcard, one of Taiwan's largest social platforms with more than 20 million monthly active users. After scaling Dcard over the past decade, Kytu realized that the biggest barrier to AI adoption isn't the models—it's enabling the people who know the work best to delegate it to AI. He believes AI should be delegated work, not just asked questions. He founded GNTC to help companies become agent-native. Its flagship product, EntryDesk, enables non-technical teams to build AI teammates in plain language and connect them to the tools they already use to deliver real business outcomes. At Ai4, Kytu will share practical lessons from transforming a 20M-MAU company into an agent-native organization—including where AI creates the greatest impact, what to automate first, and how small teams can scale by putting AI teammates to work. ## Lara Liss Chief Privacy and Data Trust Officer, GE HealthCare Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lara-liss/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Legal Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Lara Liss is Chief Privacy and Data Trust Officer for GE HealthCare, which operates in more than 160 countries and serves more than 1B patients annually. GE HealthCare also leads the medical device industry in deployment of AI with more than 130 AI enabled devices on the market in 2026. Lara co-leads GE HealthCare’s Responsible AI initiative. Prior to joining GE Healthcare, Lara was Global Chief Privacy Officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance, a Fortune 20 global retail, pharmacy and healthcare company. There she led the team responsible for maintaining the privacy of more than 1B prescriptions per year and advised the company on cybersecurity incident response, privacy legal and compliance issues and reproductive health privacy. In addition, she founded and co-led the company’s Responsible AI initiative. Lara has her JD and Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Michigan and a BA and an MBA from Northwestern University. She is a member of the board of directors for the IAPP, the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing privacy, data protection, and AI governance globally. ## Yizhou Liu Researcher, MIT Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yizhou-liu/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter My name is Yizhou, and I am a PhD student at MechE, MIT, working with Prof. Jeff Gore. I am fascinated by the concept of “emergence” - how complex phenomena like life and intelligence arise from simpler components. My approach is to use physics methods to transform these intuitive ideas into something solid. Currently, my research focuses on the physics of AI, e.g., the emergence of neural scaling laws. ## Jerry Liu CEO and Co-Founder, LlamaIndex Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jerry-liu/ Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Jerry is the co-founder/CEO of LlamaIndex, the most accurate and secure platform to automate document workflows with AI agents. Before this, he led ML monitoring at Robust Intelligence, did self-driving AI research at Uber ATG, and worked on recommendation systems at Quora. ## Ira Livshits Principal Data Scientist, EPAM Systems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ira-livshits/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ira Livshits, Ph.D., Manager, Data Analytics Consulting, EPAM Systems, is an AI strategist and consultant who helps organizations build AI that delivers real ROI — through solutioning, product development, and workflow optimization grounded in a practical, human-centric approach. Before any AI solution takes shape, she spends time understanding people, processes, and decision-making, then makes sure the underlying data foundations are solid, so AI systems can reason reliably and produce results that hold up. In her view, AI is the last step in the process, not the first. Earlier in her career, Ira was a mathematics professor and computational researcher working on complex numerical methods for solving open-ended, difficult problems. She brings that same analytical rigor and practical focus to AI and data today — favoring solutions that hold up in the real world over ones that merely look impressive on paper. ## Arturo LoAIza-Bonilla Co-Founder & Chief Medical  AI Officer (CMAIO), Massive Bio Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arturo-loaiza-bonilla/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, MD, MSEd, is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical AI Officer at Massive Bio, a global industry leader in connecting patients to clinical trials using artificial intelligence. An internationally renowned medical oncologist and researcher, Dr. Bonilla has a distinguished academic and clinical career in AI applications in healthcare, precision medicine oncology, immunotherapy, clinical trial design, digital health, entrepreneurship, and patient advocacy. Dr. Loaiza-Bonilla is board certified in both medical oncology and hematology and has extensive experience in the diagnosis and treatment of genomic biomarker-driven cancers and serves as the Systemwide Chief of Hematology and Oncology at St. Luke's University Health Network, leading a dynamic oncology team spanning 16 hospitals across 11 counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all part of a nationally recognized healthcare system. Before joining St. Luke's, Dr. Loaiza-Bonilla was enterprise Chair of Research at Capital Health, and served as vice chairman of the Department of Medical Oncology at Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as enterprise director of research, where he provided leadership and expertise to their oncology trial portfolio across 5 cancer centers and over 70 NCTN and industry-sponsored clinical trials. His research has been extensively published in the most prominent journals and meetings in oncology, and he has been recipient of NIH funding to advance digital health and artificial intelligence tools for cancer research. He was also Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; Drexel University College of Medicine, and currently as Associate Professor at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia. Throughout his stellar career, Dr. Loaiza-Bonilla has held numerous leadership positions such as President of the Pennsylvania Society of Oncology and Hematology and President of Global Alliance for Patient Access, ASCO AI and RUC Committee member, CancerX - Moonshot founding member, and editorial board of several oncology journals. In 2018, he was recognized as Philadelphia Business Journal’s Forty Under 40, in 2019 he was bestowed the Influencers of Healthcare Award – Outstanding Healthcare Provider award by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and in 2021 he was chosen as recipient of '40 under 40 in Cancer' accolade. He has also been selected in Castle Connolly's and Philadelphia Magazine's Top Doctors listing since 2018, and writes a monthly globally syndicated column for WebMD/Medscape on 'Practical AI’. ## Nina Lopatina Staff Developer Advocate, MongoDB Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nina-lopatina/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nina Lopatina, PhD, is a Staff Developer Advocate at MongoDB, where she helps developers build AI applications and agentic systems with the right data, context, and architecture. She focuses on turning complex topics like agent workflows, search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) into clear technical content, hands-on demos, and education that help developers build with confidence. Much of her current work centers on memory and context engineering for AI agents, the throughline of her Ai4 session, "Memory Systems for AI Agents," which gives developers a practical framework for deciding what an agent should remember, where to persist it, and what to retrieve at runtime so agentic systems hold up in production. Before joining MongoDB, Nina led Developer Advocacy at Contextual AI, where she helped developers build accurate, scalable RAG agents and agentic search solutions. Her background spans machine learning, NLP, and language modeling, and she began her career applying ML techniques to neural data during her PhD and postdoctoral research in reinforcement learning and decision-making. That research foundation shapes how she approaches developer education today, grounding practical guidance in how these systems actually behave. Off the clock, you'll find Nina lapping moguls or climbing mountains, depending on the season. ## Pedro Lopez Senior Software Engineer, Airbyte Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pedro-lopez/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Pedro Lopez is a Software Engineer at Airbyte, the open-source data integration platform. Previously, he was an early engineer at Grouparoo, an open-source customer data sync framework later acquired by Airbyte. He is known for his work on data integration, reverse ETL, and building connectors that help companies sync data across their tech stack. Beyond data infrastructure, he is the creator of whatsapp-web.js, a popular open-source WhatsApp client library for Node.js with over 20,000 GitHub stars, and a passionate tinkerer focused on reverse engineering and automation. ## Diego Loureda VP Customer Solutions and Success, Protegrity USA, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/diego-loureda/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Diego Loureda, VP of Customer Solutions and Success at Protegrity, is from the NW of Spain and studied physics. While doing research in academia, he collaborated on data projects with CERN, NASA, and NOAA. He enjoys the challenge of making sense of complexity and turning it into clarity. ## Amy Luca CMO, Tensor Auto Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amy-luca/ Industry: Automotive Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Amy Luca is the Chief Marketing Officer at Tensor Auto, where she leads global marketing, brand strategy, and commercial positioning for personal Level 4 autonomous vehicles. With over two decades of experience spearheading marketing strategies for global tech and automotive brands, Amy is driving Tensor's mission to redefine mobility through privately-owned robocars that prioritize safety, data privacy, and personal independence. Prior to joining Tensor, Amy held senior executive marketing roles across leading agencies and tech enterprises, developing high-impact go-to-market strategies at the intersection of consumer culture and emerging technology. At the Ai4 Conference, she shares strategic insights into building trust in autonomous systems, navigating consumer adoption of AI-driven mobility, and shifting the narrative of autonomy from shared robotaxis to personal vehicle ownership. ## Bob Lucey Senior Advisor, Porter Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bob-lucey/ Industry: Government Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Pamela Luckett Chief Digital Engagement Officer, Dallas College Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pamela-luckett/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees State: Texas Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Dr. Pamela G. Luckett-Smith, Chief Digital Engagement & Transformation Officer at Dallas College, leads with an unwavering passion for transforming lives through education. With a career spanning more than 25 years in higher education, she brings a powerful blend of strategic vision, operational excellence, and technology driven innovation that has shaped institutions, empowered teams, and elevated student success at scale. Dr. Luckett-Smith is widely recognized for her ability to merge deep educational expertise with an advanced understanding of emerging technologies, providing visionary leadership to teams leveraging digital solutions that enhance learning, engagement, and institutional effectiveness. Her intuitive, collaborative leadership style strengthened by fiscal acumen and long-range planning sets her apart as a transformational leader who consistently delivers high impact results. Throughout her career, she has navigated complex institutional challenges with clarity and purpose, guiding cross functional teams toward achieving their full potential. Whether spearheading the adoption of pioneering learning technologies, advancing AI and emerging-tech governance, or championing initiatives that close opportunity gaps, she approaches every endeavor with excellence, integrity, and a resolute focus on student and community impact. What fuels her dedication is simple yet profound: the belief that education changes lives. Dr. Luckett-Smith is energized by witnessing growth seeing teams rise, students thrive, and communities unlock new pathways to opportunity. This deep sense of purpose drives her commitment to shaping innovative, equitable, and future-ready learning environments where transformation is not just possible but expected. ## Giovanni Luperti CEO, Humaans Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/giovanni-luperti/ Track: HR and Recruiting Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Giovanni Luperti is the CEO & Co-Founder of Humaans, an AI-powered HRIS and agentic AI platform for globally scaling enterprises. With a product background, he works with HR, transformation, and business leaders to automate people operations, drive business efficiency, and enable better workforce decisions through intelligent people infrastructure that supports high-performing teams. ## Udit Luthur Director, Machine Learning, Cox Automotive Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/udit-luthur/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Name: Udit Luthur Title: Director, Machine Learning Bio: Udit Luthur is a seasoned data science leader with extensive experience in AI, machine learning, and analytics across automotive technology and marketplace optimization. As a Director for Machine Learning at Cox Automotive, he built and scaled AI solutions across multiple business units including Logistics, Ecommerce, Retail and Consumer divisions, driving the company's strategic AI initiatives from conception to production implementations. He leads cross-functional teams developing sophisticated pricing models, demand forecasting systems, and consumer & marketplace intelligence solutions that directly impact business outcomes. Building on his interests intersecting AI and Product, he has recently been involved in AI R&D initiatives spanning agentic workflows, GenAI & Agentic system evaluations, rethinking product development with AI, and AI governance. He holds a MS in Analytics from North Carolina State University and an MBA in marketing from Institute of Management Technology, India. ## Tristan Ma Manager, Solutions Architecture, Elasticsearch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tristan-ma/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Tristan Ma is a Solutions Architecture Manager at Elastic, where he leads a team of Solution Architects helping organizations build modern AI-powered search, observability, and security applications. He works closely with customers to solve complex technical challenges, accelerate AI adoption, and bridge the gap between business objectives and technical execution. With a background in solution architecture, cloud technologies, and customer-facing technical leadership, Tristan is passionate about making emerging AI technologies practical and impactful for organizations. ## Paula Macaggi Founder and Host, OFFBounds Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paula-macaggi/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Retail Job Function: Communications Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Paula is the founder and host of OFFBounds, an independent media brand and video podcast covering the future of retail and commerce. With a front-row seat to the conversations shaping the industry, she interviews C-suite executives and category leaders across the globe, turning complex shifts in consumer behavior, technology, and commerce into content that resonates with a senior audience. Recognized as an NRF Retail Voice, a three-time RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert, and a Favikon Top 10 LinkedIn Creator in Retail (US), Paula brings both editorial depth and practitioner perspective to the stage. At the intersection of AI and commerce, she explores how agentic systems are quietly rewriting the rules of how people discover, decide, and buy. ## Bryce Macher Head of AI, Fan Duel Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bryce-macher/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Bryce is the the VP of AI Engineering and senior most AI practitoner at FanDuel. His AI Software and platform engineering teams are responsible for pushing the envelope on responsible, AI-powered gaming experiences and transforming business processes into efficient AI-native workflows. Prior to FanDuel, Bryce oversaw AI for some of the workds most iconic brands, including Dominos, NBC, Universal, CNN, and WarnerBros Discovery. He has a PhD from the University of Oregon, and teaches graduate courses on mathematical systems engineering and tokenomics at the University of Southern California. ## Dan Mackey Managing Partner & Chief AI Officer, Vector Pulse Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dan-mackey/ Track: Secret Content Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dan Mackey, former bank robber, ex-nuclear engineer, and previous Director of AI Innovation Worldwide at Cigna. Dan now leads AI strategy and transformation at Vector Pulse. Earlier in his career, he led AI at one of the nation’s largest cancer centers and put more AI systems into clinical use than any peer institution at the time. At Cigna, he worked at global scale to advance practical uses of artificial intelligence across healthcare. Today, his work focuses on helping organizations move beyond AI experiments and turn new ideas into systems, products, and operating models that create real value. He is especially interested in how humans and machines think, create, and solve problems in fundamentally different ways. ## Sai Maddineni Staff Vice President, Product, FM Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sai-maddineni/ Track: Insurance Industry: Insurance Job Function: IT Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sai Maddineni is the Staff VP of Product at FM, where he currently leads finance technology strategy and delivery. He's a former consultant (BCG & Deloitte) where he led enterprise transformation initiatives in product strategy, delivery, and operating model redesign across insurance, retail, media, and energy industries. He takes pragmatic yet bold approaches to AI adoption at enterprise scale with a focus on value, speed to market and reliability. ## Mae-Beth Magno Head of AI Governance Center of Excellence, Boeing Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mae-beth-magno/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Individual Contributor: Can be a senior role, but no direct reports nor P&L management Mae-Beth Magno, J.D., FIP, FPT, CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, CDPSE Mae-Beth Magno is a global executive specializing in artificial intelligence governance, model risk management, data privacy, cybersecurity, and enterprise data governance. As the leader of AI Governance and AI Lifecycle Assurance at The Boeing Company, she helps shape the strategy, governance structures, and operational guardrails that enable responsible AI adoption across a complex, highly regulated global enterprise. Mae-Beth works at the intersection of law, technology, cybersecurity, engineering, data, and business transformation. Her experience includes building and scaling global privacy and AI governance programs, establishing enterprise AI inventories and risk-management processes, designing risk-based assessments, developing policy and technical guardrails, and integrating governance throughout the AI and data lifecycle. She focuses on translating rapidly evolving legal, regulatory, and ethical expectations into practical controls that allow organizations to innovate responsibly, securely, and at scale. Before joining Boeing, Mae-Beth served in senior leadership roles at Northrop Grumman, including as Chief Privacy Officer. Her broader career spans the aerospace and defense, technology, media, and legal sectors. She also holds a U.S. Top Secret security clearance and brings experience supporting governance across classified and unclassified environments. Mae-Beth earned her J.D. from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, where she concentrated on intellectual property, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. She is a Fellow of Information Privacy and a Fellow of Privacy Technology and holds the CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, and CDPSE credentials. She has also contributed to the development of professional AI governance certification content and regularly speaks on trusted AI, cyber risk, privacy engineering, responsible innovation, and the operational realities of enterprise governance. Known for her practical, people-centered approach, Mae-Beth believes effective governance should do more than manage risk—it should create the trust, accountability, and organizational clarity needed to accelerate responsible innovation. Her guiding philosophy is: Trust by design. Accountability by default. ## Abhinav Mahajan Technical Delivery Leader - AI, Clayton Homes Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/abhinav-mahajan/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Abhinav Mahajan is a Technical Delivery Leader at Clayton Homes, where he leads AI delivery. His work sits at the intersection of enterprise architecture, identity and access management, and cloud cost discipline, applying focus on capital efficiency to the fast-moving, high-stakes economics of enterprise AI. A builder as much as a strategist, he co-facilitates Clayton's AI Center for Enablement, a cross-functional community of practice that helps teams across the business adopt AI responsibly and at scale, and he has authored research on agentic AI systems and precision market intelligence frameworks. He is also the author of The AI Dichotomy, a business book examining how organizations can harness AI's transformative potential while navigating its inherent tensions and tradeoffs. Abhinav is a frequent and pragmatic voice on how organizations can scale their AI capabilities aggressively without losing control of the underlying infrastructure spend — turning governance and cost discipline into engines of sustainable innovation rather than brakes on it. ## Michael Maher Director of Strategy & Business Analytics, Pave Powered by Quickbase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michael-maher/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Software Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Michael Maher is Director of Strategy & Business Analytics at Quickbase, where he leads data-driven strategy across the business and spearheaded the company's centralized enterprise data model in Snowflake. With a background as an applied data scientist at Veracode, he blends strategic thinking with technical depth to turn data into growth. ## Anuj Maheshwari Vice President, CVS Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anuj-maheshwari/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Anuj Maheshwari is a Vice President of Pharma Data & Analytics Strategy at CVS Health, where he leads commercial efforts at the intersection of healthcare, analytics, and AI-driven innovation to transform how patients access and experience care. With over 20 years of experience across the healthcare and life sciences industry, Anuj has held roles spanning pharmaceutical manufacturers, management consulting, and healthcare ecosystem leaders, bringing a unique end-to-end perspective on how data and technology can drive meaningful change that create value for Patients. At CVS Health, Anuj focuses on commercialzing disruptive, AI enabled solutions that integrate data across the healthcare ecosystem to create more connected, personalized patient experiences. His work emphasizes translating advanced analytics into real-world impact—enabling richer insights, improving patient experience, and delivering measurable value at scale. ## Moataz Mahmoud SVP, Enterprise Data Management, First Citizens Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/moataz-mahmoud/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Moataz Mahmoud is SVP, Enterprise Data Management at First Citizens Bank, with nearly two decades of experience spanning enterprise data, analytics, architecture, and governance across financial services, healthcare, and energy. Throughout his career, he has helped organizations modernize data ecosystems and build the governance, operating models, and architectural foundations required to support digital transformation in highly regulated environments. His work focuses on helping organizations translate data and AI investments into measurable business outcomes by aligning governance, architecture, analytics, and enterprise operating models. His experience spans data engineering, enterprise architecture, analytics, and data governance, giving him a practical perspective on how organizations scale from strategy to production while maintaining trust, accountability, and regulatory compliance. In addition to his enterprise responsibilities, Moataz is a published author and speaker on enterprise AI governance, responsible AI, enterprise architecture, and AI operating models. Through his research and industry contributions, he helps technology leaders navigate AI readiness, governance, context management, and the organizational capabilities required for sustainable AI adoption. ## Mary Ann Majadillas Professor of Finance, California State University, Monterey Bay Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mary-ann-majadillas/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Mary Anne Majadillas is a professor of finance at California State University Monterey Bay. She obtained her Ph.D. in finance from Florida State University. She has diverse research interests and has published in the areas of economics, technology, finance, and finance pedagogy. ## Jason Makarow Chief of Staff to University President/Chief AI Officer, Sacred Heart University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-makarow/ Industry: Education Job Function: Other Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Connecticut Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Jason Makarow is Chief of Staff to the University President and Chief AI Integration Officer at Sacred Heart University, where he leads institution-wide efforts to translate artificial intelligence into practical, responsible value across academic and administrative operations. He works closely with senior vice presidents and other administrative leaders to implement the President’s strategy and oversees the complexities of AI adoption, governance, and risk at the university’s highest levels. His work includes shaping AI governance using the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, advancing AI literacy, and coordinating cross-campus adoption. An educator as well as an administrator, Jason teaches undergraduate courses in writing and finance. His doctoral research examines how nonprofit endowments respond to economic policy uncertainty and applies traditional econometric methods and reinforcement learning to portfolio optimization. With experience leading complex university initiatives, Jason brings a multidisciplinary perspective to AI strategy, organizational change, and innovation in higher education. ## Waqas Makhdum VP of Developer Relations & Community, Nebius Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/waqas-makhdum/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Gaurav Malik Managing Partner, Kagen.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gaurav-malik-dq4ndk/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Team or company is hiring: Yes Gaurav Malik is the Managing Partner at Successive Digital and a leading voice in Agentic AI and enterprise transformation. With over 25 years of experience in technology, he has helped Fortune 500 organizations and global enterprises drive AI-led innovation, digital transformation, and business growth. Gaurav specializes in translating emerging AI capabilities into practical, enterprise-scale strategies, with expertise spanning Agentic AI, Generative AI, AI-first operating models, and digital transformation. He is a member of multiple national technology councils, a jury panelist for CII Digital Transformation Awards, and a sought-after keynote speaker at leading AI, technology, and CXO forums. ## Gaurav Malik Managing Partner, Kagen AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gaurav-malik/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Team or company is hiring: Yes Gaurav Malik is the Managing Partner at Kagen and Successive Digital and a leading voice in Agentic AI and enterprise transformation. With over 25 years of experience in technology, he has helped Fortune 500 organizations and global enterprises drive AI-led innovation, digital transformation, and business growth. Gaurav specializes in translating emerging AI capabilities into practical, enterprise-scale strategies, with expertise spanning Agentic AI, Generative AI, AI-first operating models, and digital transformation. He is a member of multiple national technology councils, a jury panelist for CII Digital Transformation Awards, and a sought-after keynote speaker at leading AI, technology, and CXO forums. ## Dimple Malkani Partner, Beyond Earth Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dimple-malkani/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Finance Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Dimple is a Partner at Beyond Earth Ventures, focused on fundraising and early stage investments in transformative deep-tech ventures across space-tech, robotics, energy, compute, and communications, sectors where breakthrough innovation is accelerating the rise of space as the next industrial frontier. A Silicon Valley native, she has spent her career funding, building, and scaling frontier technologies, from the rise of the digital era through today's AI-driven world. Her background is anything but typical: a foundation in marketing and media meets hands-on experience as an operator in venture and partnerships, backed by a trusted global network spanning C-suite executives, founders, investors, journalists, and platforms, all with a global lens and stronghold on US and international markets. She partners with founders and CEOs to identify overlooked opportunities, build revenue, and design go-to-market strategies that open new categories and channels. Her career spans both tech startups across all major tech waves and global institutions, including CNBC Business News, Pfizer, and AT&T, and she brings that same cross-sector experience and pattern recognition to the deep-tech companies she backs today. Dimple advises founders globally through Antler and UC Berkeley's Entrepreneurship Hub, and as a Business Fellow at Perplexity AI, she identifies real-world use cases shaping how businesses adopt AI. She is a sought-after keynote speaker and has taken the stage at forums including the United Nations and the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Investor Meeting. Dimple holds a B.S. in Business Administration from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and an M.S. in International Affairs from Columbia University. ## Lior Mallul Principal, Battery Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lior-mallul/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Finance Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Lior is a Principal at Battery Ventures, investing in AI infrastructure, enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, and frontier technologies. He partners with founders from early stage through growth and works with companies including Fetcherr, Fundamental, LinearB, and Quantum Art. Before Battery, Lior worked in technology investment banking at Barclays, advising on M&A and financing transactions. ## Vishak Mallya Founder, Synthetix Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vishak-mallya/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Vishak Mallya is the Founder of SynthetixLabs and the architect behind Synthetix—an agentic platform that builds, migrates, modernizes, and supports enterprise software across its entire lifecycle. He founded SynthetixLabs to solve a challenge he experienced firsthand over two decades in technology leadership: delivering mission-critical software in regulated, high-stakes environments is often slow, costly, and unforgiving of error. Rather than relying solely on larger teams and manual effort, Vishak envisioned a platform where intelligent AI agents perform the engineering work, while automated verification and human oversight ensure every change remains accountable, auditable, and trustworthy—delivering speed without compromising control. A hands-on innovator, Vishak personally architected Synthetix’s deterministic-first, multi-agent framework. His work is centered on one of the most pressing questions facing modern enterprises: how to leverage AI agents in production software development while maintaining correctness, governance, and operational confidence. He is a frequent speaker on agentic software delivery, AI-powered legacy modernization, and the governance frameworks required to make autonomous engineering enterprise-ready. ## Srinivasa Manapragada VP, Wells Fargo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/srinivasa-manapragada/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter SRINIVASA MANAPRAGADA Srinivasa Manapragada is a globally recognized technology executive, AI strategist, enterprise architect, and innovation leader with more than 25 years of experience driving digital transformation across the banking, financial services, payments, and technology sectors. He currently serves as Vice President – Lead Technology Business Systems at Wells Fargo, where he leads enterprise technology architecture, AI strategy, API integration, data governance, and large-scale digital transformation initiatives. An accomplished AI Evangelist, Srinivasa is at the forefront of advancing Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI Governance, Responsible AI, Prompt Engineering, Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) frameworks, and AI Blueprints. He architects secure, scalable, and compliant AI ecosystems that enable enterprise innovation while meeting rigorous governance, cybersecurity, and regulatory requirements. His expertise spans enterprise architecture, API management, cloud platforms, data privacy, system integration, technology governance, and executive leadership. Throughout his career, Srinivasa has held leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Blackhawk Network, E*TRADE Financial, Visa Inc., and Sony Computer Entertainment America, building a strong foundation in quality engineering, automation, mobile platforms, enterprise integration, and digital transformation before evolving into AI and enterprise architecture leadership. His contributions to innovation have earned significant recognition, including the Wells Fargo CTO Recognition Award for developing the AI-powered Compliance Integrity Agent (AICIA), which transformed API Threat Assessment through responsible AI. He also serves as a Trusted Advisor to executive leadership on AI strategy, enterprise architecture, governance, and digital transformation. Beyond his corporate achievements, Srinivasa is a Guinness World Record Holder, reflecting his passion for innovation, global collaboration, and excellence. He has also been selected as the U.S. Delegate to the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, India, representing thought leadership in responsible AI and emerging technologies. Srinivasa holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) and completed the AI & Career Empowerment Executive Program at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. He has further strengthened his expertise through executive education in Responsible AI, Generative AI, AI Agents, Cybersecurity, Six Sigma, Agile methodologies, and AI leadership. Driven by a vision of building ethical, intelligent, and resilient digital enterprises, Srinivasa continues to shape the future of AI-powered business transformation by combining deep technical expertise with strategic leadership, governance excellence, and a relentless commitment to innovation. ## Zak Mandhro CEO, Lit Factory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/zak-mandhro/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Zak Mandhro is the Founder and CEO of Lit Factory, backed by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. Lit Factory is building the lights-on factory for human + AI work: a shared operating layer where people, apps, and agents coordinate with visibility, context, and control. The company grew out of PullFlow, a code review collaboration platform used by teams including Epic Games, Propel, and Alpaca. Zak previously led AI initiatives at Apple shipping voice assistant technology to hundreds of millions of devices, and built AI-powered products at Google that reached hundreds of millions in annual revenue. Earlier, at Deloitte, he led global collaboration and information-management work for Fortune 500 organizations. His AI4 talk, “Dark Factories Ship Slop: Scale Human + AI Craft with Lights On,” shows how organizations can scale AI output without losing craft, quality, or the human advantage. ## Nitish Mane Infrastructure Engineer, Philo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nitish-mane/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes I am a seasoned infrastructure and platform engineer based in the San Francisco Bay Area with nearly a decade of experience building and managing cloud infrastructure at scale. Currently at Philo, I work on video streaming pipelines and AWS infrastructure, following a notable tenure at Lucid Motors where I served as Staff Infrastructure Engineer—establishing OCI infrastructure from scratch, architecting AI-powered diagnostic systems, and achieving significant cost optimizations exceeding $100k monthly. My career spans roles at Trifacta and Waterline Data (both acquired companies), where I wore multiple hats across SRE, DevOps, and customer-facing functions. With expertise in Kubernetes, Terraform, ArgoCD, and observability tools like Grafana and Prometheus, along with certifications from AWS, GCP, and Cloudera, I bring a strong blend of hands-on technical depth and cross-functional collaboration skills. I hold a Master's in Computer Science from California State University East Bay. ## Rachel Maness Sr. Program Manager, AI Enablement, Align Technology Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rachel-maness/ Track: Product Management Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Rachel M. Maness, MBA, CDPSE, CISA, is a Sr. Program Manager, AI Enablement at Align Technology, where she helps shape the company's global AI strategy and advance an AI-first operating model that accelerates innovation, enhances workforce productivity, and drives business transformation across the enterprise. A recognized leader in AI enablement, digital transformation, and organizational change, she leads strategic initiatives that scale responsible AI adoption, unlock new enterprise capabilities, and position AI as a catalyst for growth, operational excellence, and competitive advantage. Rachel is responsible for advancing Align's AI ecosystem by driving the enterprise adoption strategy for emerging AI and agentic technologies, establishing governance and best practices, and leading the development of scalable AI capabilities that empower teams worldwide. She oversees key AI enablement programs, including custom AI applications and agents, enterprise AI knowledge platforms, executive and employee education initiatives, and company-wide events that foster AI literacy, innovation, and cross-functional collaboration. Through these efforts, she helps align business priorities with strategic technology investments while accelerating measurable value creation across the organization. Her background in technology, risk management, and strategic leadership enables her to guide complex transformation initiatives while maintaining a strong focus on trust, governance, and long-term scalability. This foundation allows her to bridge innovation and execution, helping organizations adopt and build emerging technologies responsibly while delivering sustainable business outcomes. ## Stoddard Manikin CISO, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/stoddard-manikin/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Stoddard Manikin has over 25 years of experience in information technology, AI, cyber security and privacy. He is currently Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the largest pediatric clinical care health systems in the United States. He also co-founded the Atlanta AI Cybersecurity Leaders Forum. ## Scott Mann Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Flawless Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-mann/ Cadmium Role: Presenter Writer-director Scott Mann is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Flawless, the global leader in cutting-edge technology for filmmakers. Founded by Mann and tech entrepreneur Nick Lynes, the company creates the world’s most advanced and artist-friendly film technology, empowering filmmakers to streamline production and multiply audience reach, thereby setting the stage for a new era of profitable, globalized film that benefits artists, studios, and audiences. Flawless’ proprietary, best-in-class visual dubbing technology, named a TIME Best Invention for its cinema-quality visual translation of films to any language, was recently used to enable the world’s first theatrical full-length feature to use immersive AI dubbing, with Swedish hit WATCH THE SKIES (Swedish title UFO SWEDEN), released in English-language markets on May 9, 2025, followed by several other international territories. Flawless’ mission is to integrate transformational, assistive AI-powered technology into the film industry in the manner that most effectively strengthens artists and enhances human creativity, and it believes this is the most profitable long-term approach. All Flawless tools are built entirely with legitimately sourced data, and the company works closely with industry labor groups to empower and protect filmmakers. In addition to providing world-first film tools to studios and advertisers, Flawless has created the Artistic Rights Treasury (A.R.T.), a groundbreaking rights management system guaranteeing proper consent and compensation for all parties, and Flawless Productions, a tech-powered film financing and production division. Mann is a DGA director, WGA writer, and producer, working with A-list talent on a number of blockbuster films. His credits include FALL, HEIST, FINAL SCORE, and THE TOURNAMENT, directing talent such as Robert De Niro, Pierce Brosnan, David Bautista, Robert Carlyle, Kate Bosworth, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Bruce Willis. Mann has also been at the forefront of the visual effects domain for over 25 years and has had a lifelong passion for science, innovation, and storytelling. Alongside Co-CEO & Founder Nick Lynes, he is an I-X Fellow of Imperial College London, working with the institution’s cutting-edge AI research center. ## Andrei Manolache Chief Executive Officer, DesignVerse Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrei-manolache/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Andrei Manolache is the Co-founder and CEO of DesignVerse, an AI platform that helps enterprises build and modernize complex software using their own documentation, design systems, engineering standards, and internal rules. DesignVerse creates a governed engineering context layer that ensures software is built consistently across teams, accelerating delivery while maintaining governance and architectural integrity. Before founding DesignVerse, Andrei was a Lead Product Designer at Oracle, where he played a key role in creating the award-winning Redwood Design System and designing scalable enterprise product experiences used across Oracle’s global product portfolio. ## Rakesh Maram Lead Software Engineer, AT&T Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rakesh-maram/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Telecom Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions I'm currently working as developer for Cricket Wireless Inc. I have been building ecommerce channels and customer support channels for over a decade. In current team I handle full product lifecycle from idea phase to implementation and production support. When I'm not coding or speaking I enjoys hiking, kayaking and Paddle boarding with my wife and kids in smoky mountains. ## Juliana Marchand Founder, Marchand AI LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/juliana-marchand/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees State: California Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Age: 0-1 Years Company Funding: $0-250K Funding Stage: No Funding / Bootstrapped Juliana Marchand is a bilingual computational linguist, AI safety researcher, and Founder & CEO of Marchand AI, a San Diego-based AI safety and computational linguistics consultancy. Born in Peru and shaped by a lifelong passion for storytelling and language, she brings a three-pillar expertise to applied AI: multilingual computational linguistics, AI governance and safety, and narrative intelligence as an eleven-time award-winning screenwriter. Her flagship product, Soyla Care — a proactive conversational AI companion for seniors with dementia, accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program, AWS Startups, and Google for Startups. The governance framework powering it originated in direct caregiving experience with a family member living with Alzheimer's disease, later validated against peer-reviewed literature in dementia pragmatics, affective computing, and paralinguistic NLP. Her professional background spans Google, Apple, Meta, and PolyAI, with over nine years of applied computational linguistics practice across AI evaluation, multilingual data quality assurance, RAG pipeline design, and system instruction architecture. Her research paper presented at AI4 2026, "Non-Language Is Language", proposes that silence is data, tone is primary, and that grunts, pauses, and invoked memories carry meaning that AI must be designed to receive. She believes the stories we tell, and the ones we can no longer tell in words, are equally deserving of a system that knows how to listen. ## Razvan Margauan Program Manager, EUROCONTROL Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/razvan-margauan/ Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Raz leads the integrated Network Management (iNM) programme at EUROCONTROL, the organisation managing the flow of Europe’s air traffic. iNM is a 10-year digital transformation replacing the legacy systems behind the European aviation network with a modern, cloud-first platform, including a single flight manager for both flight and flow domains. As programme manager, Raz works at the intersection of large-scale aviation infrastructure and applied AI. His focus is less on the hype and more on the harder question: how do you responsibly bring AI into safety-critical operations, where you can’t afford to get it wrong? ## Oscar Marin Executive Director, EY Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/oscar-marin/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Oscar Marin is an Executive Director at Ernst & Young LLP (EY), where he leads Data & AI transformation programs for some of the world's largest energy and industrial companies. With more than 20 years of experience, Oscar partners with C-suite executives to help organizations harness the power of data, artificial intelligence, and automation to drive operational excellence, accelerate innovation, and enable sustainable growth. His expertise spans data strategy, cloud modernization, generative AI, industrial data products, and enterprise-scale AI solutions across finance, supply chain, engineering, and field operations. Oscar is passionate about helping organizations build data-driven cultures that deliver lasting business value. ## Will Markow Founder and CEO, FourOne Insights Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/will-markow/ Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Will Markow is an internationally recognized expert on the future of work and the Founder and CEO of FourOne Insights, a research and advisory firm focused on the impact of emerging trends and technologies on the workforce. Will has advised hundreds of companies, technology vendors, training providers, workforce development organizations, government agencies, and multiple White House administrations on key issues related to the future of work, skills-based hiring, and related topics. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and numerous other national media outlets. He has also testified before Congress on growing the cybersecurity talent pipeline. Will previously spent 12 years with Lightcast, where he oversaw their workforce consulting and research team. Will also oversaw the development of CyberSeek.org – a cybersecurity career exploration portal frequently cited by national media outlets and multiple presidential administrations. ## Carl Marquez Associate Professor, University of Arizona Global Campus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/carl-marquez/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Co-Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Carl Marquez, Associate Professor, University of Arizona Global Campus, serves in the Forbes School of Business and Technology – Department of Technology Studies, where he teaches in the BS in Cyber and Data Security Technology program. A seasoned educator and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Carl brings over 20 years of experience in instructional technology, information systems, cybersecurity, and education. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Education at UAGC, with a research focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Reality (XR), and workforce readiness in cybersecurity education. He holds multiple industry certifications from Microsoft and CompTIA. ## Phil Marshall Deputy Director of Operations, NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/phil-marshall/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Phil Marshall is the Deputy Director of Operations at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and is looking forward to all the science from its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). He helped form the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration at its inaugural meeting in 2012, and held leadership positions in it for 7 years until he moved to his current position at Rubin. (This included being collaboration Spokesperson 2017-2019, during which time he led the implementation of the collaboration's operations plan.) His long-standing scientific interest is strong gravitational lenses, whose Einstein rings and time delays can be used to probe the accelerated expansion history of the Universe, and which can help us probe the nature of Dark Matter via the sub-galactic structure than perturbs the lensing effect. Analyzing tens of thousands of these systems from the LSST will take new approaches to lens detection and modeling: Phil and his Strong Lensing Group at KIPAC are investigating machine learning with deep neural networks as a way to carry out principled, multi-level scientific inference at LSST scale. Phil did his PhD on Bayesian Analysis of Clusters of Galaxies at the University of Cambridge, during which time he first got interested in the process of measuring astronomical objects, including things like Dark Matter halos which we may not be able to observe directly. He first moved to Stanford in 2003 as one of KIPAC's first wave of postdocs, and returned as Kavli Fellow in 2009 after three years as TABASGO Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Phil then spent three years in Oxford as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, before moving back to join the SLAC staff on a permanent basis in 2013. ## Srikanth Maru Director, Data, Cricut Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/srikanth-maru/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Consumer Electronics Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $500M-$1B Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Srikanth Maru is the Director of Data Engineering at Cricut, where he leads the strategic vision, architecture, and execution of the enterprise data platform supporting millions of connected users. His current focus is building AI-ready data infrastructure that bridges production data systems with generative AI — including LLM-assisted development workflows, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for self-service analytics, and natural-language-to-SQL interfaces grounded in real production constraints. Over nearly two decades, Srikanth has architected transformational data platforms across consumer technology, autonomous systems, telecommunications, and large-scale retail — spanning real-time event ingestion, manufacturing intelligence for next-generation LiDAR, ML-driven supply chain forecasting at scale, and enterprise customer data unification. He has a particular interest in the operational realities of running AI/ML systems in production: data contracts, validation patterns, observability, and the unglamorous infrastructure work that determines whether AI initiatives succeed or fail. He writes and speaks regularly on data engineering, GenAI in the enterprise, and the data foundations that enable trustworthy AI. ## Peter McCaffrey Chief Digital and AI Officer, The University of Texas Medical Branch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/peter-mccaffrey/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Peter McCaffrey, MD, MS, FCAP, is VP, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), where he leads AI strategy and implementation across clinical, research, and operational domains and as Co-Chair of the University of Texas System AI Collaborative. Dr. McCaffrey earned his MD from Johns Hopkins, completed his residency and chief residency in Clinical Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, and holds a master’s degree in Biomedical Data Science from Stanford University. His work focuses on integrating AI into healthcare. ## Sharahn McClung Learning Engineer, Nebius Academy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sharahn-mcclung/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Education Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sharahn McClung is a Learning Engineer at Nebius Academy, where she specializes in educational R&D for Evolve. Her work sits where pedagogy meets applied AI: creating the systems that turn a language model into a coach that can guide, assess, and adapt to each learner in real time. For over two decades, Sharahn has dedicated her career to exploring & designing how people learn. Most recently, as a curriculum developer at TripleTen, ranked by Course Report in the Top-3 online bootcamps. While at TripleTen, she designed career programs in AI machine learning, software engineering, and AI Automation. She shaped learning experiences using Dot, TripleTen's 24/7 AI assistant. She has appeared in interviews for Cybernews, the Tech Start Podcast, BBC StoryWorks, and co-created a monthly Job Market Overview for TripleTen. Before designing curriculum, Sharahn coached clients on personal brand, leadership, and communication in the entertainment, education, and tech industries. Her clients spanned nonprofits to global corporations such as HubSpot, Warner Music Group, and NYU Tandon's Veteran Futures Lab. As Director of Learning & Development at Your Career Strategy, she designed and led novel workshops, and group and 1:1 coaching for national and international clients. Sharahn is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and a certified facilitator of Dependable Strengths, with a background in performing arts and forensic speech and debate. She believes every person carries a unique and fascinating story — and that the tools we build to help people learn should honor it. That conviction is now what she engineers into Evolve’s AI Coach. ## Brendan McCook Head of Product Marketing, Miro Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brendan-mccook/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Brendan McCook is the Head of Product Marketing at Miro, the intelligent canvas where tens of millions of people and their AI agents think, plan, and build together. Brendan has spent his career chasing one question: how do people and systems actually work together to make good decisions? It's a thread that runs from the start of his career in the engine room of a nuclear submarine to the tech industry, where he's helped companies from high-growth startups to publicly traded market leaders evolve their ways of working to unlock growth. What he's found again and again is that the hard part is rarely the technology, it's the messy, human work of getting a team to a smart decision and aligned behind it. Brendan has held a range of strategic operator roles from Management Consultant at Bain & Company, to Head of Product Development at Reforge, to Head of Strategic Programs at Okta. Still, he's an engineer at heart, an instinct that took hold as an Electrical Engineering major at Yale and sharpened as a graduate student at MIT. Maybe it's the former championship collegiate rower in him, but what still draws him in is the gap between teams that merely move fast and teams that move fast together, the idea at the heart of today's talk. Brendan lives in the Washington, DC area and spends his free time playing Disney piano songs (somewhat poorly) for his two kids. ## Kari McCoy Doctoral Candidate/ Career Counselor, CSU Northridge Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kari-mccoy/ Industry: Education Job Function: Other Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Kari McCoy is a non profit leader, AI literacy strategist, and doctoral researcher dedicated to helping organizations move from uncertainty to confident, responsible AI adoption. With more than a decade of experience spanning K–12 education, California Community Colleges, nonprofits, and workforce development, she helps leaders build the knowledge and confidence needed to integrate artificial intelligence into their organizations. Kari serves as a Veterans and Career Counselor at College of the Canyons and Antelope Valley College, where she combines student success, career development, and emerging technology to prepare learners for the future of work. She is an AI Literacy Instructor, a Digital Equity Doctoral Fellow, and a member of the California State University Generative AI Task Force. Her doctoral research focuses on AI literacy integration. A recognized civic leader, Kari is the 2026 JCI USA Ten Outstanding Young Americans (TOYA) Honoree and has received numerous awards for leadership, innovation, and community impact. She is also the founder of the LEAP Children's Museum initiative and has created award-winning community programs focused on financial literacy, civic engagement, and veteran support. Through practical strategies, real-world examples, and an engaging presentation style, Kari helps executives, educators, government leaders, and nonprofit professionals understand not just what AI can do, but how to lead people through the cultural shift that AI represents. ## Kevin McGrath CEO, Meibel Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-mcgrath/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kevin brings over 25 years of experience in startup and enterprise technology, with a background spanning infrastructure, cloud optimization, and developer platforms. Prior to founding Meibel, Kevin was Vice President and General Manager of Spot by NetApp, a role he ascended to after serving as CTO, where he led engineering and product during a period of rapid growth and innovation in cloud automation. Earlier in his career, Kevin held technical leadership roles across startups and global tech organizations, consistently focused on building scalable systems and high-performing teams. ## Scott McIsaac CEO, Helios Core AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-mcisaac/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Scott McIsaac is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Helios Core AI, where he leads the development and delivery of Mira Resolve, the company’s AI agent for IT service management and IT operations. With more than two decades of experience in enterprise technology, managed services, cloud infrastructure, application operations, and service delivery, Scott brings a practical understanding of the challenges facing modern IT organizations. Before founding Helios Core AI, he held senior technology leadership roles at Secure-24, including Co-Chief Technology Officer, helping guide the company’s managed services, cloud, and enterprise technology strategy through its acquisition by NTT, where he went on to hold several global leadership positions. At Helios Core AI, Scott focuses on helping organizations improve IT support and operations through Mira Resolve. The platform is designed to automate high-volume service desk activities such as user support, knowledge retrieval, incident triage, password resets, account unlocks, ticket creation, ticket updates, and workflow execution across existing enterprise systems. Mira Resolve works across the service desk and the broader IT environment. It connects with ITSM platforms, identity systems, knowledge bases, cloud infrastructure, monitoring tools, and observability platforms to detect issues, correlate alerts and tickets, investigate root causes, and resolve incidents. It can support major incident response, page the appropriate teams, provide stakeholder updates, execute governed remediation runbooks, and close the loop with a complete audit trail. The result is less alert noise, faster resolution, fewer repetitive tasks, and more time for IT teams to focus on complex and strategic priorities. Scott’s approach emphasizes practical deployment, secure integration, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement. Rather than requiring organizations to replace their existing technology, Mira Resolve is designed to run on the systems they already have and extend AI from the front-line service desk into end-to-end IT operations. ## Markus Mckay-Fleisch Professional Services AI Enablement Director, Smartsheet Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/markus-mckay-fleisch/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Software Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Markus works on AI adoption and enablement at Smartsheet. Before Generative AI, he built in-app help, guided walkthroughs, and other technology adoption tools designed to teach people inside the software they used every day. Now he applies his 20 years of experience in adult learning, graphic design, and technology change management enabling teams to use AI and measuring the real impact on day to day work. ## Mark McNeill Vice President of Global Sales, OneSource Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-mcneill/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Sales Company Size: 51-100 employees State: Texas Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Mark D. McNeill is the Vice President of Global Sales for OneSource Cloud Corporation, a provider of data center services (Colocation, Bare Metal, Managed Services) and global data networks specializing in AI/GPU infrastructure solutions in both cloud environments and on-prem private builds. Mr. McNeill's career spans 4 decades with the last 20 years in sales leadership roles. He has been a key contributor in new product development, product management, customer success management, sales leadership and corporate management for companies such as AT&T, InterCall, TelTrust, Ameritech, ISI Analytics, AppDirect-TBI and OneSource Cloud. Mr. McNeill has also been a regular guest speaker and panel participant in conferences related to AI, Healthcare, Channel Sales and Marketing. Mr. McNeill is a graduate of Boston University where he received a BA in Economics as well as an MBA from Boston University's Questrom School of Business. He is originally from New York City and now hails from Crystal Lake, IL, a suburb of Chicago. ## Emily McReynolds Senior Fellow, Future of Privacy Forum Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emily-mcreynolds/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Emily McReynolds is a Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum. She has worked in data protection, machine learning, and AI for over 15 years. As an academic, she has published papers in machine learning documentation, explainable AI, and responsible approaches to ML data labeling. Emily led strategic partnerships with civil society on responsible AI for a large tech company, as well as implementation of Microsoft's responsible AI standard as part of Microsoft Research. She was the founding program director for the University of Washington’s Tech Policy Lab, an interdisciplinary collaboration across the Computer Science, Information, and Law schools where she co-led projects on augmented reality, driverless cars, and Toys That Listen. Emily went to graduate school planning to improve technical understanding in policy and previously taught people to use computers back when there were still floppy disks. ## Bhairav Mehta Head of AI & ML, JPMorganChase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bhairav-mehta/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Rachit Mehta Software Dev Engineer II, AWS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rachit-mehta/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Jonas Melton Principal, RSM US LLP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonas-melton/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Other Job Function: Finance Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jonas Melton, Principal, Finance Automation Lead, RSM US LLP Jonas Melton provides strategic thinking and accounting and finance advice to help clients transform and automate their accounting and finance processes. He currently serves as one of the firm's automation and AI leaders focused on the accounting and finance functions. Experience Prior to joining RSM, Jonas served as a management consultant at Riveron where he supported dozens of clients through global finance transformations. He also served in the audit practice at KPMG for over six years and spent more than three years leading the accounting and finance department at a privately owned, global publishing and distribution company. By leveraging his broad experience in accounting, finance and technology, Jonas is able to assist clients with identifying and architecting technology solutions that drive more efficient, scalable business processes. Jonas has over 20 years of progressive accounting and finance experience in public accounting, consulting and industry with over 11 years leveraging technology to transform client's processes. His notable financial transformation clients include: Lineage Logistics, Medline, Tiffany & Co, Revlon, Tapestry, Jacobs Engineering, McAfee, Hard Rock Digital, CareerBuilder, CDW, Advocate Healthcare, Tyler Technologies, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Arthrex, Kelly Services Professional affiliations and designations: Certified Public Accountant, Certified BlackLine Implementation Professional Education: Bachelor of Arts, Accounting, Illinois Wesleyan University Website: https://rsmus.com/people/jonas-melton.html LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-melton/ ## Robbie Melton Vice President of SMART AI for ALL Applied Research & Innovations, Tennessee State University-SMART AI for ALL Applied Research Center Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robbie-melton/ Industry: Education Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Dr. Robbie Melton, Vice President of Strategic SMART AI Technology Innovations, has been named the 2026 Leading African Americans in Advancing Technology, and one of the 2025 Leading Woman in AI. and selected as a founding member of the Center for Digital Education Higher Education AI Council and serves on the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) AI Commission, where she contributes to shaping the future of AI in education. In addition to her leadership roles, she is a tenured professor at Tennessee State University and an esteemed global researcher and international consultant specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education and Emerging Internet of Everything (IoE) technologies. Her expertise encompasses mobile devices, smartphones, tablets, wearables, smart gadgets, and immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Dr. Melton has provided global presentations in over 30 countries, showcasing the emerging educational benefits of AI in higher education. She has also trained administrators on developing comprehensive frameworks for AI policies, ensuring institutions are equipped for the integration of AI technologies. Previously, she served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Emerging Technologies at the Tennessee Board of Regents, where she was the primary developer and chief administrator for the system-wide Regents Online Degree Programs. Her numerous accolades reflect her impact on education and technology, including being named one of the Top 50 Women Leaders in Education (2024), National Women of Legend (2023), induction into the USDLA Hall of Fame (2019), and recognition as a Distinguished Woman of Legend (2018). Other honors include the OLC Leadership Award (2017), WCET Lifetime Achievement Award (2016), and recognition as one of the Top 30 Technologists (2014). She was also named an Apple Distinguished Educator (2013) and a Top Fifty Technology Innovator (2012). Dr. Melton is widely known as an “Appologist” for her extensive research on best practices with mobile devices and her creation of the Mobile App Resource Center to support educational innovation. She continues to advocate for Open Educational Resources (OER) to increase global access to education and serves as an education technology trainer in Malawi and several South African countries. Her initiatives, such as “Everyone Can Code and Create” and “Academic eSports – Mixed Reality Gamification,” are advancing SMART immersive teaching and learning worldwide. Driven by a passion for equity and inclusion, Dr. Melton is a tireless advocate for empowering underserved populations, particularly Black women, to become innovators and entrepreneurs in the digital age. Her work continues to push the boundaries of education technology while fostering opportunities for all learners to thrive in the rapidly evolving digital world. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eVxHU5kycHU https://youtu.be/xZfSD_LeSHs?si=JM9nNbeEs0cyx7lP https://youtu.be/87gx-3ahnWY?si=2UGCK8rVQ8Qjhcef ## Mark Menger Solutions Architect, F5 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-menger/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Mark Menger is a Solutions Architect in Technology Alliances at F5, focused on AI and security technology partnerships. He leads development of F5’s AI Reference Architecture and, in the current fiscal year, serves as Lead Architect for F5’s AI Data Delivery mission. His background spans application development, enterprise architecture, application delivery, and IT operations leadership. ## Vrinda Menon CTO Transformative AI, JP Morgan Chase, Private Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vrinda-menon/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions ## Rajiv Menon CEO, AIAR Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rajiv-menon/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees State: Florida Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Rajiv Menon is a serial entrepreneur/angel investor focused on tech, innovation and social enterprise. His current focus is AIAR - which is the world's first self-driven, AI-powered startup acceleration program designed to help accelerators 10X their impact while serving founders wherever they may be. He also founded Informulate (a software and innovation consultancy focused on AI), and Orlando Innovation League (a grant-winning, global award wining non-profit). With past board positions in tech and innovation focused organizations, he has helped scale impact in the Central Florida region. ## Brian Merchant Tech Columnist, Author, Blood in the Machine Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-merchant/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Brian Merchant is a writer, tech journalist, and the author of a bestselling book about the iPhone, The One Device. His most recent book is Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (2023). Exclusively represented by BrightSight Speakers, he has been the Los Angeles Times' tech columnist, an editor at Motherboard, VICE’s science and technology publication, and the founder of Terraform, its online fiction site. He founded Automaton, a project that examined the human impact of AI and automation, for Gizmodo. He currently serves as Journalist in Residence, AI Now Institute. Brian is also the co-editor of a print anthology of Terraform stories, called Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn (2022). His work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, Wired, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Slate, the Washington Post, Fast Company, Fortune, and beyond. He lives in Los Angeles. ## Nell Meshcheryakov Strategic Advisor Responsible AI, Dominion Energy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nell-meshcheryakov/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Nell Meshcheryakov is the Lead for Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Dominion Energy’s CTO organization, where she helps shape the company’s enterprise approach to ethical, transparent, and trustworthy AI adoption. Nell brings deep expertise spanning artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and strategic leadership. Prior to joining Dominion Energy, she served as Senior Director of Emerging Technologies at SEI, where she led innovation initiatives across multiple domains and established and led the organization’s global AI Center of Excellence. Her career includes leadership roles across operations, product development, information technology, innovation, and enterprise strategy—providing a uniquely holistic perspective on how AI systems are designed, governed, and scaled responsibly. Her passion for AI began in 2016 when she built her first machine learning model. She earned an MIT certificate in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in 2020, and her 2021 doctoral dissertation focused on algorithmic bias in machine learning—laying a strong foundation for her work in Responsible AI. Nell is currently advancing her technical and systems thinking through a Master’s in Systems Engineering at Harvard University. Beyond her professional work, Nell is deeply committed to giving back to the community. She actively supports nonprofits in the Richmond area and is a frequent speaker at conferences, webinars, and community events, where she shares insights on Responsible AI and ethical technology adoption. ## Amanda Milberg Enterprise Solution Engineer, ElevenLabs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amanda-milberg/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Amanda is a Forward Deployed Engineer at ElevenLabs, working directly with customers to take their AI agents from prototype to production. She's passionate about helping teams find the right application of generative AI for their business. She studied Computer Science and Mathematics at Colgate University. ## Jeff Miller CIO, Clayco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeff-miller/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Jeff Miller Chief Information Officer +1 480-828-3455 millerje@claycorp.com Jeff Miller is Chief Information Officer at Clayco and a technology leader known for operating at the edge of what is possible, then turning that edge into practical business advantage. At Clayco, he leads technology, AI, data, cybersecurity, enterprise applications, infrastructure, and field technology support for one of the nation’s leading design-build firms. His team is focused on helping Clayco build faster, operate smarter, and scale technology as a competitive advantage. Jeff’s career spans construction, quantum computing, aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Before Clayco, he served as CIO and Chief Information Security Officer at Quantinuum, a Honeywell subsidiary, supporting the commercialization of quantum computing hardware, software, and cloud-based services. He also spent 15 years at Honeywell in senior and executive leadership roles across IT, cybersecurity, physical security, aerospace, and advanced technology. A proud U.S. Navy veteran, Jeff served 25 years in nuclear power, engineering, IT, and intelligence. He brings an explorer’s mindset to leadership: look over the horizon, understand what is changing, and build a rational path from bold ambition to measurable execution ## Maxwell Millington Reporter/Host/Creator, Freelance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/maxwell-millington/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Maxwell Millington is an entertainment and sports reporter, formerly of Axios and Courier Newsroom. His work spans entertainment, sports, and culture and the intersection of tech in these spaces. Maxwell has reported on-the-ground from major events like the Oscars and the Men's Final Four. As a frequent contributor to TV, radio, and podcasts, he bring a sharp editorial eye and a passion for stories that inform and inspire. ## Jeff Mills Chief Customer Officer, AI, Toptal Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeff-mills/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Jeff Mills is a senior technology executive with more than 25 years of experience operating at the intersection of data, artificial intelligence, and global expert talent. He currently serves as Chief Customer Officer for AI at Toptal, where he is focused on bringing AI deep into the enterprise by assembling elite, flexible teams that combine world-class talent with practical AI execution to deliver measurable business outcomes. Prior to joining Toptal, Jeff spent nearly a decade at iMerit, most recently as President. There, he led global customer experience and revenue initiatives while building and scaling expert teams that power modern AI systems. His work spanned predictive AI, generative AI, and multimodal AI, supporting Fortune 1000 companies across autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, robotics, and frontier AI platforms. Earlier in his career, Jeff held leadership roles at several emerging and high-growth technology companies, including 1-Page (ASX), Gengo (acquired by Lionbridge AI), Criteo (Nasdaq), and Sidestep (acquired by Kayak). He began his career at Yahoo, where from 1998 to 2006 he worked across commerce and media during multiple phases of the company’s growth, gaining early exposure to data-driven products and machine learning systems at scale. Jeff is passionate about helping organizations move AI from experimentation into production, with a strong focus on execution, quality, and real-world impact. He completed the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program in 2021, has served on the board of the Montessori School of Lake Forest, is an avid traveler, and is based in the Greater Chicago Area. ## Albert Milton AI Enablement Lead, Hitachi Energy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/albert-milton/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Albert Milton, MCSD, is an AI Enablement Leader at Hitachi Energy, driving AI adoption across R&D by embedding agentic AI, intelligent automation, and AI-assisted development and quality practices into teams, tools, and enterprise workflows. Based in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, Albert brings nearly two decades of experience across software engineering, test automation, quality assurance, and enterprise technology leadership. At Hitachi Energy, he has served in multiple leadership roles, including AI Enablement Leader, Global Quality Assurance Testing Manager, and Senior Architect / Lead in Test Automation. His work focuses on helping teams apply AI practically and responsibly to improve software delivery, accelerate quality engineering, and scale automation across complex enterprise environments. Before Hitachi Energy, Albert worked as a Senior .NET Developer at Briggs Medical Supply Company and as a Senior Software Engineer at iGATE, contributing to projects for major organizations including Northwest Airlines, Thomson Reuters, and AAA Cooper. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from Anna University and is certified as a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. ## Selim Mimaroglu Author, Director of GenAI and Data Science, Fannie Mae Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/selim-mimaroglu/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Selim Mimaroglu is the author of Enterprise AI Productivity: Success Beyond the Hype (Oracle Press/Pearson, May 2026). He built and scaled the AI organization at Oracle Energy from the ground up, establishing an AI Center of Excellence and delivering AI and GenAI models into production across regulated industries including energy, water, and construction. He currently serves as Director of GenAI and Data Science at Fannie Mae, leading AI delivery in one of the most demanding regulatory environments in U.S. financial services. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from UMass Boston, an MIT Product Management Certificate, and 5 US patents. Before entering industry, he spent over a decade in academia and founded multiple technology ventures. ## Todd Minnigh Chief of Medical Imaging Innovation, Chief of Medical Imaging Innovation - Leidos. University of Pittsburgh, Steering Committee - Computational Pathology and Ai Center of Excellence (CPACE) MediConsult Capital, Advisory board Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/todd-minnigh/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Todd R. Minnigh Todd serves as the Chief of Medical Imaging Innovation within Leidos Health Mission Solutions business. His primary responsibility is to help Leidos Healthcare develop innovations that contribute significant value in the medical imaging domain. Before coming to Leidos Todd served as the Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer for GE Healthcare’s Global X-Ray business unit. While there he led the launch of the world’s first artificial intelligence on an imaging device for early indication of critical findings, rebranded the X-ray portfolio, and innovated two medical imaging patent submissions. Before going to GE, Todd held multiple executive roles over his 16 years at Kodak and Carestream Health in the sales, service, and marketing of radiology systems. This included at various times - CR, DR, PACS, RIS, VNA, Printer, and Film products. CAREER CHRONOLOGY: Chief of Medical Imaging Innovation, Health Mission Solutions, Leidos Inc. Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, GE Global X-Ray Vice President of Global Service Sales, Carestream Health, Inc. (formerly Kodak Health) Philips Medical Systems, Global Product Marketing Director Cardio IT, Andover, MA Fujifilm Medical Systems, National Marketing Manager, Stamford, CT Agfa Corporation, Imaging Specialist, Chicago, IL & Los Angeles, CA INNOVATION: US8351568 Long length multiple detector imaging apparatus and method US8019625 Administrative reports for digital radiology departments US7531822 Management of erasure intervals for storage phosphor US6843598 Imaging plate cassette for extended X-ray radiographs US8213572 Retrofittable long-length digital radiography imaging apparatus and method US11284847 X-ray imaging system and method US11324464 Storage slots for digital radiographic detectors Additionally, 4 USPTO Patents pending in Ai, pathology slide scanning, and telepathology EDUCATION: Executive Education for Sr. Leaders, University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School Bachelor of Science (BSc), Imaging PPHT, Rochester Institute of Technology ## George Miranda VP of Marketing, InsightFinder AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/george-miranda/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist George Miranda currently serves as VP of Marketing at InsightFinder AI. He is the co-author of the O'Reilly book "Observability Engineering" which offers a deep dive into the world of modern observable systems, detailing the essential data, workload performance, analysis techniques, and sociotechnical approaches necessary to build & operate resilient applications amidst the large complicated chaos found in today's distributed production environments. He spent over 15 years as an engineer building and supporting large-scale distributed systems in the finance and video game industries. During the shift to cloud-native systems and DevOps practices, his career pivoted toward working with companies focused on elevating and evolving engineering practices: Chef Software (DevOps automation), PagerDuty (incident response), and Honeycomb.io (a pioneer in Observability). George has consistently championed equipping software developers with the tools and techniques necessary for overcoming the inevitable complexities and surprise challenges that arise when applications scale from testing in development to running in production. Everyone has a plan until they get woken up at 2am because production is inexplicably broken. He believes AI is the next on-call frontier and we must also equip data scientists, ML teams, and AI engineers for the battles ahead if we're going to ensure the stability, performance, and trust of AI-powered systems. ## Avinash Misra CEO & Co-Founder, Skan AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/avinash-misra/ Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Julie Mitchell Director, Robotic Sortation, Amazon Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/julie-mitchell/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Julie Mitchell is the Director of Robotic Sortation Technology at Amazon Robotics, where she leads the development of advanced automation solutions that enhance safety, speed, and efficiency across Amazon's global fulfillment network. Her current focus is applying AI to simplify the usability, diagnosability, and maintainability of complex robotic systems at scale. Prior to joining Amazon, she built next-generation compute servers powering Oracle's cloud infrastructure. A certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Julie holds an M.S. in Management from MIT's Sloan School of Management, an M.S. in Systems Engineering from MIT, an M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University, and a B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. Originally from the Boston area, Julie lives just north of the city with her husband and two children. ## Kanishk Mittal Principal Technology Architect, InterSystems Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kanishk-mittal/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Kanishk Mittal is a Principal Technology Architect at InterSystems, where he leads the development of an enterprise-wide data lake supporting analytics and AI. He has spoken at Ai4, AI Council, PegaWorld, and InterSystems READY on topics spanning data, enterprise architecture, and artifical intelligence. Kanishk concurrently pursued a master’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and graduated from Harvard University with a double degree in Physics and Mathematics and a minor in Economics. He is passionate about technology’s ability to solve human problems at scale and enjoys connecting with others around sports, emerging tech, books, and the outdoors. You can find more inforation about him at kanishkmittal.com ## SC Moatti Managing Partner, Mighty Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sc-moatti/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter SC Moatti is the Founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital, the VC firm that leverages the Product Alpha Effect, a data-backed framework for outperformance. As a venture capitalist honored on the Kauffman Top 30 Index and Power100, she invested in pioneering companies like Amplitude (NASDAQ: AMPL), Netskope (NASDAQ:NTSK) and Groq. Prior, SC earned the reputation of “genius at making products people love” during the cloud/mobile era, when she built products that billions of people use at Meta and Siebel Systems, won industry awards and nominations from the Wall Street Journal and the Emmys, and wrote an award-winning bestseller on what makes a great product. SC holds a master’s in electrical engineering and a Stanford MBA, and is a Kauffman Fellow and member of YPO. ## Devang Modi Chief AI Officer, Bausch & Lomb Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devang-modi/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist High-impact digital and AI executive with over 30 years of experience building AI-first organizations across pharma, MedTech, and consumer sectors, where technology directly influences commercial outcomes. Build and scale digital, data, and AI capabilities that measurably improve revenue growth, margin, speed, and compliance. Trusted CXO partner on investment strategy, governance, risk, and operating model modernization. Led global AI transformation across 13,000+ employees and increased product velocity 4x through scaled Agile. ## Tabrez Mohammed VP of AI, Docusign Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tabrez-mohammed/ Track: Software: Productivity & Collaboration Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tabrez is the Vice President of AI at Docusign, where he leads engineering and applied science teams building the next generation of intelligent agreement technologies. With a proven track record in both big tech and high-growth startups, Tabrez was formerly the Chief Technology Officer at Shopsense, pioneering media-to-commerce AI. His extensive industry experience also includes leadership and engineering roles at Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft. ## Max Moldavsky Director of Innovation and Climate Solutions, Netafim Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/max-moldavsky/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Max Moldavsky serves as the Global Director of Innovation and Climate Solutions at Orbia’s Precision Agriculture business Netafim, where he spearheads the integration and introduction of cutting-edge solutions in precision irrigation, digital farming, and data-driven agriculture. Under his leadership, Netafim is advancing the adoption of AI-powered platforms, sensor technologies, and automation tools that help growers optimize yields, reduce inputs, and make smarter decisions. He also oversees initiatives that combine digital solutions with new business models, enabling farmers worldwide to benefit from precision agriculture at scale. Before joining Netafim, Max held several roles in management consulting, including Director of Strategy, advising organizations on innovation, operational excellence, and technology transformation. Max earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. ## Mike Montano Partner, True Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mike-montano/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Cadmium Role: Panelist Mike is a partner at True. He is the former founder of BackType, a social media analytics software company acquired by Twitter in 2011. Following the acquisition, Mike joined Twitter where he scaled its engineering function and team for over a decade, most recently as head of engineering. He invests in and advises startups from the earliest stage onward on product, technology, hiring, and creating high performing organizations. At True, he’s thrilled to extend his expertise to our founder community and help them build and scale exceptional teams and innovative businesses. ## R. York Moore President/CEO, Coalition for Christian Outreach Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/r-york-moore/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees State: Michigan Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator R. York Moore serves as the President & CEO for the Coalition for Christian Outreach. Moore is a speaker, abolitionist, and accomplished Tiktoker. R. York holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and an MA in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the co-founder of the EveryCampus movement, a data-driven coalition of over 120 organizations working together on American college campuses. R. York is widely published and the author several books, including “Do Something Beautiful” and “Seen.Known.Loved,” co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman of the 5 Love Languages. Moore lives on his farm in Ann Arbor, MI with his wife of 29 years, three children and enjoys the hard work of tending land and animals. ## Ian Moraes Head of Consumer Domains Tech, Audible Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ian-moraes/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: AI Coding Strategy Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Ian Moraes, Ph.D., is an engineering leader at Audible serving as Head of Consumer Domains. Ian leads a team that enables Audible’s key customer functions (e.g., subscriptions, payments, promotions), Audible's presence on amazon.com and also Audible’s global web sites. Ian has 20 years of software development experience and has been awarded a dozen patents. Prior to Audible, he successfully delivered large-scale consumer applications development for numerous telecommunications and media businesses. In his session, Ian shares learnings on how his team has accelerated the delivery of software using AI. ## Barr Moses CEO & Co-founder, Monte Carlo AI, Monte Carlo AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/barr-moses/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Barr Moses is the CEO & Co-founder of Monte Carlo AI, the agent trust platform that intelligently monitors, troubleshoots, and improves AI agents and their underlying data in production. Monte Carlo AI gives enterprises the confidence to deploy trusted AI at every stage, from human-guided to fully autonomous, without the manual overhead to match. Under Barr’s leadership, Monte Carlo AI has pioneered the data + AI observability category, partnering with the world’s most data-driven organizations to reduce data + AI downtime and improve reliability at scale. The company is backed by leading Silicon Valley investors, including Accel, GGV Capital, ICONIQ Growth, and Redpoint Ventures. She has been named a Top 25 Data Management & Analytics Executive of 2025, a 2024 top Woman in AI by VentureBeat. ## Maggie Mosher Chief AI Consultant & AstR Professor, University of Kansas Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/maggie-mosher/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Member of the Press: Yes Dr. Maggie Mosher is a pioneer at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), student goal attainment, and educational innovation. Currently serving as the Chief AI Consultant for the Center for Reimagining Education and an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Kansas, she leads national efforts to integrate AI into K-12 and higher education systems. As an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, she develops and instructs advanced graduate coursework on strategic design, Unity, C#, and AI integration for enterprise XR applications. Armed with a Ph.D. from the nation’s #1 ranked Special Education program, Dr. Mosher bridges the gap between high-level technological innovation and practical learning realities. As a Co-Principal Investigator managing over $11 million in grant funding, she has spearheaded groundbreaking XR assessment and instructional methods. Her flagship program, VOISS, utilizes immersive XR scenarios to deliver real-time, individualized instruction across nearly 200 social skills across 123 VR scenarios, scaling accessible, evidence-based interventions for neurodiverse learners globally. Dr. Mosher’s expertise is grounded in over two decades of front-line educational leadership, ranging from an award-winning special education teacher to an Assistant Principal and district technology trainer. Because she has trained educators across 60 domestic school districts and 12 international municipalities, she possesses a rare, deep-rooted understanding of the systemic barriers to technology adoption. Today, she uses that insight to co-create AI professional credentialing pathways, advising schools, universities, and businesses on how to move beyond theoretical AI to scale ethical, universally designed, and personalized instructional frameworks. A highly sought-after global thought leader, Dr. Mosher has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and delivered over 100 presentations, including over 65 invited keynotes. Her transformative work has been honored by the American Academy of Achievement, L'Oréal Women in Science, and the International Science and Engineering Society. Recognized as a William E. Simon Fellow and a State of Kansas Horizon Award winner, she has collaborated on sustainable technology and educational panels with prominent figures, including visionary filmmaker George Lucas, Nobel Laureate Baruch Blumberg, and Dr. Ben Carson. Whether organizing international outreach missions for hundreds of university students or designing the future of spatial computing, Dr. Mosher remains fiercely dedicated to a single mission: developing ethical, evidence-based AI and XR strategies that build communities of respect, collaboration, and opportunity for all learners. ## Wade Moss Global Head of AI and Data, Sentiex Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/wade-moss/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Wade Moss is The Global Head of AI and Data at Sentiex Labs, where he is building core infrastructure for the emerging agentic economy. Previously Head of AI for Moody’s Data Estate, he led the development of multi-agent and semantic intelligence platforms that transformed how enterprises reason, govern data, and operationalize decision intelligence at scale. Wade is a senior AI transformation leader driving enterprise-scale AI adoption, operating model redesign, and measurable value creation across financial services and data platforms. ## Tanvi Motwani Director of Machine Learning, Core AI, LinkedIn Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tanvi-motwani/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Tanvi Motwani is a prominent technology executive and Director of Core AI at LinkedIn, where she leads AI Agent Evaluation efforts. Over a 15-year career, she has scaled machine learning organizations across major tech companies, previously serving as Director of AI at Block (working on Sales and Marketing AI Agents), Senior Engineering Manager for ML at Snapchat (working on Search and "My AI" chatbot), and Head of Discovery at Robinhood through its $32B IPO. An alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin's AI Lab, she is a recognized thought leader who advocates for outcome-first AI strategies, the shift from copilots to autonomous enterprise agents, and the utilization of smaller, specialized language models to reduce operational costs. ## João Moura Founder & CEO, CrewAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joao-moura/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Shone Mousseiri Head of Global AI Model Validation and Governance, Manulife Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shone-mousseiri/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Shone Mousseiri leads Global AI Model Validation and Governance at Manulife, responsible for ensuring AI systems are fair, reliable, secure, and accountable at scale. He focuses on translating AI strategy into scalable, proportionate governance that enables responsible adoption while supporting business growth. He brings end-to-end experience across the model lifecycle, spanning financial, actuarial, and advanced AI systems. His approach centers on risk-aligned frameworks that scale across the enterprise and embed responsible AI into day-to-day operations. Shone is focused on evolving model risk practices for AI and GenAI, embedding responsible AI across the lifecycle, and equipping first-line teams with clear guardrails and expectations to build high-quality, production-ready models. ## Oshri Moyal CTO & Co-founder, Atera Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/oshri-moyal/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Oshri Moyal is CTO and co-founder of Atera, the company behind Robin, the world's only AI technician that resolves Tier-1 and complex Tier-2 incidents in full by acting directly on devices, servers, and networks. He leads Atera's engineering team and technological vision. Previously, he was the sole developer of a breakthrough SMB firewall and spent years in the MSP field. Oshri has been building software since age 14 and is an elite football player. ## Abhimanyu Mukerji Science Manager and Research Lead, Amazon Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/abhimanyu-mukerji/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Abhimanyu is a Science Manager and Senior Economist at Amazon working on foundation models, dynamic causal models and causal machine learning. His academic research has used methods from machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing combined with econometric approaches to study problems in applied microeconomics and empirical corporate finance. He holds a PhD in financial economics from Stanford University. ## Allison Murphy Chief Operating Officer, Axios Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/allison-murphy/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Operations Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Allison Murphy is the Chief Operating Officer at Axios, where she oversees the company’s media business, leading strategy, growth, Axios Loca, finance and HR, and overall operations. Since joining in 2023, she has driven the expansion of Axios Local to reach one-third of the U.S. population, accelerated AI experimentation, and advanced product innovation. Before Axios, Allison was a strategy leader at Capital One and spent nearly eight years at The New York Times spearheading product and advertising innovation. Allison was named to the Adweek 50 list of 2025 for leading Axios Local’s growth, expansion into paid membership programs and AI-driven innovation. She was honored as a 2018 Digiday Changemaker and as a 2020 Ad Age 40 Under 40 recipient, recognizing her work in privacy-first ad technology while at The Times. She has an M.B.A from Harvard Business School and holds a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Virginia. ## Harry Murphy VP for Presales Americas - Applications, Data & AI, Siemens - Intelligence Center X Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/harry-murphy/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Harry Murphy is the VP of Presales Americas for Applications, Data & AI at Siemens, where he helps organizations leverage emerging technologies to drive digital transformation and business outcomes. Harry began his career as an Artillery Officer after graduating from West Point in 2012 before transitioning into the technology industry as a Solutions Architect focused on Data and AI. Throughout his career, Harry has led teams helping customers define their AI strategies, modernize their data ecosystems, and implement innovative solutions in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Today, he works with organizations to unlock the potential of AI, data, and intelligent applications through Siemens Intelligence Center X and the broader Siemens digital ecosystem. ## Sunil Murthy watsonx Technical Lead - IBM Gen AI Field CTO, IBM Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sunil-murthy/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sunil Murthy leads IBM’s Generative AI initiative across the U.S. market, with a focus on IBM watsonx software. As a Field CTO and Subject Matter Expert in Data and AI technologies, he drives technology adoption across industries, helping clients harness the power of AI to transform their businesses. With over 25 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, Sunil brings deep expertise in Information Architecture, Business Analytics, and AI/ML. His work spans industrialized AI solution design, Data Science, Data Fabric, and Traditional, Generative and Agentic AI. Throughout his career at IBM, Sunil has held diverse roles in software development, product management, software strategy, technical sales, solution architecture, consulting, and support—giving him a comprehensive view of how to deliver impactful AI solutions at scale. Sunil is based out of the IBM Silicon Valley Labs. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilmurthy/ ## Nicholas Muy CISO / VP of Engineering, Scrut Automation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicholas-muy/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Dhivya Nagasubramanian VP, AI Transformation and Innovation, U.S. Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dhivya-nagasubramanian/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Dhivya Nagasubramanian is an experienced AI/ML leader in the financial sector. She is an active member of prominent forums, including the Forbes Tech Council, and AI Frontier Network. With a proven history of leading transformative initiatives that deliver measurable results, Dhivya excels at navigating complex challenges, driving large-scale digital programs, and building high-performing teams. Holding a Postgraduate degree in Business Analytics, along with a Business Communications from Harvard, Dhivya combines deep expertise with a strategic approach. Dhivya's career encompasses a diverse array of roles in Information Technology, Engineering, Architecture, Data Science, AI, and Machine Learning. She has played a key role in designing and deploying cutting-edge AI solutions, driving significant advancements in the field. ## Adam Nahari Operating Partner, Head of Data, Digital, & AI, Apollo Global Management Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/adam-nahari/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Cadmium Role: Presenter Adam is a Partner and Chief Data & AI Officer at Pinegrove Venture Partners, where he leads the firm’s efforts to apply AI and advanced analytics to drive better investment outcomes. His work centers on deploying cutting-edge data science to enhance how Pinegrove sources opportunities, evaluates investments, and supports portfolio companies. Prior to Pinegrove, Adam led the data science and AI group at Berkshire Partners, where he developed and operationalized analytics across the investment lifecycle—from algorithmic sourcing and data-driven diligence to value creation in portfolio companies. Adam began his career as a Research Scientist at Harvard Medical School’s Predictive Medicine Group, designing predictive models in healthcare and pharmaceuticals. A data scientist by training, Adam has applied AI and computational methods across multiple sectors to drive strategic insights and high-impact decisions. Adam is an MIT System Design and Management Fellow. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.S. from MIT. ## Madhavi Najana AI Trailblazer | Women in AI Ohio State Ambassador| Forbes Technology Council Member | Fellow BCS | Software Engineering Manager |, Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/madhavi-najana/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Madhavi Najana | AI Trailblazer | Women in AI USA Ohio State Ambassador | Forbes Technology Council Member | Fellow BCS | Software Engineering Manager - Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati. Madhavi Najana is a distinguished technology executive and strategic leader in artificial intelligence with nearly two decades of experience driving innovation in software engineering. She serves as Ohio State Ambassador for Women in AI, a Strategic AI Advisory Board Member, and is an Official Member of the Forbes Technology Council. Madhavi’s career has been recognized globally for excellence in technology and leadership. Her honors include the Top Women Leaders of 2026, Silver Globee Award for Information Technology, Most Admired Global Indians, Best of Tech Awards Finalist, Women in AI Responsible AI Leader Finalist, Leadership Awards 2025 AI Rising Star, and designation as a LinkedIn Top Artificial Intelligence Voice. As an early advocate and practitioner of Agentic Engineering, AI governance, Responsible AI, and cloud transformation, Madhavi specializes in architecting autonomous intelligent systems and cloud-enabled platforms that extend beyond traditional AI paradigms. A sought-after keynote speaker and panelist at major industry conferences worldwide, Madhavi contributes strategic insights on emerging technologies, responsible AI adoption, AI governance frameworks, Agentic Engineering, enterprise AI orchestration, and the future of autonomous intelligence. Her professional excellence is further acknowledged through BCS Fellowship, IEEE Senior Membership, and Senior Membership in the Society of Women Engineers, testaments to her sustained impact and leadership in technical communities. She is also a published researcher on topics including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud, reflecting her thought leadership in advancing cutting-edge technology. Madhavi holds an MBA, a Master of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering, and a Master of Computer Applications, complemented by certifications in AI Transformation Leader, Microsoft Azure AI, Data Science, Security, Compliance & Identity, OKTA, Scaled Agile, Agile Scrum, Six Sigma, Change Management, and Leadership. ## Mostafa Namian Associate Professor, East Carolina University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mostafa-namian/ Track: Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) Industry: Education Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Mostafa Namian, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Construction Management at East Carolina University, where he teaches and conducts research at the intersection of construction safety, workforce development, and artificial intelligence (AI). His work focuses on improving safety performance, training effectiveness, and decision-making in the construction industry through practical, research-based, and technology-driven solutions. Dr. Namian has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in construction safety, ethics, and artificial intelligence in construction. He developed and launched one of the first applications-focused graduate courses on AI in Construction (sponsored by NVIDIA), designed to help construction students and professionals understand and use AI tools without requiring advanced coding skills. His research and applied projects include AI-supported safety training, safety return-on-investment decision tools, construction workforce development, hazard recognition, safety communication, and the adoption of emerging technologies in construction. He has led and contributed to federally and non-federally funded projects involving safety training, AI-based safety decision support, and technology transfer for transportation and construction organizations. Dr. Namian’s recent work emphasizes the practical use of AI in construction, including AI copilots for safety investment decisions, AI tools for disaster reimbursement and infrastructure decision-making, and educational models that prepare construction managers to work effectively with intelligent systems. His broader mission is to help the construction industry adopt innovation in a way that is useful, trusted, and grounded in real-world problems. ## Christian Napier Director of AI, Utah Division of Technology Services Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christian-napier/ Track: Government & Public Sector Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Vijay Narasimhan Director, Technology Investments and Partnerships, M Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vijay-narasimhan/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Vijay Narasimhan, PhD, MBA is Director of Technology Investments and Partnerships at M Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, where he focuses on startups in AI for Science, Physical AI, and Deep Tech. Before moving into venture capital, he led R&D collaborations at EMD Electronics, championing enterprise AI programs that brought machine learning into materials discovery and experimental design. A materials scientist turned investor, Vijay holds degrees from Stanford (PhD, Materials Science), Cambridge (MPhil, Nanotechnology), and IE University & Brown University (MBA), with 17 peer-reviewed publications, 2,900+ citations, and 6 patent families spanning applied AI and machine learning, ferroelectric memories, nanoscale optoelectronics, energy technologies, and RF systems. He lives in Connecticut and works out of the M Ventures offices in Boston. ## Sada Narayanappa Lockheed Martin Fellow/Chief Data Scientist, Lockheed Martin Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sada-narayanappa/ Track: Aerospace & Defense Industry: Other Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Sada is an AI leader focused on building foundational frameworks that enable large-scale, mission-critical operations across the enterprise. He leads key initiatives in knowledge management, ontology and semantic data enablement, and AI/ML-driven predictive analytics at Lockheed Martin Enterprise Operations. His work emphasizes establishing scalable knowledge foundations that transform fragmented data into connected, actionable intelligence, enabling advanced decision-making and supporting next-generation mission capabilities. He is also focused on identifying and advancing practical pathways to accelerate the responsible adoption of AI at scale across complex organizations. With over three decades of experience in the aerospace and defense industry, Sada has led initiatives spanning artificial intelligence and machine learning, model-based engineering, systems architecture, affordability management, engineering economics, and predictive analytics. His focus has consistently been on developing foundational capabilities that enable complex systems to scale, integrate, and operate effectively across mission environments. Sada has authored and co-authored more than 40 conference papers and journal publications in areas related to artificial intelligence, analytics, and advanced engineering applications. Sada holds a dual Ph.D. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Denver, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from New York Tech, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, India. ## Ronak Nathani Principal Staff Software Engineer, LinkedIn Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ronak-nathani/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Ronak leads LinkedIn’s Kubernetes platform team, running one of the largest self-managed Kubernetes platforms: 500,000+ bare metal machines, 5M+ containers, 3,000+ applications, and 110,000+ deploys per week. The platform powers a broad range of workloads across the company: stateless services, stateful systems, ML/CI/Spark jobs, Flink/Samza applications, AI agents, agent sandboxes, and more. Outside his day job, he co-hosts the Software Misadventures Podcast, a show not just about the technology but the people and stories behind them. ## Yoav Naveh CEO, Reindeer Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yoav-naveh/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Yoav is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor, and Founder and CEO of Reindeer. Reindeer is the enterprise AI that runs your most complex business operations. Most automation assumes a stable, documented process, but real enterprise work is full of exceptions, evolves over time, and lives largely in the expertise of the people who run it. Reindeer deploys AI agents built to operate under those conditions, handling exceptions, adapting as processes shift, and learning continuously from the human experts they work alongside. Agents are trained on each client’s specific operations and execute work across finance, procurement, logistics, and shared services. Previously, he co-founded ConvertMedia, later acquired by Taboola, where he served as SVP of People Operations. He is also a Managing Partner at INT3, backing early-stage startups. ## Pranjal Nawarkar Business Intelligence Engineer 2, Humana Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pranjal-nawarkar/ Industry: Software Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Pranjal Nawarkar is a Business Intelligence Engineer II at Humana, a Fortune 40 healthcare organization, where she builds internal data infrastructure, pipelines, and analytics solutions that support enterprise decision-making across healthcare operations. She holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and specializes in the intersection of data engineering, large language models, and enterprise AI. Her research focuses on the reliability and governance of RAG-based systems under real compliance constraints, work that led to her accepted paper and poster at the Applied AI Research Conference at Ai4 2026. Pranjal is a speaker at Grace Hopper Celebration 2026, a two-time PyCon US Scholar, an AWS All Builders Welcome Grant recipient, and a mentor through AnitaB.org's Mentorship Program. She is passionate about making AI systems trustworthy, auditable, and accessible, and about building pathways for the next generation of technologists. ## Nayaki Nayyar CEO, Siteimprove Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nayaki-nayyar/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nayaki Nayyar, CEO of Siteimprove, is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of deep industry experience in driving transformation, innovation and growth at large enterprise software companies. In her role she spearheads the company’s vision and strategy, accelerating its market leadership as an AI-powered SaaS-platform delivering digital content experiences that are compliant and accessible. Previously, as CEO at Securonix, she successfully led the company through rapid transformation and innovation to become one of largest unicorns to address cybersecurity challenges faced by organizations globally. Over the course of her career, she has driven significant growth at companies like Ivanti, SAP, and BMC Software, leading to strategic expansions and technological advancements. Nayaki currently serves on the boards of Fortune 500 companies TD Synnex (NYSE: SNX) and Corteva Agriscience (NYSE: CTVA). ## Shadab Nazar Founder & CEO, Faberlens Inc Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shadab-nazar/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Shadab Nazar is the founder and CEO of Faberlens, which builds white-box behavioral assurance for AI agents — instruments that measure what an agent actually did, not another LLM's opinion of it. Faberlens maps the failure modes agents are prone to, measures them on each customer's own traffic with error bars, and molds agent behavior at runtime. ## Laura Nespoli Executive Strategy Director, Article Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/laura-nespoli/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Other Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Strategic storyteller helping tech leaders achieve big ambitions with human-centered brand and product stories. ## Vincent Nestler Professor, Director, California State University, San Bernardino Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vincent-nestler/ Industry: Education Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: California Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Dr. Vincent J. Nestler is the John M. Pfau Endowed Professor and 2025–26 Outstanding Professor at California State University, San Bernardino, where he directs the Center for Cyber and AI in the School of Cyber and Decision Sciences. He is a contributing member of the OpenAI Red Teaming Network (2024–2026), individually credited in five publicly released System Cards (GPT-4o, o1, o3-mini, Operator, and Deep Research) for adversarial testing across text, image, video, voice, and agentic AI systems. He is principal investigator on the NSF "AI Horizon" project, which forecasts how cybersecurity curricula must adapt to AI, and co-author of the CyberAI Knowledge Area Frameworks for cybersecurity programs in the age of artificial intelligence. His writing on Kasparov's Law and the new definition of hirable, the argument that the work worth hiring for is work neither a human nor an AI can do alone, is the basis of the curriculum model he presents here. He founded the Virtual Cyber Career Challenge, a national capstone program whose Spring 2026 cycle was part of a 15-day live exercise that ran AI-augmented red teams against 69 AI-built and AI-defended blue-team enterprises. That exercise followed a mid-semester decision to throw out the syllabus for two undergraduate classes and rebuild them around a three-week-old agentic AI framework, with students deploying it on both offense and defense and defending credentials to a university-hosted inference cluster under live attack. Several of those students were interviewed and hired before the term ended. He runs the CSUSB Cyberlab that made it possible, an on-premises Proxmox cluster with a GPU-backed vLLM tier serving open-weight models to students behind single sign-on. Before academia he served twenty years in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring as a Chief Warrant Officer 2 in Electronics and Data Communications Maintenance. He holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Design with an emphasis in Information Assurance from Idaho State University, an M.S. in Network Security from Capitol College, and an M.A. from Columbia University. He was principal investigator on the NSF- and NIST-funded NICE Challenge Project, now a national model serving more than 700 institutions, and is lead author of McGraw-Hill's Principles of Computer Security Lab Manual (multiple editions, including a Chinese edition with Tsinghua University Press) and author of Norwich University's Competency in Cybersecurity Education. Across his career he has secured more than $40M in federal cybersecurity and AI-education funding as PI or Co-PI, and his talks run from democratizing open-source LLMs for education and research to what competency-based instruction looks like when the workforce, the adversary, and the classroom are all changing at the speed of AI. ## Jordan Nettles Account Solution Engineer, Salesforce Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jordan-nettles/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Sam Newnam CMO, Secuvy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sam-newnam/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Sam Newnam is Chief Marketing Officer at Secuvy AI, where he helps enterprises discover, classify, and govern their data to safely power modern AI pipelines. Focused on protecting corporate IP—including dark data enterprises didn't know they had—Sam works to ensure data is secure and compliant before it ever reaches an AI model or agent. Sam’s career spans the intersection of AI infrastructure and data, including founding multiple data and analytics startups and holding senior leadership roles at Nutanix, WEKA, and Hammerspace. As VP of AI Solutions at Hammerspace, he launched the company’s AI Data Platform and led strategic integrations with NVIDIA, Cisco, Supermicro, and Hitachi Vantara for GPU-intensive workloads. Having solved critical data gravity and fragmentation challenges to get unstructured data moving into agentic AI systems, Sam now leads marketing and growth at Secuvy to address the next frontier: full-visibility data governance, classification, and IP protection for enterprise AI. ## Jonas Ng Head of Small Business Banking & Former Sr Dir-Business & Tech Optimization for Real Estate Capital/Institutional Banking, Valley Bank / entrepreneur / (formerly) KeyBank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonas-ng/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Jonas Ng currently serves as the Head of Small Business Banking at Valley Bank. He leads Small Business strategy, focused on delivering relationship-driven financial solutions that help business owners operate efficiently and scale with confidence. He focuses on enhancing Valley’s capabilities across deposits, lending, digital channels, and client engagement. Jonas is also the founder of NKGAC, an AI-consulting business providing serving AI startups. He has also launched PersonaPick.com, an AI-driven hyper-personalization engine that helps high school students find their best-fit college matches. Jonas formerly served as the Senior Director of Business/Technology Optimization for KeyBank’s Real Estate Capital and Institutional Banking division. In this role, Jonas worked to lead line-of-business technology strategy initiatives surrounding process improvements and efficiencies, data/ reporting/ compliance, AI/Machine Learning, and digital interactions. Before KeyBank, Jonas served as Head of Strategy and COO of KeyBank's Fintech division, where he led operations, risk, sales/servicing, and efforts to scale Fintech and AI across the enterprise. He also served as Head of Digital for KeyBank’s Commercial banking businesses and led KeyBank’s Financial Wellness and Consumer Strategy. Jonas previously worked at Nationwide, Discover, Enova, MBNA, and seven start-ups and consulting boutiques. He has had leadership roles in Marketing, Product, Finance, Operations, Strategy, Business Development, Mergers & Acquisitions, Application Development, and Innovation. ## Brian Ngo Senior Product Marketing Manager, ISBG, ASUS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-ngo/ Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Khanh Nguyen Developer Relations Engineer, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/khanh-nguyen/ Track: Google Cloud Programming State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Anna Ni Associate Dean, California State University San Bernardino Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anna-ni/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student / Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: California Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals ## Anna Ni Professor, California State University San Bernardino Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anna-ni-du2nzu/ Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter ## Rohit Nichani President, Emergence AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohit-nichani/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 51-100 employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Rohit is President of Emergence AI, where he leads revenue growth and go-to-market strategy for the company's platform. He brings more than 26 years of experience building and scaling high-growth technology companies, having held executive leadership roles including Chief Growth Officer, President, and Chief Commercial Officer, with expertise spanning revenue growth, large-scale deal execution, M&A, and investor relations. Prior to Emergence, Rohit spent two decades helping shape Encora's growth journey from a seed-stage company to a global digital engineering leader - culminating in Coforge's $2.35 billion acquisition of Encora, one of the largest acquisitions ever completed by an Indian IT services company. ## Alan Nichol CTO & Co-founder, Rasa Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alan-nichol/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dr. Alan Nichol is co-founder and CTO of Rasa and the creator of the most popular developer platform for Conversational AI. Rasa has helped the world's leading enterprises move from legacy chatbots to modern AI agents, and has led the industry in defining architectures and patterns for enterprise AI. He was recently named one of top 100 individuals shaping AI in Europe. He has written widely-cited papers on conversational AI and holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Cambridge. ## Alexander Niehenke Partner, Scale Venture Partners Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alexander-niehenke/ Track: Insurance Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Operations Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Alex is a Partner at Scale Venture Partners, focused on early investments in vertical markets where incumbents have underinvested in advanced technology. This thesis has led to investments in Motive (formerly KeepTruckin), Root Insurance (ROOT), Spruce (acquired by Zillow), Range, Sixfold, Proscia, and Archipelago, among others. He has been in venture for over 20 years and at Scale since 2012, investing through the rise of the internet, social, mobile, cloud, SaaS, and now AI. His focus on verticals was shaped early by watching his dad’s transportation businesses intersect with many industries. He began investing in fintech and trucking a decade ago and has stayed committed to vertical software across market cycles. ## Naomi Nix Tech Reporter, Freelance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/naomi-nix/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes ## Josh Noble Field CTO, Tray.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-noble/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Other Job Function: IT Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Anthony Noguera Director - AI for Business Applications, NVIDIA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anthony-noguera/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Anthony Noguera is the Director of AI for Business Applications at NVIDIA. His team develops cutting-edge tools such as AI Planner powered by cuOpt that integrate artificial intelligence into NVIDIA’s supply chain infrastructure. Prior to his current role, he led the development and support of SAP and other business applications at NVIDIA. He holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of the Philippines. ## Chase Norton Head of Artificial Intelligence, Faros Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chase-norton/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Head of AI at Faros AI. Three-time founder and 18-year engineer. Shipped at PayPal scale. Led teams to GA in healthcare. Built and sold companies in AI agents and consumer commerce. Independent security researcher focused on AI systems, evals, and the risks of epistemic monoculture in AI-generated code. Splits time between Honolulu and the Bay. ## Dejay Noy Principal AI Architect, NetApp Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dejay-noy/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dejay Noy is a Principal AI Architect at NetApp, where he partners with enterprises to design the data infrastructure behind their most ambitious AI initiatives. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Dejay works across financial services, healthcare, public sector, media, and manufacturing—helping organizations feed GPUs, govern data, and defend against modern threats wherever their workloads run. He is a recognized voice on intelligent data infrastructure, cyber resilience, and the rise of neo-clouds, and collaborates closely with technology partners. A frequent speaker and enablement leader, Dejay is passionate about cutting through hype to show technical and business audiences how to move AI from experimentation to real production outcomes. ## Camille Nwaefulu Senior Engineer, Applied and Post-Quantum Cryptography, Visa Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/camille-nwaefulu/ Track: Quantum AI [Technical] Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Camille Nwaefulu is a Senior Cryptography Engineer on Visa’s Applied Cryptography team, specializing in Data Protection Architecture & Engineering, where she leads enterprise initiatives in applied cryptography, sensitive data tokenization, encryption, cryptographic agility, and post-quantum readiness. With more than eight years of experience across global payments, federal consulting, aerospace and defense, and other highly regulated environments, she has helped design and scale security architectures protecting sensitive data across more than 200 applications supporting billions of financial transactions. Camille develops tokenization and encryption solutions that reduce data exposure while enabling secure business innovation. She also serves as a senior technical authority and leader for complex data-protection and applied cryptography challenges. Her work spans data-protection due diligence, remediation, privacy by design, and post-acquisition integration across three major acquisitions collectively valued in the billions of dollars. She evaluates inherited data environments, identifies security and privacy gaps, develops remediation roadmaps, and drives risks through closure to support secure enterprise integration. Camille has contributed to enterprise post-quantum cryptography efforts through proof-of-concept initiatives evaluating the integration and performance of quantum-resistant technologies. She works alongside her team to translate emerging cryptographic standards into practical implementation strategies that protect long-lived sensitive data. As a trusted partner to engineering, product, legal, cloud, risk, audit, and executive stakeholders, Camille leads enterprise audits, communicates complex technical risks to senior and executive leadership, and strengthens alignment with regulatory and security requirements. Earlier in her career, Camille worked as a Software Engineer on Northrop Grumman’s Nuclear Surety team, supporting the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, a major United States nuclear weapons modernization initiative, through software assurance, cybersecurity analysis, threat modeling, and risk management for mission-critical defense systems. Camille holds a Master of Engineering from The George Washington University and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree. She is recognized for combining technical depth, strategic vision, and cross-functional leadership to build resilient data protection programs for today’s threats and tomorrow’s quantum-security challenges. ## Tristen O'Brien AI Educator & YouTube Creator, Complete Workflow Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tristen-o-brien/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Education Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tristen is an AI educator, creator, and builder on a mission to make artificial intelligence dead simple for everyone. He is the creator of @Tristen_OBrien a YouTube channel that grew to 56,000 subscribers in just 10 weeks by turning complicated AI tools into clear, step-by-step lessons anyone can follow. Rather than talk about AI in theory, Tristen builds with it in public. He runs a personal staff of more than 150 AI agents that support his content, research, and businesses, giving audiences a live look at what it actually means to work alongside AI instead of being replaced by it. His approach is refreshingly practical: less buzzword, more "here is exactly how you do it." Tristen is also a doctoral researcher at Purdue University, where his work centers on technology leadership and innovation with a focus on AI. That research background shapes how he teaches, grounding big ideas in something people can actually use on Monday morning. At AI4, Tristen helps audiences move past the fear and the noise, and walk away knowing how to make AI work for them starting today. ## Suzanne O'Keeffe Professor, Sonoma State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/suzanne-o-keeffe/ Industry: Education Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Suzanne B. O'Keeffe is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Special Education at Sonoma State University. With more than 30 years of experience in the field of special education, she has served in a variety of roles supporting multilingual learners with and without disabilities. Her commitment to educational equity was shaped by her experience teaching in a special education program serving emergent bilingual students with diverse learning needs, an experience that continues to inform both her teaching and research. Building on this foundation, her current research explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, accessibility, workforce development, and equitable learning through a human-centered lens. Whether she is teaching children, preparing future educators, or collaborating with organizational leaders, Dr. O'Keeffe strives to create learning communities that foster collaborative inquiry, cultural responsiveness, academic rigor, critical thinking, and self-reflection. ## Chi Ogbuehi Vice President, Marketing Technology and Consumer Products, National Football League (NFL) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chi-ogbuehi/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Chi Ogbuehi is Vice President of Marketing Technology & Consumer Products at the National Football League (NFL), where she leads the strategy, delivery, and governance of marketing technology platforms and emerging technologies that power fan engagement at scale. With more than 20 years of experience spanning digital transformation, product management, customer experience, and enterprise technology, Chi operates at the intersection of marketing, technology, and innovation. At the NFL, she is responsible for advancing capabilities that support more than 200 million fans globally, leveraging insights, automation, personalization, and artificial intelligence to create more relevant and impactful fan experiences. Chi leads the AI strategy across the NFL's marketing technology ecosystem. Her work includes the development of a two-layer AI operating model that combines AI assistants embedded across marketing workflows with a governed GenAI Content Ecosystem designed to scale content creation, localization, personalization, and distribution. Her focus is on transforming AI from isolated experimentation into secure, measurable, and operationalized business capability. In this role, she drives AI adoption through governance frameworks, workflow integration, operating models, and measurement strategies that enable responsible innovation while delivering business value at enterprise scale. Prior to joining the NFL, Chi held leadership and consulting roles supporting digital transformation initiatives for global organizations including Accenture, NBCUniversal, Viacom, and MetLife, helping enterprises modernize customer and fan experiences, adopt emerging technologies, and drive organizational change across media, entertainment, financial services, and nonprofit sectors. Chi holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BBA in Computer Information Systems with Honors from Baruch College. She is a frequent speaker on artificial intelligence, marketing technology, digital transformation, and the future of customer engagement. ## James OKane Director, Human AI Services, Arcova Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-okane/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No James B. O'Kane, Ph.D. is Director of Human-AI Systems at Arcova. He has 30 years of professional experience ranging from academia and applied scientific research to cybersecurity operations and consulting. As an applied social scientist, he focuses on emerging ML/AI technology, human-AI interaction, and cyber risk management. His current work is focused on developing value engineering frameworks that embrace complexity of human-technology integration, and new human-systems integration constructs and prototypes for agentic systems. ## Robert Bob Okello Co-Founder, OneNine Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-bob-okello/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: Operations Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Robert Bob Okello is a Ugandan tech entrepreneur and ecosystem builder who is expanding Africa’s contribution to the global AI economy. He is the Co-Founder and Chief People Officer at OneNine.dev, an AI data and language technology company that is building the data supply chain for Artificial Intelligence with a focus on low-resource African languages. Through OneNine.dev, Bob leads efforts to connect African linguists, data annotators, and developers to global AI opportunities. The company currently manages a community of more than 500 transcript reviewers and AI data specialists across Africa who support multilingual datasets and AI training pipelines for international partners. Bob’s work is guided by a simple conviction: Africa’s linguistic diversity is not a limitation but a powerful advantage in shaping ethical and culturally aligned AI systems. By designing scalable talent pipelines and strong operational frameworks, OneNine.dev is helping position Africa as a meaningful contributor to the next generation of machine intelligence. Beyond OneNine.dev, Bob is the Founder and CEO of Maarifasasa Limited, a Pan African education technology company that equips young Africans with digital skills for the future of work. His dual focus on learning and data innovation reflects a holistic approach to digital transformation. This approach helps young Africans move from simply using AI tools to building, training, and shaping the technologies that will define tomorrow. A Tony Elumelu Foundation alumnus and a two-time Davis Projects for Peace awardee, Bob brings more than a decade of experience at the intersection of education, entrepreneurship, and emerging technology. He studied at the University of Oklahoma, where he designed his own degree in African Development Engineering, and at the United World College Red Cross Nordic in Norway. Across all his work, Bob continues to advocate for Africa’s full inclusion in the global AI conversation. He believes the continent’s voices, data, and talent must play a central role in the intelligent systems that will shape the future of humanity. ## Joe Olsen Managing Partner, Olsen Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joe-olsen/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator For the last 20 years, I have served as the managing director of Olsen Capital, a seed and late-stage investment and advisory family office. I've also started and founded, ran and sold multiple businesses in the strategy, communications, and technology services space. My latest venture, Vector, is a go-to-market consultancy that helps companies build new scalable revenue ecosystems in emerging markets, where I serve as a co-founder and CEO. Prior to Vector, I served as Global Chief Growth Officer at Monks, S4 Capital's digital services platform, where I led global growth strategy, ecosystem partnerships, and market expansion. I'm a software engineer by trade. That's not a throwaway line. It means I don't stop at strategy. I think about systems, dependencies, and how things actually work at the execution layer. That orientation shapes everything, from how I structure a go-to-market motion to how I build the tools my team runs on. Today, that engineering instinct is pointed squarely at AI. My view: in a services business, senior people backed by an AI operating system built around exactly how they work will outperform everyone else. Not because AI replaces judgment, but because it compounds it. At Vector, we've built that back office for ourselves, and it's central to how we deliver more, move faster, and build businesses that scale beyond the people running them. ## Josh Olson Chief Information Officer, Michigan Technology University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-olson/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Santiago Ontanon Alvarez CIO, Coppel Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/santiago-ontanon-alvarez/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes SANTIAGO ONTAÑÓN ALVAREZ Chief Information Officer, Grupo Coppel Originally from Mexico City, Santiago Ontañón holds a degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, graduating with honors and the prestigious Gabino Barreda medal from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He also holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. His most recent position before Coppel, was Executive Director of Transformation at Seguros Monterrey New York Life. Santiago joined Seguros Monterrey New York Life in May 2016 as the Director of Information Technology. Prior to that, he held sales roles in leading software companies (Microsoft, Oracle, and Computer Associates), where he had the opportunity to serve clients from various industries and sizes. Throughout his professional career, Santiago has gained significant experience in national and international companies, assuming various functional responsibilities across a range of industries, including Transportation (Mexicana de Aviación and the Mexican Postal Service), Telecommunications (Televisa and Satmex), technology startups (Tachyon), and consulting (McKinsey & Co.). Santiago Ontañón joined Grupo Coppel in July 2021 as the Corporate Director of Business Systems and Digital Transformation, where he was responsible for system solution development for the business and all digital aspects for Grupo Coppel's Retail and Financial Services divisions. The main objective of this role is to build upon and enhance existing strengths to create, implement, and execute new business models supported by technology, driving digital growth with efficiency and effectiveness while fostering talent development, thus making the company more competitive each day. In November 2023, Santiago was appointed Corporate Technology Director for Grupo Coppel, consolidating all IT departments under one leadership. ## Gary Oppenheimer Founder/Executive Director, AmpleHarvest.org, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gary-oppenheimer/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Gary Oppenheimer has spent his life using technology to solve problems others overlook. A personal-computing pioneer who soldered his first computer in 1976 and demonstrated a prototype email system in 1977, he later became MCI Mail’s largest global sales agent and published the first electronic newsletter. He brought that same systems-thinking to hunger and food waste when he founded AmpleHarvest.org in 2009. The award-winning nonprofit uses technology and AI to connect America’s 62 million home and community gardeners with nearby food pantries that can accept their surplus harvests. Today, its zero-logistics platform helps more than 8,500 pantries across all 50 states access locally grown fresh food without AmpleHarvest.org owning a single truck, warehouse, or refrigerator. Gary is a World Food Prize nominee, CNN Hero, Points of Light Tribute recipient, Purpose Prize Fellow, two-time TEDx speaker, and nationally recognized authority on food waste and hunger solutions. His work has been supported by organizations including Google, USDA, Bonnie Plants, and faith and gardening networks nationwide. His philosophy is simple: To do the impossible, you must first believe it isn’t. ## Greg Osuri Founder, Akash Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greg-osuri/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Greg Osuri is the founder of Akash Network, an open-source, decentralized cloud computing marketplace, and the CEO of Overclock Labs, the primary developer behind the platform. With over 25 years of experience in technology, Greg has established himself as a prominent leader in decentralized infrastructure and AI-driven cloud solutions. Before Akash, Greg founded AngelHack, which grew into the world's largest hackathon organization, engaging over 200,000 developers across 164 cities. His early career included significant roles at IBM and designing Kaiser Permanente's first cloud architecture in 2008. Recognized as a top programmer globally, Greg has contributed to major open-source projects including Kubernetes, Terraform, and Nomad. He is a frequent expert voice in the industry, often featured in major publications and providing expert testimony to the US Congress on critical intersections of AI, energy, and blockchain technology. ## Jeremiah Owyang VC, Blitzscaling Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jeremiah-owyang/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures investing in AI Startups and also the founder of the LLama Lounge AI event series He is a prominent figure in the AI startup community, spearheading some of the largest and most influential events in the industry. He leads the Llama Lounge, a premier gathering of hundreds of AI startups and top investors in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He has presented at major conferences such as TED AI, Web Summit, the Frankfurt Auto Show, TechCrunch Disrupt, the Swiss Economic Forum, and numerous global conferences across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. As the General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, based on the best-selling book, he has invested in innovative AI agents, educational AI startups, and global commerce AI ventures. A former industry analyst at Forrester and co-founder of several technology research firms, he has extensive experience in technology trends and market dynamics and has worked with large corporations and smaller companies alike. An acknowledged thought leader and widely read publisher, he has appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Fast Company, and Reuters. He has 250,000+ followers on TwitterX and 25,000+ followers on LinkedIn, reaching both the tech and business communities. He is also equipped to deliver virtual speeches, broadcasting from his state-of-the-art Airstream Studio in his Silicon Valley backyard. ## Rahul Pahuja Field CTO, CData Software Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rahul-pahuja/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Rahul Pahuja is Field CTO at CData Software, where he partners with enterprise customers to turn complex data challenges into delivered solutions. With 20+ years of consulting experience — including VP of Client Engagement at Argano and Director of Global MuleSoft Practice at Slalom — he brings deep expertise in API Management, Cloud Integration (AWS, MuleSoft), and scalable microservices architectures, having led programs with 80+ team members globally. A recognized thought leader in data integration and digital transformation, Rahul bridges business strategy and technology execution to help organizations unlock the full value of their data with AI. ## Sabrina Palme Founder & CEO, Palqee Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sabrina-palme/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Sabrina Palme is CEO and co-founder of Palqee, where she led the development of Palqee Prisma, an independent AI oversight layer used by financial institutions to strengthen assurance over investigation narratives, contact center decisions, and AI-supported processes by systematically evaluating policy adherence and decision quality. A data scientist by background, she combines deep expertise in AI governance, data protection, and information security, ensuring that both human-led and AI-supported processes operate consistently and in line with internal policies and risk standards. Sabrina has been recognized among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, Inc. Founders 500 List, and contributes to international AI standards development through her work with CEN-CENELEC and ISO/IEC. ## Christine Palmer Chief Technology Officer, Federal Civilian Sector, Peraton Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christine-palmer/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Government Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Christine Palmer is the Chief Technology Officer for Citizen Security & Public Services at Peraton. Known for her pivotal contributions across artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity, and engineering for the Department of Homeland Security, Department of War, and National Security Agency, Christine is no stranger to high-stakes technology environments. As Chief Technology Officer, she is transforming the way we provide AI-enabled information technology for American citizens. Before joining Peraton, Christine served as the Chief Enterprise Architect and former Technical Lead for the DHS AI Corps at the Department of Homeland Security, where she drove the adoption of breakthrough artificial intelligence technologies to secure the Homeland. In her previous role as the Chief Technology Officer for the United States Naval Observatory, she also led the transformation of legacy infrastructure by integrating advanced cybersecurity and machine learning techniques, ensuring the nation's trusted source of time and critical global positioning, navigation, and timing services remained secure and cutting-edge. Christine also held transformational roles across the intelligence community and Department of War, where she championed the integration of artificial intelligence to enhance critical national security missions. Christine holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Materials Science & Engineering from Drexel University. As a frequent public speaker and certified subject matter expert, she often shares her vision for a secure, connected, and intelligent future that brings tomorrow’s information online, today. ## Julu Panat Director of Product Management, Outshift by Cisco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/julu-panat/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Julu Panat is Director of Product Management at Outshift by Cisco, where she leads product strategy for agentic AI and emerging technology initiatives. With more than 18 years of experience across Amazon, Cisco, and Samsara, she has built and scaled customer-focused products spanning enterprise software, IoT, marketplace platforms, and AI-driven solutions. Her work includes generative AI, natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning, with a current focus on trustworthy, secure, and accountable multi-agent systems. Julu is passionate about turning frontier technologies into practical products that create meaningful customer and business impact. ## Satya Panda CTO, BillGO Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/satya-panda/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees State: Colorado Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Revenue: $50M-$200M Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker I am Satya Panda, CTO of BillGO. At BillGO, I am leading our 10X journey to become an AI-native company, reimagining how we build products, operate the business, and deliver value through AI. This includes developing an agentic payments platform and embedding AI across our operating model. I will bring a practitioner’s perspective on this transformation, including the realities of legacy modernization, data readiness, security, governance, and customer trust. My broader background spans payments, fintech, and technology transformation, including prior leadership experience at Fiserv. I have led the modernization of payment platforms and global technology organizations, with a focus on building scalable and secure systems. ## Chandan Pandey Founder & CEO, Iseyon Analytics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chandan-pandey/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Team or company is hiring: Yes Chandan Pandey is the Founder and CEO of Iseyon Analytics, bringing more than 30 years of experience in Information Technology operations with deep specialization in Business Intelligence, analytics solutions, and emerging AI-driven technologies. Over the course of his career, he has successfully led large-scale onsite and offshore teams, delivering complex data-driven and AI-enabled transformation projects for organizations across diverse industries. ## Vijay Panwar Member of Technical Staff IV (Staff Engineer), Panasonic Avionics Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vijay-panwar/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No I am Vijay Panwar, a Fellow of Sigma Xi and a Senior Member of IEEE, with certifications in AWS and Scaled Agile methodologies. With over 12 years of experience in software engineering, I currently serve as a Senior Software Engineer at Panasonic Avionics Corporation, where I design and scale backend systems supporting mission-critical, enterprise-grade platforms. My expertise spans backend development, SQL Server optimization, API architecture, and large-scale data systems, with a strong focus on high-performance databases, cloud-native architectures, and automation to improve system reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. I am also an active contributor to the technology community, having authored multiple research papers and presented at numerous international technology conferences. I am a speaker at AI4 2026, where I share practical insights on AI-driven database optimization, cloud architecture, and modern data engineering best practices, drawing from real-world experience building and operating systems at scale. ## Miguel Paredes Partner / Fellow, Kearney / AI Fund Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/miguel-paredes/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Miguel is a Partner at Kearney, where he helps clients with their AI Strategy and Value Creation transformation programs, and to redesign with AI the future of how they work. A former AI senior executive at multiple corporations and a Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry, he is a fellow / adviser for Stanford AI Professor Andrew Ng's AI Fund, and MIT Professor Sinan Aral's Milemark Capital, two AI focused VCs. Until recently he was the Vice President of AI & Data Science at Albertsons, where he led the Data & AI strategy and value creation, and co-led the Generative AI program. Miguel holds a PhD in Applied AI and Data Science from MIT, as well as Masters’ degrees in Engineering and Economic Development from the same school. Miguel is an alum of Harvard Business School, where he completed the General Management Program (GMP). He earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and has completed several post graduate programs at Stanford, IMD, Columbia, and MIT. Miguel is an angel investor and advisor to many startups. ## Sundari Parekh VP, AI Security and Cyber Security Advisory, TrendAI™ Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sundari-parekh/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sundari Parekh, CISM, is a senior security executive and strategist serving as Vice President of AI Security, Strategy & Architecture at TrendAI™, where she leads the development of enterprise security strategy and architectural frameworks for AI driven, agentic, and autonomous systems. Her work focuses on helping organizations operationalize AI securely—moving beyond infrastructure protection to governing intent, autonomy, and machine driven decision making at scale. Prior to TrendAI, Sundari served as Head of Business Security Services at CDW, where she built a business facing information security function designed to enable innovation while managing risk across cloud, SaaS, application, and third party ecosystems. At CDW, she strengthened cloud security posture, aligned third party risk to service providers, modernized incident response, and partnered closely with engineering teams to embed secure development and runtime practices. This role refined her ability to translate complex security and emerging technology risk into practical, outcome driven programs for business leaders. Previously, Sundari was Vice President of Security Risk Management at Activision Blizzard King, where she centralized and matured security risk functions across multiple global business units. Earlier in her career, Sundari served as Chief Information Security Officer at Allstream and held senior leadership roles at InComm, where she built global capabilities in security governance, third party risk, business resilience, and crisis management—leading organizations through large scale disruptions while maintaining customer trust. Across her career, Sundari is recognized for bridging deep technical and risk expertise with executive clarity, and for shaping security as a strategic enabler of AI adoption. She brings a systems level perspective to securing the next compute layer, helping enterprises innovate with AI while embedding trust, resilience, and accountability by design. ## Kate (Soo Young) Park Freelance Reporter (TechCrunch) | Founder of Signals Ventures (Host of The Signals Podcast), TechCrunch | Signals Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kate-soo-young-park/ ## Nereida Parks AI, Regional Privacy and HIPAA Officer, OCA, Olympus Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nereida-parks/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Legal Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Nereida Parks is a global AI governance and data privacy executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience at the intersection of business, technology, and law. She currently serves as AI, Regional Privacy, and HIPAA Officer for the Americas at Olympus Corporation, where she holds designated Data Protection and HIPAA Officer authority and serves on the ELT/GRC and Global Executive Privacy and AI teams. In this role, she directs the regional strategy and implementation of Olympus’s privacy, HIPAA, and AI governance programs across the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Chile. She embeds privacy-by-design across technology and AI adoption and advises executive leadership on emerging regulatory and risk developments. Throughout her 20-plus-year career in the healthcare ecosystem, Nereida has held executive leadership roles at Sanofi (Regional Privacy Officer, North America and Specialty Care), Anthem (Chief of Staff to the C-Suite and Chief Strategy Officer), IQVIA (Head of Information Governance and Data Privacy, RWE), UCB Pharma (Head of Global Digital Transformation), and GE Healthcare (Director of Global Product Management, DGS and Ultrasound). At GE Healthcare, she managed a $760 million P&L and led the ultrasound and global detection and guidance solutions (DGS) medical device product management team in Buc, France, driving product innovation and market growth. She graduated from GE’s esteemed Corporate Audit Staff (CAS) program and was named Marketer of the Year by GE’s CMO. Earlier in her career, Nereida gained extensive experience in pharmaceutical and hospital sales, working with leading organizations such as Merck, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Par Pharmaceuticals. Her unique blend of scientific knowledge and business skills, particularly in roles such as National Sales Trainer and Medical Science Liaison (MSL), consistently helped achieve key sales and business goals. She was recognized with Merck’s President’s Club award multiple years in a row, highlighting her ability to deliver results. Nereida holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Georgia Tech, the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University. She also holds certifications as a Six Sigma Black Belt and a PMP (Project Management Professional). ## Devendra Parmar SVP, Head of Fraud Products, Citizens Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devendra-parmar/ Track: Product Managers Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Devendra Singh Parmar is a seasoned expert with over 15 years of impactful experience in the banking industry, having held key roles at global financial institutions such as HSBC and Discover Financial Services. He is widely recognized for his exceptional leadership in business transformation, project and program management, data science, AI, and product management, driving innovation and operational excellence. As an IEEE Senior Member, Devendra is also a thought leader in AI and a sought-after speaker at global conferences. His contributions include multiple research articles published by IEEE and featured in ACM conference workshops, showcasing his expertise in cutting-edge technologies. He has been invited to prestigious platforms like MIT, USA, where he judged the 100K Pitch Competition, and Duke University, where he evaluated product hackathons, reflecting his commitment to nurturing innovation and talent. Devendra's academic accomplishments are equally impressive, holding three advanced degrees, including an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, USA, and postgraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India. Beyond his professional endeavors, he is passionate about writing, traveling, and inspiring innovation through his engagement with academia and industry initiatives. With a remarkable blend of technical expertise, strategic leadership, and thought-provoking insights, Devendra is a driving force in shaping the future of banking and technology. ## Raffaele Pascale Director of Innovations, Solutions & Engineering, Argos Multilingual Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/raffaele-pascale/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Raffaele Pascale is Director of Innovation, Solutions and Engineering at Argos Multilingual, where he leads the engineering and data teams behind the company's AI data services. His teams design and run the pipelines that feed AI systems: multilingual datasets, human annotation and preference evaluation at scale, and the quality measurement that tells you whether model output is fit for real use. He came up through the language industry, managing translation and data projects back when nobody called it training data. Shipping that work under hard deadlines and quality thresholds left him with little patience for AI that only performs in demos, and a lasting preference for keeping humans in the loop. He speaks at industry events on applied AI, data operations, and quality evaluation. He is Italian and lives in Marbella, on Spain's Costa del Sol. ## Amir Pasdar Director of Innovation - Center of Intelligent Connected Solutions, Henny Penny Corp Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amir-pasdar/ Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Ohio Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $500M-$1B Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Amir Pasdar is Director of Innovation, Intelligent Connected Solutions at Henny Penny, where he leads global initiatives in artificial intelligence, connected products, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. He oversees the development of intelligent equipment platforms that combine AI, IoT, predictive maintenance, and remote diagnostics to enhance reliability, reduce downtime, and deliver actionable operational insights. Amir leads AI and connectivity initiatives through NAFEM, collaborating with manufacturers and technology providers to accelerate the adoption of intelligent, data-driven foodservice equipment. With over 20 years of experience spanning manufacturing, industrial automation, AI, and IoT, Amir is recognized for translating emerging technologies into practical business value. His expertise includes connected products, predictive maintenance, digital services, cybersecurity, and enterprise AI strategy, helping organizations unlock new levels of efficiency, reliability, and customer engagement. ## Udita Patel Senior Applied Scientist, Amazon Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/udita-patel/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Udita Patel is a Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon with expertise in NLP and large language models. She leads the development of Kindle Gen AI features, including "Ask this Book" conversational experience, as well as AI agent and RAG initiatives for search and contact center automation. More recently, her focus has shifted to performance evaluation of RAG and Agentic LLM applications, building frameworks to measure and improve the reliability of generative AI systems at scale. Outside her core research, Udita is passionate about mentorship, where she enjoys guiding and supporting junior scientists. ## Payal Patel Senior Director, Solution Engineering, North America, Freshworks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/payal-patel/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Payal is the Senior Director, Solution Engineering at Freshworks. She oversees the Americas (NA & LATAM) solutions engineering team who provide innovative solutions for customers leveraging the Freshworks platform. A veteran of sales strategies, she builds high-performing teams that align with GTM sales strategies, and partners with sales and product leaders to help accelerate and drive company growth. As President and Co-Founder of Freshworks WISE (Women in Solution Engineering), she helps develop, network, and nurture a diverse group of women within the solution engineering organization through the development of programs that educate, encourage, and foster this strong and under-represented community. ## Parthh Pathak Field CTO, Regulated Industries, Cresta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/parthh-pathak/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Parthh Pathak operates at the intersection of engineering and enterprise change, helping the world's largest organizations turn technical possibility into real-world execution. As Field CTO at Cresta, Parthh leads the field engineering organization, partnering with customers to unlock the full value of the Cresta AI Platform and elevate customer experience for the Agentic era. Previously, Parthh spent years at Google, guiding global enterprises and public-sector organizations through complex cloud and AI transformations that shaped a deep, practical understanding of what it actually takes to move AI from pilot to production at scale. Parthh brings this hands-on, execution-first perspective to Ai4, exploring how enterprises can move beyond AI experimentation to build agentic systems that deliver measurable business impact. ## Darin Patterson VP, Market Strategy, Make Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/darin-patterson/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Darin Patterson is VP of Market Strategy at Make, the leading AI automation platform. He leads the strategy for how organizations move from AI curiosity to AI execution, turning agents and automation into core operational infrastructure. Darin brings over 20 years of hands-on experience driving technology-led organizational change. He has worked at the crossroads of business strategy, product leadership, and operational transformation—helping organizations move beyond incremental improvement to reimagine their workflows from the ground up. Before Make, he led automation, integration, and enterprise product strategy at Workfront, navigating its acquisition by Adobe Inc. A captivating speaker and storyteller, Darin has presented at events including Make Waves, monday.com Elevate, and Web Summit. He grounds his work in a conviction that lasting transformation starts with people, not technology. He is also deeply interested in the social impact of technology, having partnered with health and human service organizations to help them maximize their mission through smarter operations. ## Nick Patterson Head of Solutions Engineering, Moderne Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nick-patterson/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Nick Patterson is Head of Solutions Engineering at Moderne where he leads the Customer Success and Forward Deployed Engineering organizations. He has spent more than 25 years in software engineering, including over 15 years at Microsoft where he led the Microsoft & Partner Sales organization for the Americas at GitHub, and now helps some of the world's largest and most complex engineering organizations achieve deterministic code modernization and security remediation via an agentic SDLC at massive scale. ## Rob Pegoraro Contributor, PCMag / Fast Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rob-pegoraro/ Track: Generative AI: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Member of the Press: Yes Rob Pegoraro tries to make sense of computers, gadgets, the Internet, apps, and other things that beep or blink. He covers tech policy at Fast Company and PCMag, offers telecom and gadget guidance at Wirecutter and has contributed to the likes of AARP, The New Republic, Light Reading, and Ars Technica. A conference regular, he has spoken at Web Summit, SXSW and CES, among many other events.  Until the spring of 2011, Pegoraro wrote a consumer-tech column and blog for the Washington Post during a 17-year stint that saw him write for almost every section of the paper, survive five CMSes and appear on the front page all of three times.  Pegoraro has a degree in international relations from Georgetown University (meaning, zero academic credentials to cover technology), has met most of the founders of the Internet and once received a single-word e-mail reply from Steve Jobs. ## Shamindra Peiris Senior AI Product Manager, Visa Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shamindra-peiris/ Track: Product Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Shamindra has 13+ years of experience and expertise in Machine Learning, Analytics and AI based Product Management across multiple industries and sectors ranging from Banking & Finance, Fintech, Agriculture and Manufacturing in North America and South Asia. Currently she plays a key role in the Predictive Fraud Intelligence team at Visa as a Senior AI Product Manager, driving and leading the design and execution of Real Time payment Risk Analytics product suite. Further, she serves as an Adjunct Professor and a Program Advisory Committee Member for multiple colleges in North America and volunteer as a mentor for several Non-Profit organizations to uplift and guide young professionals and new immigrants in North America ## Sebastian Pellejero U.S. Columnist, Reuters Breakingviews Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sebastian-pellejero/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Sebastian Pellejero is a U.S. columnist for Breakingviews, the financial commentary arm of Reuters. He writes about topics across business, investing, markets and technology. Prior to joining in March 2025, he worked as an equity research analyst at BlackRock and a markets reporter for The Wall Street Journal, along with stints at Bloomberg and Debtwire. ## Luke Pendergrass Product Lead, Xorq Labs, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/luke-pendergrass/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Luke Pendergrass, is a product leader and go-to-market advisor at Xorq, where he helps shape product positioning and enterprise strategy for trusted, verifiable AI systems. Over more than a decade in machine learning product management, he has built and led products across highly regulated industries — legal technology, healthcare, and life-sciences lab automation — including roles as Head of Product at Advocat AI, Principal Product Manager at TetraScience, and Product Manager at Premera Blue Cross. He was working on transformer-based models well before they entered the mainstream, and he's known for translating deep technical complexity into clear, credible narratives for both engineers and executives. Luke holds an M.Sc. in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience from Humboldt University of Berlin. He is based in Seattle. ## Ravi Pendse Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, University of Michigan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ravi-pendse/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Ravi Pendse, Ph.D., is the vice president for information technology (VPIT) and chief information officer (CIO) at the University of Michigan. As an executive officer of the university, he provides university-wide leadership and strategic direction for information technology. Before joining U-M, Dr. Pendse served as vice president for computing and information services and CIO at Brown University and as vice president for information technology and CIO at Wichita State University. In 2023, he was named U-M’s first-ever Special Advisor to the President for India. He is also a professor, researcher, teacher, and advisor to students. Dr. Pendse spearheaded the development and launch of U-M’s custom AI services, making Michigan the first university in the United States to deploy a suite of generative AI tools broadly to faculty, staff, and students. He co-sponsored U-M’s first faculty advisory committee on generative AI and has led efforts to build AI literacy across the university, emphasizing responsible, ethical, equitable, and human-centered use. His leadership has helped position U-M at the forefront of higher education’s thoughtful adoption of artificial intelligence. Dr. Pendse holds a B.S. in electronics and communication engineering from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Wichita State University. ## Andy Pernsteiner Field CTO, VAST Data Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andy-pernsteiner/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Andy is Field Chief Technology Officer at VAST, helping customers build, deploy, and scale some of the world’s largest and most demanding computing environments. Andy has spent the past 15 years focused on supporting and building large scale, high performance data platform solutions. From humble beginnings as an escalations engineer at pre-IPO Isilon, to leading a team of technical Ninjas at MapR, he’s consistently been in the frontlines solving some of the toughest challenges that customers face when implementing Big Data Analytics and next-generation AI solutions. ## Sean Perryman Global Head of AI & Fairness Policy, Uber Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sean-perryman/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist None ## Nathan Persily Co-Director, Stanford Law AI Initiative, Stanford Law School Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nathan-persily/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Education Job Function: Academic Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Co-Director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative. He also holds appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies. Professor Persily’s work focuses on two distinct areas: the Law of Democracy and Governance of Technology. He is coauthor with Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, Richard Pildes and Franita Tolson of the casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2020), which address issues such as voting rights, political party regulation, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. He also served as the nonpartisan Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the governance of technology and technology’s impact on democracy. He is coeditor, with Joshua Tucker, of Artificial Intelligence, Politics and Political Science (Cambridge Press, 2026) and Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform (Cambridge Press, 2020). He is also co-editor of the Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America (2024) with Erik Brynjolfsson, Alex Pentland and Condoleeza Rice. Professor Persily cochairs the Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence of the American Political Science Association and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ## Arun Pandiyan Perumal Site Reliability Engineer, Adobe Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arun-pandiyan-perumal/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: DevOps Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Arun Pandiyan Perumal is a Cloud and Technology Infrastructure Expert specializing in Site Reliability Engineering at Adobe, with over thirteen years of experience in Cloud Infrastructure Management, AIOps, SRE, DevOps, Platform Engineering, and Cloud Security. He has led teams and strategic initiatives in designing, developing, and managing globally distributed multi-cloud platforms supporting mission-critical business applications. His expertise spans high-availability architecture, reliability engineering, infrastructure automation, end-to-end observability, AI agents, and LLM governance. Beyond industry practice, Arun has authored and published research papers at IEEE and Springer conferences and peer-reviewed journals. He has delivered expert talks at AWS Community Day, SANS CloudSecNext Summit, ISACA Silicon Valley, ACM Fremont Chapter, Louisville AI Week, and multiple IEEE and Springer conferences. He has served on Technical Program Committees for IEEE Cloud Summit, IEEE CLOUD, IEEE ANTS, IEEE CCWC, CloudCom, SIOTEC, and AICTC. Recognized among the Top 10 ADPList mentors in Site Reliability Engineering and an Ambassador of PeopleCert DevOps Institute, he has received numerous awards, including the Titan Business Platinum Award, the Stevie Silver Award, and the Global Recognition Award. ## Amy Peterson Senior Director of Product Management, Fivetran Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amy-peterson/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Amy Peterson is Senior Director of Product Management at Fivetran, where she leads the company’s enterprise platform spanning security, deployment, and reliability. She drove the launch of Fivetran’s Hybrid Deployment, expanding how enterprises securely manage data across environments. Her career has focused on the intersection of data infrastructure and enterprise needs, with a track record of building products for large-scale, security-conscious organizations. She is based in Fivetran’s Oakland office. ## Erik Peterson Founder & CTO, CloudZero Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/erik-peterson/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Erik Peterson is the Founder, CTO, and CISO of CloudZero, the financial control plane for cloud and AI spend. He built CloudZero on a simple thesis: every engineering decision is a buying decision, and most companies don't have the governance to see it, let alone know whether it paid off. Cost data alone was never the point; knowing the return on every dollar is. As AI has pushed that problem into inference, developer tooling, and autonomous agents, Erik has spent the past year extending the thesis into what he calls "cost-per-anything," the ability to calculate the cost, and the ROI, of any unit of value, across cloud and AI, for humans and the agents they deploy. Erik has been building and securing cloud software since the cloud's arrival, and is a frequent speaker on AI cost governance, ROI, cloud economics, and security. He sits on the FinOps Foundation Governing Board, is an AWS Ambassador, and in 2026 delivered talks at QCon AI Boston and FinOps X. Previous to CloudZero, Erik was Director of Technology Strategy for Veracode, where he led Veracode's migration to the public cloud, and has nearly three decades of software industry experience, including senior leadership and technology roles for HP, SPI Dynamics, GuardedNet, and Sanctum. Erik has also held IT & InfoSec roles at Moody's, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Embassy Vienna, Austria, and the United Nations, where he supported the technology needs of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency. LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikpeterson/ Website: http://www.erikpeterson.com X: @silvexis ## Brian Peterson CTO, Founder, Dialpad Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-peterson/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Brian Peterson is the Co-Founder and CTO of Dialpad, the AI-native communications platform valued at $2.2B and backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and T-Mobile. He leads Dialpad's engineering vision — building AI into the platform's infrastructure from the ground up, not layering it on top. Before Dialpad, Brian was a Senior Software Engineer at Google, where he helped build Google Voice. Under his technical leadership, Dialpad now processes 1.2 billion AI-enabled call minutes daily and has delivered over 775 million AI-generated conversation recaps. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from UC San Diego. ## Frank Pettinato CEO, Avantive Solutions Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/frank-pettinato/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Frank Pettinato is the CEO of Avantive Solutions, bringing over 30 years of global contact center and customer engagement expertise at a time when AI is changing how businesses engage with customers. A mechanical engineer who went on to earn his MBA, Frank has spent his career founding companies, leading acquisitions, and thinking deeply about where people and technology meet. That combination of technical and business insight directly shapes how he leads Avantive's approach to AI-powered solutions and digital transformation. He speaks at industry events on innovation, customer experience, and the future of the contact center, and serves on several boards reflecting his commitment to giving back. ## Craig Pfister Vice President, Solutions Architecture, Kiteworks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/craig-pfister/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Craig is a global security leader at the intersection of cybersecurity strategy, AI governance, and regulatory compliance — helping organizations navigate an era when data doesn't just move faster, it moves smarter. With deep roots in financial theory, risk management, encryption, and enterprise operations, Craig brings a business-first lens to some of the most complex security challenges of our time: securing AI agents, achieving CMMC compliance, and governing sensitive data across increasingly automated workflows. He specializes in translating those challenges into strategies that boards act on and security teams can execute. A sought-after speaker and thought leader, Craig is known for making the complex clear — whether the audience is a CISO, a compliance officer, or a frontline team under pressure. His sessions bridge the gap between technical depth and strategic urgency, equipping organizations to stay ahead of evolving threats without losing sight of the business outcomes that matter. As enterprises accelerate their AI adoption, Craig focuses on what comes next: building resilient, trustworthy systems where security isn't a checkpoint — it's a competitive advantage. ## Young Pham Chief Strategy Officer, CI&T Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/young-pham/ Track: Roundtable Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Young has been providing strategy for digital delivery for over 25 years, specifically with a focus in financial services. He's previously led digital product teams at Chase and also co-founded separate venture back startups in mortgage and investing. At CI&T, Young is responsible for helping clients create digital distribution strategies, customer experience and product strategies for clients such as Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Invesco and Chase. Most recently, he's been advocating for how AI will transform the financial services industry while also creating greater accessibility to banking for all consumers. ## Nicky Pike Field CTO, Coder Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicky-pike/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nicky Pike is Field CTO at Coder, helping enterprises deploy cloud development environments and AI developer infrastructure safely. His 30-year career spans the U.S. Air Force (C-141 Crew Chief), Xbox Live launch team at Microsoft, and platform engineering leadership at Dell, CVS Health, and VMware Tanzu. He hosts the [Dev]olution and co-hosts Cloud Foundry Weekly podcasts and is a regular conference and panel speaker. ## Sce Pike Vice President, AI Growth & Solutions, TELUS Digital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sce-pike/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Scé Pike is the VP of GenAI at TELUS Digital where she works with Hyperscalers, Foundational AI Model Companies, and Enterprise AI to train their AI Models using RLHF, Red Teaming, Trust & Safety, Synthetic Data, and more. She is a tech pioneer who began her career in Silicon Valley's 90s, designing early e-commerce sites for companies like GM, HP, and Blue Cross. At Palm, she worked on the first WiFi and Bluetooth smartphones. In 2007, she founded Citizen, growing it to become Oregon's 7th fastest-growing company before selling to Ernst & Young. Her product vision spans industries, creating multi-million-dollar solutions for clients including Intel, Daimler, AT&T, and Disney. Recognizing a gap in IoT for multi-family housing, she founded IOTAS in 2014—a smart apartment platform which was acquired by ADT in 2022. A passionate advocate for diversity in STEAM, Scé mentors BIPOC entrepreneurs. When not working, she explores the Pacific Northwest with her family, hiking and skiing. She studied Electronic Arts and Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, discovering her tech passion through mixed media art. ## Kartik Pillai Director - Data Strategy, Master Data Management, AI & Data Governance, Yum! Brands Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kartik-pillai/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Retail Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Johannes Plambeck Senior Managing Data Scientist, AI Engineer, Pfizer Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/johannes-plambeck-zqymdc/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: California Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Johannes is a senior managing AI Solutions Expert and Machine Learning Practitioner at Pfizer Inc., where he contributes his expertise in AI evaluations and optimizations and commercial supply chain optimization to Pfizer's North American commercial operations. His background in both the private and public sectors, spanning the U.S. State Department to small startups, has helped him drive strategic decisions that support the Pfizer's mission to help improve patient's lives. Johannes' experience in AI began as a site selection consultant and data scientist in commercial real estate at the Newmark Group. He developed an industrial momentum model alongside economists before continuing on to the startup world, working with satellite data for enhancing trading signals used private equity trading algorithms. He worked at a variety of startups in crypto finance, health tech, and OEM before moving back into the corporate world at Pfizer. He dedicates his research time to building "spatial artificial intelligence", which can be used for simulating urban mobility patterns in smart cities. Johannes is also deeply committed to his local community. He serves as an operations coordinator for the Forward Party of California and a grant writer for his Registered Neighborhood Org and HOA, where he has worked with local leaders - including contractors, councilmen, registered neighborhood organizations, and assembly members. He has built out the state party's intelligence platform and helps volunteers use political-economic data for identifying areas of improvement for the party's ground-game. He also contributes his time to NGOs, such as Greater Denver Transit, which further highlights his commitment to community development; by analyzing ridership data and recommending capacity upgrades, he has supported regional governments in making informed decisions on transportation infrastructure. Outside of his professional and political work, Johannes enjoys a variety of hobbies that reflect his creativity and commitment to community. He is an avid drone enthusiast and a dedicated trombonist at the Ventura College Community Orchestra, which allows him to connect with others through music. He also organizes a local outdoor group, bringing people together for local hikes. Through these activities, he enjoys creating meaningful connections and strengthening his community in a relaxed, engaging way. ## Johannes Plambeck Senior Managing Data Scientist, AI Engineer, PFIZER Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/johannes-plambeck/ ## Xena Plat COO, 411 Music Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/xena-plat/ Track: Social Impact of AI Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Operations Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Xena Plat, MBA, is Chief Operating Officer of 411 Music Group, a Los Angeles-based music licensing and publishing company, where she works on one of the most contested frontiers in entertainment: what happens when AI meets a music catalog. Xena sits on both sides of the AI equation. As an operator, she architected the AI-driven automation behind the company's catalog operations the systems that register, clean, and monetize a sprawling publishing catalog. As a dealmaker, she negotiates and closes the sync, publishing, and AI dataset licensing agreements that decide how music is valued as training data. That dual vantage point, building with AI while pricing it, has made her a distinctive voice on how rights holders can turn the AI wave from an existential threat into a revenue stream. Her instinct for where content and technology collide predates the current AI boom. At Dame Dash Studios, she produced television shows and virtual concerts before virtual events went mainstream, and built streaming and podcast audiences from the ground up. Behind the deals is deep expertise in sync licensing, catalog operations, royalty administration, and go-to-market strategy, the machinery that determines whether music actually gets paid for. Xena holds an Executive MBA from Synergy University and a Music Business certificate from UCLA Extension. Fluent in English and Russian with working Portuguese, she splits her time between Los Angeles and São Paulo, bringing a global perspective to an industry, and a technology, that crosses every border. ## John Polito Deputy General Counsel, Commercial & Technology, Airbnb, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-polito/ Track: #AIFails Industry: Other Job Function: Legal Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No John Polito is Deputy General Counsel, Commercial & Technology, at Airbnb, Inc., where he oversees Airbnb's global partnerships, core commercial, technology, and IP legal teams. Before serving in this role, he had a leadership role on Airbnb's global litigation and regulatory team; litigated software license disputes, copyright matters, international tax controversies, and LGBTQ+ and immigration civil rights cases as a law firm partner; was a software engineer focused on statistical forecasting, machine learning, and analytics; and, was a not-very-successful classical musician. John received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his undergraduate degrees from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. John will be appearing in his personal capacity, presenting his own views and not those of any current or former employer or business. ## Caleb Poore CEO, Boone County Health Center Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/caleb-poore/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Caleb Poore is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Boone County Health Center, a Critical Access Hospital in Albion, Nebraska, a community of 1,800 people that serves rural and frontier communities across four counties and cares for approximately 12,000 unique patients each year. Holding two degrees: a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration and a degree in physical therapy, he brings nearly two decades of rural healthcare leadership experience. In just three years under his guidance, he has increased the hospital’s revenue by 31 percent, earned the National Rural Health Association’s “Top 20 Overall Performing Critical Access Hospital” recognition three years in a row, while maintaining a 98% staff retention. He currently serves as Chairman of the Rural Health Transformation Funding Committee in Nebraska, chairs the Nebraska Hospital Association District II Board, is a board member of Aquila AI, and holds a seat on the local economic development agency. Earlier in his career, while leading five rural health clinics at a Critical Access Hospital in Iowa, he eliminated a $550,000 operating loss in 22 months; later, as Chief Financial Officer of another Critical Access Hospital, he secured consecutive National Rural Health Association Top 20 awards while managing the finances of a 12-bed facility. His sustained success turning around rural hospital finances, strengthening access, recruiting providers, and advancing data, analytics, and technology solutions for workforce and care-delivery challenges positions him to share practical insights on applying artificial intelligence in rural healthcare settings. ## Cait Porte Instructor, General Assembly Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cait-porte/ ## Liv Porter Director of Strategic Accounts, Gray Swan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/liv-porter/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Liv Porter is Head of Go-to-Market at Gray Swan AI, the leading AI security company protecting organizations from emerging threats in their AI deployments. At Gray Swan, Liv drives market strategy for the company's comprehensive AI Security Suite, which includes Agent Shield, an integrated threat detection and response platform that combines live threat intelligence, automated red-teaming, and self-healing defenses. Gray Swan operates the world's largest AI red-teaming network and maintains partnerships with leading AI research labs including OpenAI and Anthropic. The company was founded by Carnegie Mellon University researchers who pioneered the AI security field and continues to publish cutting-edge research on novel AI exploits. Liv leads efforts to bring Gray Swan's automated red-teaming platform Shade and customizable guardrails platform Cygnal to enterprises seeking to scale their AI deployments securely. ## Jon Porter President & CEO, Porter Group LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jon-porter/ Track: AI Policy Summit Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Doron Portnoy Senior Staff ML Engineer, Zoox Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/doron-portnoy/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Automotive Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Doron Portnoy is a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Zoox, serving as Technical Lead of the Offline Driving Intelligence team. With over 17 years of industry experience in computer vision, deep learning, and software engineering, he specializes in the design and development of end-to-end driving architectures for both offboard and onboard applications, as well as automated data scaling strategies. During his tenure at General Motors, he served as the technical lead for end-to-end perception architecture and spearheaded automated data scaling and data generation initiatives to significantly increase perception robustness. Today at Zoox, his work centers on leveraging multi-modal foundation models and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) architectures to enhance spatial understanding and driving in long-tail scenarios within complex urban environments. ## Ravi Teja Prabhala Venkata Senior Manager, Software Engineering, Capital One Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ravi-teja-prabhala-venkata/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ravi Teja Prabhala Venkata is a Senior Engineering Manager at Capital One, where he leads a chapter in cloud compute infrastructure and drives AI-first automation across the organization. Over 17+ years spanning Fortune 100 and 500 companies, he has architected large-scale payments platforms, designed highly available distributed systems, and built production ML, NLP, and LLM applications that automate complex business workflows and reduce operational overhead. He is the inventor of US Patent #10,552,122, a text-to-business rule engine that reduces rule implementation from weeks to hours, cited by Oracle, VMware, and JPMorgan. He has published 8 peer-reviewed papers on real-time credit scoring, event-driven architecture, fraud detection, and microservices security. His technical depth spans cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, Kubernetes), applied AI and machine learning, and full-stack engineering across Python, Java, and .Net. He holds an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Osmania University. ## Jithin Pradeep Head of Enterprise AI & Research, Vanguard Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jithin-pradeep/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jithin Pradeep is the Head of Enterprise AI & Research (EAIR) and leads the AI research and in-house Enterprise AI product development for Vanguard. In his role Jithin has been responsible in developing innovative AI capabilities through research and converting them into high impact solutions for Vanguard. He also leads partnerships with universities and business sector to guide Vanguard’s AI strategy through early identification and shaping of technology with special focus on artificial intelligence and customer experience. At Vanguard, Jithin’s leadership in AI Research and commitment to Enterprise AI product development have been pivotal in steering groundbreaking AI capabilities into impactful solutions. Jithin’s focus on Language modeling, Generative AI (LLMs & Agents), Responsible AI and Deep Learning has yielded proprietary advancements. Collaboratively EAIR, efforts have been focused on building Vanguard AI stack that powers proprietary solution such speech recognition, foundational Large/ Small language models and responsible AI frameworks solidifying Vanguard's competitive edge in the financial industry. ## Emma Prendergast Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Center, Utah Tech University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emma-prendergast/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Emma Prendergast (PhD in Philosophy) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities Center Director at Utah Tech University in St. George, UT. Her teaching and research interests include ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of education, experiential learning, and open pedagogy. ## Marina Printz VP, AI and Data Science, New York Life Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marina-printz/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Insurance Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Marina Printz is Vice President of AI at New York Life, where she leads AI solution delivery within the Technology, Data, AI & Ventures organization and serves on the AI Governance Committee. She has more than 25 years of experience in analytics and AI across insurance and financial services. ## Satyam Priyadarshy Founder, Reignite Future, LLC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/satyam-priyadarshy/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy is the Founder of Reignite Future. He is a Board Advisor to Global Quantum Intelligence and a number of startups and educational and research institutes in the USA, India, and other countries. He is recognized as the first Chief Data Scientist of the oil and gas/energy industry. He is a former Technology Fellow and Chief Data Scientist of Halliburton. He is an author of 56+ research papers and articles, holds 10+ patents, and is an invited keynote speaker at over 200 conferences in AI/ML, Data Science, Digital Transformation, Quantum Computing, and other emerging technologies. Dr. Priyadarshy is a highly sought-after speaker and leadership coach. He has received many industry accolades in these fields, and his work or profile has appeared in media outlets such as Forbes, CNBC, Silicon India, DEW Journal, SPE, C&EN, and The Scientist. He holds a Ph.D. in Quantum from IIT Bombay and an MBA from Virginia Tech. ## Armin Prommersberger Chief Technology Officer, HARMAN International Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/armin-prommersberger/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Consumer Electronics Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Armin Prommersberger is the Chief Technology Officer of HARMAN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. He is an accomplished technologist, serial entrepreneur and transformational leader with over 30 years of experience in the acoustics, music, consumer electronics and automotive industries. As CTO, Armin steers the company’s AI-led strategy to reimagine the intersection of next-generation connectivity and technology, as well as encourage cross-functional innovation and a culture of experimentation. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President, Divisional Product Management, Strategy & Technology, for HARMAN Automotive where he lead a team envisioning the HARMAN Automotive product line of tomorrow, delivering Consumer Experiences at Automotive Grade to leading global automakers and their customers. Over his tenure with Harman, Armin has shaped the company’s product direction and future experiences for the Consumer, Pro Audio and Automotive sectors. Apart from HARMAN, he has served as Chief Product Officer of Music Tribe and its boutique professional audio brands including Midas, Klark Teknik, Behringer and Tannoy, and as Chief Technology Officer of Dirac Research. ## Emil Protalinski Editor and Consultant, Techmeme and EPro Strategies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emil-protalinski/ Track: World Models Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Member of the Press: Yes Emil is a tech writer and editor who studied Computer Science but fell in love with journalism. His superpower is explaining emerging technologies. Emil has led teams of writers and editors for VentureBeat, created a sci-fi editorial product for The Bulleit Group, and now consults startups and VCs. ## Chandler Provence CEO/Founder, IRIS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chandler-provence/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees State: Maryland Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Chandler Provence is the Founder of AXOLTL and the creator of IRIS, a visual intelligence platform designed to bring real-world computer vision systems from concept to deployment faster. A former U.S. Marine, he has worked across defense and commercial environments where model performance alone is not enough and systems must operate under real constraints. His work focuses on compressing the computer vision lifecycle, from data to deployment, through integrated workflows for dataset expansion, validation, and architecture comparison. Chandler has led efforts in areas such as drone detection, maritime domain awareness, and weapons detection in unconstrained environments, where recall, consistency, and failure modes directly impact outcomes. He speaks on why the future of AI is not just better models, but better systems for learning, adapting, and operating in the real world. ## Pushpak Pujari CEO, Harden Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pushpak-pujari/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Sanjay Puri Chairman/Founder, RegulatingAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sanjay-puri/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Sanjay Puri is a dynamic business leader, Founder of Knowledge Networks Group, and serial podcaster transforming the narrative around generative AI through media, education, and advocacy. As the host of the CAIO (Chief AI Officer) and Regulating AI podcasts, Sanjay leads critical discussions that debunk myths, promote fresh thinking, and highlight AI’s societal impact. His depth of expertise positions him as a trusted advisor, helping organizations leverage AI to drive innovation and sustainable growth. Sanjay brings a unique perspective to the AI arena, advocating for the creation of a dedicated Chief AI Officer (CAIO) role within the C-suite. Recognizing AI’s unique challenges within the corporate landscape, he promotes the CAIO as a pivotal position responsible for ensuring organizations fully harness AI technologies, drive innovation, and align strategies with ethical standards. Ahead of the curve in monitoring trends and advocating for AI regulation, Sanjay’s leadership extends to democratizing AI talent, pushing for a broader reach beyond traditional tech industries. He aims to unlock AI’s immense potential by fostering an inclusive ecosystem that sparks innovation and drives economic growth across diverse sectors. Sanjay specializes in thought-provoking discussions on: * AI Policy & Regulations: Advancing frameworks to guide ethical AI adoption worldwide. * AI Leadership & Strategy: Advocating the CAIO role to unlock AI’s full potential in businesses. * Driving Ethical AI in the Global South: Addressing challenges and opportunities in underrepresented regions. ## Momei Qu Managing Director, PSP Growth Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/momei-qu/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Finance Company Size: 101-250 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Momei Qu is a Managing Director at PSP Growth, and leads PSP’s venture capital and growth equity initiatives. PSP Growth invests in Series B to pre-IPO software companies. Portfolio includes: Synthesia, Nominal, Lyric, Cinder, Zafran, OpenSpace, Airspace, Icertis, Enable, Physical Intelligence, Unconventional. Prior to joining PSP Growth in 2018, she was a Vice President at Baird Capital where she invested in healthcare and technology companies. Before that, she worked as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch & Co. Momei earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. ## Towfique Raj Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/towfique-raj/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Towfique Raj, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Genetics and Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a core faculty member of the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease. He serves as Co-Director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) Genomics Core and was Co-Chair of the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) AI/ML Consortium, leading efforts to develop machine learning frameworks for genetic discovery and target prioritization in neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Raj received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Cambridge and completed postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His honors include the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Fellowship, and the Charleston Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease Award. His research program integrates AI/ML, statistical genetics, and functional genomics to define the molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. By leveraging large-scale multi-omics datasets and advanced computational modeling, his group links genetic risk variants to cell-type–specific molecular programs, particularly in innate immune cells such as monocytes and microglia. His laboratory leads deeply phenotyped human cohort studies, including the MyND study, to generate population-scale transcriptomic and multi-omic profiles of immune cells across disease progression. A central goal of his work is to develop interpretable AI/ML approaches to prioritize causal variants, infer gene regulatory networks, and model disease-relevant cellular states, ultimately translating genetic discoveries into biomarkers and therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases. ## Rahul Rajendra Prasad Senior Vice President of Technology, Citizens Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rahul-rajendra-prasad/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: North Carolina Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Company Revenue: $10B+ Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker ## Sai Krishna Rallabandi Director, Data Science, Fidelity Investments Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sai-krishna-rallabandi/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes I am a Director of Data Science at Fidelity Investments and published author working at the intersection of large language models, financial analysis, and agentic systems. My research focuses on turning complex financial documents such as earnings-call transcripts, into grounded insights, investment recommendations, and decision-support outputs. I am especially interested in practical AI systems for regulated domains: agents that can reason over evidence, use tools, remain concise, and produce outputs that are useful, auditable, and aligned with real analyst workflows. ## Nithin Ramachandran Senior Vice President, AI and Data, Cargill Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nithin-ramachandran/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Nithin Ramachandran is an executive leader known for turning AI investment into measurable business value at enterprise scale. He most recently served as Global Vice President of Data, Analytics, MDM & AI at 3M, where he led the global data and AI strategy delivering solutions to 70+ countries, building a practice that delivered disruptive and incremental business value consistently at 5X ROI. He established co-innovation partnerships with leading hyperscalers, partnered with the Board, C-suite and business leaders to define a multi-horizon Data & AI value roadmap, including frameworks for risk-conscious scaling and quantified AI value pools. Prior to 3M, Nithin transformed Kohler Co.'s digital and data function into a patent-winning global organization, launching AI products that scaled to over one million users — including a multimodal generative AI customer service app, a Gen AI-driven data discovery tool, and a generative digital experience platform for B2B customers, each engineered to deliver tangible operational and commercial impact. Earlier, he led an AI research team at Direct Supply, where his group built IP driving AI enabled software products and econometric models that powered recommendations, pricing and allocation across the largest three-sided marketplace in senior living — directly driving revenue and efficiency gains for a network serving 40,000 nursing homes. Nithin bridges research and real-world impact: he holds patents, has published AI research in venues like IEEE COMPSAC, serves on university advisory boards including Washington University in St. Louis, and speaks widely — including at AWS re:Invent and AI4 — on translating AI capability into bottom-line results. He holds a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from NIT Jaipur, India, and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. ## Arjun Ramachandran Founding Robotics Engineer, MOBY Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arjun-ramachandran/ Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Arjun Chembai Ramachandran is a Founding Robotics Engineer at Moby Robotics, where he leads the Ocean Intelligence Platform team. With expertise spanning full-stack software architecture, computer vision, and hands-on hardware prototyping, he acts as a core technical driver for next-generation subsea crawler and robotic gripper platforms engineered for the sustainable blue economy. At Moby Robotics, Arjun spearheads the development of deep-sea computer vision pipelines, ocean mapping stacks, and 3D seabed reconstruction models that translate raw maritime data into actionable intelligence. His dual-hatted role includes architecting complete software frameworks for ground control and subsea autonomy, while simultaneously designing and fabricating physical hardware systems, electronics, and custom tactile controllers for complex ROV operations. Prior to pioneering deep-sea robotic systems, Arjun engineered scalable generative AI and risk infrastructure as a Software Engineer 2 at PayPal. His extensive research portfolio includes deploying real-time, risk-aware autonomous navigation systems at the University of Michigan’s Mcity, developing reinforcement learning controllers for advanced prosthetic devices, and designing underactuated embedded systems for aerial manipulation. He holds a Master of Science in Robotics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has authored published research alongside a patent for a flexible manipulator. ## Jayakumar Ramalingam Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Architect, SiriusXM Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jayakumar-ramalingam/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Jayakumar Ramalingam is a Staff Software Engineer and Cloud Architect at SiriusXM with more than 16 years of experience building cloud-native distributed systems, event-driven platforms, and production AI/ML solutions across media, retail, automotive, and financial services. He is a published researcher whose work focuses on cloud architecture, scalable AI, and autonomous systems. ## Santhi Ramesh Chief Commercial Officer and Head of AI Transformation, Pampered Chef Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/santhi-ramesh/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Retail Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Nikhil Rao CEO, Reflex Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nikhil-rao/ Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nikhil Rao is the CEO and Co-founder of Reflex, an open-source framework that brings vibe coding to the enterprise. Reflex helps developers build internal business apps with AI and Python, integrating seamlessly with company data, existing codebases, and deployment platforms. The project has grown to over 28,000 GitHub stars and is used in production by Fortune 500 companies to power internal tools and business intelligence systems. Before founding Reflex, Nikhil worked on AI projects at Apple and at self-driving car startups. ## Rémi Raphael Chief AI Officer, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/remi-raphael/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Dr. Raphael is a computer scientist by training and author of a dozen scientific publications on data integration, ontologies and workflow systems. He spent over a decade developing software in industry and academia prior to shifting his focus to the energy industry and the application of information technology to risk management, quantitative finance, and business strategy. He led digital & business transformation for Duke Energy, EDF Renewables and most recently Origis Energy focusing on rapid execution of Digital Strategy covering Mobility, Enterprise Systems, Data Analytics and AI tools. Prior to that, he held various positions in Risk Management at Duke Energy leading its international renewable energy assets in Latin America and at Sempra Energy as the joined Quantitative Risk Manager for SoCal Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric. Dr. Raphael earned a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics, a Master of Computer Science from Claude Bernard University in Lyon-France, PhD in Computer Science from National Institute of Applied Sciences Lyon, France (INSA de Lyon) and an MBA focused on Quantitative Finance from University of California, San Diego. ## Ryan Rapp CEO, Terrana Biosciences Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-rapp/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Agriculture Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ryan Rapp joined Flagship in 2023 and is the Co-Founder and CEO of Terrana Biosciences. Ryan is an experienced leader in Ag-Biotech and has bridged the gap between research and commercial application throughout his career. Before joining Flagship, he served as Chief Technology Officer at Pairwise, responsible for company-wide R&D strategy and execution as the company advanced its research portfolio to deliver biotech charged consumer food products. Prior to his time at Pairwise, Ryan was Associate Director of Agricultural Genomics at Illumina responsible for R&D direction, product marketing, product management, and market development for the company’s agriculture work. Ryan started his career at Monsanto where he held several roles. Over the course of his tenure, he was responsible for technical assessment of investment opportunities for the biologicals R&D program, driving implementation of a new genetics discovery framework in maize, applying quantitative genetics to advance understanding of the genetic interactions of yield relevant phenotypes, and creating Monsanto’s first high-density genotyping chip. Ryan has a Ph.D. in Genetics from Iowa State University and a B.S. in Plant Science from Cornell University. He is the author of numerous published patents and papers. ## Garrett Raska Senior Solutions Engineer, Redpanda Data Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/garrett-raska/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Garrett Raska is a Staff Solutions Engineer at Redpanda, where he enables organizations build real-time data pipelines and streaming systems that power AI and next-generation applications. He brings over a decade of experience in data architecture, technical sales, and engineering, with a focus on helping teams translate complex data challenges into scalable, low-latency solutions. Before joining Redpanda, Garrett held leadership roles at FeatureBase (formerly Molecula), where he served as Lead Solutions Architect, and at Dropbox and AllClear ID, where he combined technical expertise with enterprise sales. His career reflects a unique blend of engineering depth and customer-focused strategy, with a proven ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and sales teams. Garrett is known for helping businesses modernize their data stacks, reduce costs, and unlock real-time insights that drive AI and machine learning workloads. ## Marco Rauland VP, Market Access & Pricing, Strategy, Pricing & Analytics, Merck KGaA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marco-rauland/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Dr. Marco Rauland, Vice President, Merck KGaA, Global Value Demonstration, Market Access & Pricing (GVAP), Strategy, Pricing & Analytics Marco Rauland has more than 30 years of drug development, marketing, market research and pricing consulting experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Merck Marco was Vice President Europe of GfK's Market Access practice. Before that Marco was the Global Head of the Pricing, Access and Reimbursement practice of Genactis and Senior Director of the Pricing and Reimbursement Business Unit at TNS Healthcare (now Kantar Group). Marco is an expert in global pricing, listing and reimbursement strategy and has extensive experience in implementing pricing, access and reimbursement solutions at all stages of the product life cycle, from early product development to post-launch pricing. He has developed the pricing, access and reimbursement strategy for product launches across numerous therapy areas and has in-depth knowledge of international country pricing & reimbursement systems. Marco studied Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Cologne and holds a PhD in Natural Science. ## Jalashri Raval Sr Manager, Information Systems, Amgen Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jalashri-raval/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Jalashri Raval is Senior Manager, Information Systems at Amgen, where she leads enterprise AI initiatives within the Neural Nexus program, driving the adoption of generative AI to accelerate business innovation across the organization. With more than a decade of experience spanning product management, business strategy, and enterprise technology, Jalashri specializes in translating complex business challenges into practical, scalable AI solutions that deliver measurable business impact. Under her leadership, AI adoption within Amgen's Competitive Intelligence organization increased more than 22-fold in just six months, growing active users from approximately 180 to over 4,000. Her initiatives reduced information discovery and research effort by 40% while improving AI response relevance by 30%, enabling Commercial, Medical, Brand, and executive teams to make faster, more informed, data-driven decisions. Jalashri is passionate about helping organizations integrate AI into everyday business workflows responsibly and at scale. Beyond Amgen, she serves as a judge for the 2026 Stevie Awards, has been a jury member for City of STEM, and actively mentors and advocates for women in technology. She holds a Master's degree in Information Systems (4.00 GPA, Honors), an MBA in Marketing and Operations, is a Certified SAFe Scrum Master, and has completed Stanford University's specialization in AI in Healthcare. ## Radhika Ravirala Senior Product Manager, Granica.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/radhika-ravirala/ Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Brian Ray Head of Data & AI NA, Atos Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-ray/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Brian Ray is the Head of Data and AI for North America at Atos, where he leads one of the region's largest enterprise AI consulting organizations. He works with Fortune 500 executives to move AI beyond pilots into production, helping organizations scale agentic AI, modernize data platforms, and build governance models that enable innovation without sacrificing trust. Over the past several years, Brian has led AI transformations across healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, retail, and the public sector, with a focus on delivering measurable business outcomes rather than technology demonstrations. He is a frequent speaker on enterprise AI, AI governance, and agentic systems, and serves as a lecturer on Generative AI. His sessions are known for practical insights, candid perspectives on what actually works, and real world lessons from deploying AI at scale. ## Seetaram Rao Rayarao VP, Senior Lead Software Engineer, JP Morgan Chase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/seetaram-rao-rayarao/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Seetaram Rayarao is a Senior Vice President and Expert Engineer at JPMorgan Chase, where he leads enterprise-wide initiatives in Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and cloud-native modernization. With over 18 years of experience in the technology industry, Seetaram brings deep expertise in AI-driven solutions, microservices architecture, and scalable cloud platforms such as AWS and Kubernetes. His work bridges advanced AI capabilities with enterprise systems to deliver secure, reliable, and impactful business outcomes. At JPMorgan Chase, Seetaram plays a pivotal role in building the firm’s LLM Suite, leading the design and deployment of AI agent frameworks and decision-support applications powered by LangChain, LangGraph, and the OpenAI SDK. His innovations have streamlined complex workflows, enhanced real-time decision-making, and accelerated automation across business domains. He also contributes to the development of enterprise-grade AI governance and observability frameworks, ensuring the responsible and explainable use of AI at scale. Throughout his career, Seetaram has driven technology transformation by architecting high-performance, event-driven systems and adopting modern engineering practices such as Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), Event-as-Code (EaC), and API-first design. His leadership extends beyond technical execution—he mentors cross-functional teams, champions innovation culture, and fosters collaboration across engineering, product, and AI research functions. An active participant in global technology communities, Seetaram contributes to technical publications, peer reviews, and mentorship initiatives that promote knowledge sharing in AI and cloud computing. He frequently delivers talks, workshops, and conference sessions on Generative AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), AI Agents, and Large Language Model orchestration. His sessions emphasize practical frameworks, real-world patterns, and architectural best practices for building resilient, enterprise-grade AI systems. Seetaram’s professional mission is to leverage AI for real-world problem solving—integrating intelligence into business processes, enhancing decision systems, and improving user experiences. His work reflects a strong commitment to responsible AI, innovation, and scalable design principles. Beyond his work at JPMorgan Chase, Seetaram actively engages in research and technical writing focused on AI system optimization, including projects such as Enhancing Rate Limiting with Machine Learning: Adaptive and Predictive Approach. He is also a dedicated mentor, supporting the professional growth of emerging engineers and data scientists, and contributing to community development within the broader AI ecosystem. Seetaram holds multiple professional certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD). His combination of technical mastery, leadership experience, and thought leadership in Generative AI positions him at the forefront of building scalable, intelligent, and adaptive AI-driven enterprises. ## Ruth Reader Journalist, Second Opinion Media Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ruth-reader/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Ruth Reader writes about the intersection of health, business, policy, and technology for Second Opinion Media and Hunterbrook. For the last four years, she's written about the policy and politics of health and technology for POLITICO. Before that she covered health and technology business for Fast Company. She now writes about health policy for Second Opinion and conducts investigations into the health care world for Hunterbrook. ## Shan Reddy Co-Founder and CEO, Aristotle Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shan-reddy/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Education Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Shan Reddy is Co-Founder and CEO of Aristotle, a voice-first AI tutoring platform that gives high school students a personal tutor at human-tutor caliber. The company is backed by a $4.8M seed round led by True Ventures, with participation from Wicklow Capital and angel investors from Anthropic, OpenAI, Sierra, Ramp, and Cognition. Aristotle's thesis is built on Benjamin Bloom's 2 Sigma research: one-on-one tutoring lifts students above 98% of their classroom peers, but remains out of reach for most families. Shan grew up in one of the lowest-funded school districts in the country and went on to tutor students for nearly a decadebefore founding Aristotle. He studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford and is also a Venture Partner at True Ventures. ## Pavan Kumar Reddy AI Scientist, Mistral Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pavan-kumar-reddy/ Track: Keynote Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Pavan Kumar Reddy is one of the leaders in conversational AI who left Google and the Gemini project to join Mistral as one of the first AI scientists in the US. He currently leads the audio AI team and was one of the AI scientists behind early state of the art vision language models in the industry ## Devin Redmond Co-founder & CEO, Theta Lake Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devin-redmond/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Redmond is a two-time founder, multi-time public company executive with 20+ years’ experience delivering Security & Compliance technology. Redmond has helped some of the world’s leading software companies grow and innovate, including Check Point, Neoteris, Websense, and Nexgate (Acq. by PFPT). Redmond is a prolific innovator holding two patents and is a frequent speaker and press contributor as seen on CNN, CBS, in Forbes, and at FinTech New York. ## Brandon Reed Head of Compliance Model and AI Oversight, Regions Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brandon-reed/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist My name is Brandon Reed, Head of Compliance Model and AI Oversight at Regions, and my background is in electrical and computer engineering and applied mathematics with a focus on controls systems, automation, and robotics. I am a visionary leader with 15+ years experience in model risk management, quantitative analytics, and regulatory compliance. I am a trusted advisor to executive leaders with deep expertise in model governance, AI oversight, and enterprise-level risk management. I'm skilled at optimizing quantitative demands, qualitative culture, regulatory requirements, and business value while enabling sound decision making across credit, market, fraud, and operational risk functions. I have a proven track record of establishing and implementing enterprise-wide governance frameworks, enterprise inventory solutions, key risk indicator (KRI) reporting, risk identification, risk assessment methodologies, business process and regulation mapping, and control design and execution. ## Lindsey Rem SVP of Project Delivery & Innovation, Barton Malow Holdings Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lindsey-rem/ Track: Business Summit Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter BIOGRAPHY Lindsey Rem is Barton Malow Holdings' Senior Vice President of Innovation & Project Delivery. In her current role, Lindsey leads the K-12 Education business unit and Enterprise Innovation, where she drives the organization's AI adoption and technology strategy, aligning emerging capabilities with business priorities to ensure Barton Malow stays ahead in a rapidly evolving industry. Lindsey began her more than 25-year career with Barton Malow working on projects in the field before joining the SAP Implementation team, where she learned to deploy technology effectively across the company. Her passion for leveraging technology to improve project performance led her to build a cohesive Virtual Design & Construction (VDC), innovation, and technology strategy—one she continues to evolve today by exploring how AI can strengthen project delivery and construction outcomes. Lindsey holds a Bachelor of Arts in Law, Letters and Society from the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the varsity soccer team. She is a recognized speaker and thought leader in the AEC space, named a 2024 Autodesk Construction Champion, an annual global award honoring 25 industry leaders driving innovation and change, and most recently a 2026 Crain's Detroit Business Notable Leader in AEC, recognized for her leadership in driving innovation and impact across the industry, from adapting to emerging markets to mentoring the next generation of professionals. Barton Malow Overview Founded in Detroit in 1924, Barton Malow is a 100% family-owned construction enterprise built on building innovative and trust-based solutions to overcome productivity challenges in the industry and deliver value to clients and communities, serving automotive, energy, industrial, healthcare, commercial, K12, higher education, mission critical, sports, and entertainment markets across North America. Other education: Strategic Leaders Program, University of Michigan; Leading Change and Organizational Renewal, Stanford University; Finance for Senior Executives, Harvard Executive Education ## Nurit Revah Founder, EmbraceAI Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nurit-revah/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Nurit Revah, M.Sc., is the founder of EmbraceAI Global - an AI Architect, keynote speaker, and 20-year technology leader with a Master's in AI and an executive MBA. For two decades, she has driven digital transformation across industries - from manufacturing and energy to semiconductors and tightly regulated biotech and pharma - managing enterprise business applications and shipping systems where the compliance bar is highest. Recent work includes leading AI transformation in financial services, serving as AI Vertical Lead at Israel Tech Week Miami, and mentoring founders at New York's Quay Accelerator. Through EmbraceAI Global, she helps organizations turn AI access into fluency - building the systems, training the people, and staying past go-live until intelligence is simply how they work. ## Jason Rice Sr Director - Customer Experience (CX) Technology, The Home Depot Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jason-rice/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Retail Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Jason Rice Senior Director, Customer Experience (CX) Technology at The Home Depot Jason Rice is a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years of engineering and leadership experience in software development. Currently serving as the Senior Director of Customer Experience (CX) Technology at The Home Depot, Jason plays a pivotal role in driving strategic technological advancements, overseeing large-scale software development projects, and managing enterprise systems that enhance the overall customer journey. Prior to his current role, Jason held multiple director-level positions within The Home Depot, where he successfully oversaw enterprise architecture, marketing and advertising technology, and applied machine intelligence. His strategic foresight also led him to contribute significantly to the company's mergers and acquisitions team, where he facilitated the seamless integration of several newly acquired companies into the broader enterprise ecosystem. Jason began his career as an Analyst at Accenture and holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and University of Miami. ## Scott Richard Broker/Owner, Richard Realty Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-richard/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Real Estate & Facilities Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Scott Richard is a national speaker and Broker/Owner of Richard Realty, and former 2025 Chair of the National Association of REALTORS® Emerging Business & Technology Forum. A leading voice at the intersection of artificial intelligence and real estate, Scott is embedding AI into the operational foundation of one of the largest and most regulated industries in the U.S. Working inside this complex, relationship-driven sector, he designs compliance-aware systems, automated workflows, and enterprise-grade infrastructure that are redefining how brokerages operate. As a 2023 Wyoming REALTOR® of the Year and past State President, he brings both industry authority and hands-on execution, building and deploying AI in an SMB environment where owners operate without dedicated IT or data teams. His work provides a blueprint for deploying AI in regulated, high-stakes environments where trust, compliance, and execution are critical. If it does not work in practice, it does not scale. ## Jacob Rideout Chief Technical Officer, HiddenLayer Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jacob-rideout/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Jacob Rideout is the Chief Technology Officer of HiddenLayer, a cybersecurity start-up dedicated to preventing adversarial machine learning attacks. He has over a decade of experience leading engineering, product management, threat research, and data science teams, with a focus on security products at organizations such as Salesforce and Agari. Jacob has successfully brought multiple cutting-edge products to market, overseen acquisition transitions, collaborated with technical working groups at M3AAWG, ETIS, IETF, and MITRE, and managed research patents. Jacob lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife Sarah and son Solomon. ## Thom Rimmer VP, Product Design, Fin Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thom-rimmer/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Thom Rimmer leads Product Design at Fin, the leading AI Customer Agent company. He builds fast-moving, high-performing teams that deliver AI-first product experiences with clarity and impact. Over the past two decades, he’s been both a builder and a design leader – solving complex problems, scaling teams, and embedding design into the strategic foundation of the companies. He’s led distributed product design, brand, and research teams across SaaS and agency environments, taking products from 0→1 and building cutting-edge AI native systems. ## Devvret Rishi GM of AI, Rubrik Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devvret-rishi/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Mark Ritzmann Faculty in AI & ML, Co-Director SPS Artificial Intelligence Lab, Associate Dean - AI, Analytics, and Strategic Communications, Columbia University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-ritzmann/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Dr. Mark Ritzmann has worked in the field of AI, machine learning, data, and analytics for over 20 years. He has worked for Capgemini, IBM, Oracle, Endeca, and American Express as well as a number of start-ups. He’s taught at Columbia for 10 years in the Applied Analytics, IKNS and Technology Management MSc programs. Dr. Ritzmann is also a co-founder and co-Director of the SPS AI Lab, and the Associate Dean of AI, Analytics and Strategic Communications. Dr. Ritzmann has conducted primary research in the areas of neural networks, machine learning, missing data imputation, and decision making under uncertain conditions. His current project work includes applied AI, responsible and ethical use of AI, ML, applied analytics, data visualization, and data engineering. ## Alina Rivilis Director, Data Science & AI, Fairstone Bank of Canada Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alina-rivilis/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Alina Rivilis is the CEO and co-founder of AI Future Leaders, an organization dedicated to advancing AI literacy by blending technology, leadership, and creativity. With more than 25 years of experience in artificial intelligence, data science, and enterprise technology strategy, she helps organizations translate emerging AI technologies into real business value. Alina currently serves as Director of Data Science & AI at Fairstone Bank of Canada, where she leads enterprise AI initiatives focused on responsible AI adoption, governance, and innovation. She also serves as part-time faculty at Northeastern University, teaching information systems management and artificial intelligence to the next generation of technologists. Recognizing the growing gap between traditional education and the skills required in an AI-driven world, Alina founded AI Future Leaders. Through executive workshops, courses, and community initiatives, the organization equips professionals and students with the knowledge and practical skills needed to build, lead, and innovate with AI. Alina holds a Master’s degree in Statistics from York University and an MBA in Information Systems Management from the University of Phoenix. A frequent speaker at conferences and international AI summits, she is recognized for her work in AI strategy, governance, workforce upskilling, and responsible AI adoption. A finalist for the 2025 Women in AI Awards (Private Sector), Alina is a strong advocate for responsible AI and inclusive innovation, helping organizations and communities prepare for the opportunities and challenges of an AI-driven future. ## Joshua Robert Founding Editor-in-Chief, Journal for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (JAIM) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joshua-robert/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Joshua Robert is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (JAIM) and an M.D./M.Eng. candidate in the Texas A&M School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed) in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital. His work focuses on translating artificial intelligence from research into real clinical and operational environments across the Texas Medical Center ecosystem. Joshua operates at the intersection of health systems, product development, and responsible AI deployment, working with clinicians, engineers, and executives to evaluate use cases, implementation barriers, and governance strategies for enterprise healthcare AI. He has contributed to initiatives spanning clinical decision support, care navigation, and AI evaluation frameworks, and has led national-scale innovation and partnership efforts across academic medical centers and industry collaborators. Through JAIM, he is building a scholarly platform dedicated to improving rigor, transparency, and reproducibility in AI-enabled healthcare, with the goal of helping organizations move from experimentation to safe, scalable adoption. ## Peter Robinson COO and Executive Lead of KAI Labs, Kaspar Companies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/peter-robinson/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Operations Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Peter Robinson is the Chief Operating Officer of Kaspar Companies, a 128 year old manufacturing organization with five business platforms and multiple subsidiaries. He is also the founder and Executive Lead of KAI Labs (Kaspar AI Labs), a high performing AI innovation team built around a simple mission: ship one production ready, value-added AI solution every week that solves real business problems or creates strategic advantage. Since launching KAI Labs in November 2025, the team has deployed more than 30 production ready solutions, demonstrating that the greatest value of AI comes from rapid execution, continuous learning, and solving problems that matter. With more than 25 years of leadership experience, Peter has led full business units, enterprise transformation initiatives, and operational excellence efforts across organizations including Amazon, United Airlines, Grainger, United Rentals, and Kaspar Companies. His expertise spans enterprise strategy, Lean systems, AI adoption, leadership development, and building scalable business systems that accelerate performance. Peter is the architect of the Kaspar Business System (KBS), an enterprise operating system that aligns strategy, leadership, behaviors, and continuous improvement across the organization. Through KAI Labs, he combines Lean thinking with rapid AI deployment to transform AI from pilots into practical solutions embedded in daily operations, creating built in learning cycles that accelerate continuous improvement while delivering measurable business results. His leadership philosophy embraces a 10x mindset, challenging conventional thinking, accelerating innovation, and building organizations that adapt faster than the pace of change. Peter serves on the boards of the Don G. Kaspar Foundation and Modo Academy, actively mentors emerging leaders, and is deeply involved in his church and community. A devoted Christian, husband, and father of five daughters, he lives by the philosophy “Humble, Hungry, and High Yielding,” believing that an organization’s greatest competitive advantage is people who continually learn, grow, and serve others. ## Sagi Rodin CEO, Agen.co Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sagi-rodin/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Sagi Rodin is a seasoned technology leader dedicated to helping SaaS companies scale faster. Before launching Frontegg, Sagi spent over four years at Check Point Software Technologies, leading R&D and Cloud Security initiatives. With a deep background as a CTO and Full Stack Developer, he combines technical rigor with a founder’s mindset to solve the complex challenges of modern application infrastructure. ## Leticia Lorena Rodriguez Independent Researcher / Founder, Universidad de Buenos Aires / TEG AI Consulting, Argentina Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/leticia-lorena-rodriguez/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Age: 0-1 Years Company Funding: $0-250K Funding Stage: No Funding / Bootstrapped Leticia Lorena Rodríguez, Professor in Computer Science, is the Founder of TEG AI Consulting and an Invited Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, dedicated to bridging the gap between academic research and enterprise innovation. Her journey in technology began early; coding by age 12 with dreams of becoming a software engineer, she launched her professional career at just 18 at PeopleSoft, straight out of high school. Over the next 15 years, Leticia built a robust foundation in the corporate tech industry, including a tenure as a Senior Software Engineer and Team Leader at MercadoLibre. Driven by a growing fascination with computer science and education, she took a bold step: leaving the corporate world to join a research facility at CONICET as a Research Support Technician. During this transformative period, she began formalizing her academic expertise, eventually earning her degree as a Professor in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). In 2017, discovering Artificial Intelligence through online courses became the catalyst that completely redefined her trajectory. From that point on, her passions for scientific research, university-level teaching, and software engineering converged entirely around AI. This deep specialization propelled her to Google, where she served as an AI Consultant, advising C-level executives and leading AI engineering teams to deploy cutting-edge Generative AI solutions. Today, Leticia continues to shape the future of tech and learning in LATAM through multiple avenues. Alongside her roles at the University of Buenos Aires and TEG AI Consulting—where she focuses on empowering organizations through specialized AI education, governance, and advisory services—she is deeply engaged in independent scientific research. Focusing on Explainable AI (XAI) and AI Safety, her independent work culminated in the publication of her paper, "Explaining is Harder Than Predicting Alone: Evaluating Concept-based Explanations of MLLMs as ICL Visual Classifiers," which she is proudly presenting at this conference. ## Danny Rodriguez Chief Information Officer, CoolSys Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/danny-rodriguez/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Danny Rodriguez is Chief Information Officer at CoolSys, where he leads the company’s information technology strategy, operations, and transformation initiatives. His experience includes leadership roles at ABM Industries, Dell Technologies, World Fuel Services, and Teva Pharmaceuticals, with a track record of driving innovation, large-scale technology transformation, and business growth. Danny is known for identifying operational improvement opportunities and aligning technology investments with broader business objectives. His current work includes applying agentic AI to modernize IT service delivery, automate high-volume requests, improve efficiency, and enable teams to focus on higher-value work. ## Carolina Rodriguez PhD Candidate | Founder, Custamor, Claremont Graduate University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/carolina-rodriguez/ Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Carolina Rodriguez is a PhD candidate in Business and Marketing at the Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, and founder of Custamor, a customer experience consultancy based in Southern California. She also serves as a Lecturer at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches Strategic Brand Management and Professional Development in the College of Business Administration. Drawing on nearly two decades of corporate retail and consumer goods experience, including leadership roles at Nixon Inc. and work with brands such as Gap Inc., Lucky Brand, and Guess, Carolina's research examines how human-AI service design shapes frontline employee identity, service authenticity, and customer-based brand equity. Her work reflects a core belief that customer love is a powerful driver of sustainable brand growth. At Ai4 Research Day, she will present her paper and poster, "Customer Love in the Age of AI: Human-AI Service Design and Brand Equity." ## Julie Roginsky Co-Founder, Lift Our Voices Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/julie-roginsky/ Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Communications Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No JULIE ROGINSKY, a co-founder of Lift Our Voices, has long been an outspoken champion of women’s rights and issues. A nationally recognized political consultant, Roginsky began her career working at a prominent organization dedicated to electing more women to political office. Throughout her career, she has focused her efforts on mentoring and empowering women to become engaged in the political process. Since filing her lawsuit for sexual harassment and retaliation against the Fox News Channel, she has dedicated herself to ending the silencing mechanisms that prevent survivors of workplace toxicity from coming forward about their experiences. In Congress, she championed the bipartisan Speak Out Act, which eradicates pre-dispute non-disclosure agreements for sexual assault and harassment. At the state level, she has advocated for laws that prevent workers from disclosing toxic workplace experiences. Roginsky was previously a contributor at CNBC and the Fox News Channel, where she was a frequent co-host of “Outnumbered” and “The Five.” In 2017, she became one of the first women to file a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and its chairman. She serves as an advisor to major corporations, start-ups, non-profits, labor unions, and dozens of elected officials, including governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives, and state legislators. Roginsky received both her B.A. and M.A. with honors from Boston University, where her graduate work focused on studying the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its transition from a planned to a market economy. Her passion for empowering women began in college, when she spent 9me working at the Labour Party in London, focusing on policies affecting women in the United Kingdom. Roginsky previously served as a decade-long board member of the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University. ## Luis Romero-Sevilla VP of AI, Orbis Operations Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/luis-romero-sevilla/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Government Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Luis Romero-Sevilla is an experienced AI strategist, researcher, and full-stack software engineer with over 13 years of experience driving technological innovation across government, industry, and research institutions. He currently serves as the Vice President of AI at Orbis Operations, where he leads the company’s AI strategy, research, and product development efforts—focused on rapid prototyping, knowledge representation systems, and mission-driven AI solutions. Luis has held impactful roles at organizations such as MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, and the Department of Health of Puerto Rico, where his work contributed to projects with both organizational and nationwide significance. His background spans defense, healthcare, finance, and public-sector systems, blending deep technical proficiency with a passion for solving high-stakes problems. ## Sani Ronen Director of AI Networking, DriveNets Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sani-ronen/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Other Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Sani serves as a director of product marketing at DriveNets. With over 25 years experience in communications systems and semiconductors, Sani brings expertise in wireless communications, AI and autonomous driving accumulated at a variety of organizations including Arbe, Microchip, Microsemi, Radwin and Siemens. He holds a BSc in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Ben-Gurion University and a Masters in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Swinburne University of Technology. ## Tali Rosenblum Vice President, Executive Officer | Enterprise AI-Led Analytics & Intelligence Solutions, New York Life Insurance Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tali-rosenblum/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Insurance Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Tali Rosenblum VP, Head of Enterprise AI-Led Analytics & Intelligence Solutions, New York Life Tali Rosenblum is a data and AI leader focused on turning intelligence into real business outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, analytics, and execution. At New York Life, she drives the company’s AI-led analytics transformation, enabling data and AI-led product solutions with smarter decisions that improve customer experiences at enterprise scale. Tali partners across businesses and corporate stakeholders to activate data in ways that shape growth strategies, optimize performance, and embed AI into everyday decision-making. Before joining New York Life, Tali led enterprise-scale data, analytics, and AI initiatives at BSL Capital, delivering high-impact business transformation. She began her career advising financial institutions at Andersen and Deloitte, driving strategy and large-scale execution for global clients. She has been recognized with multiple awards, including industry honors Women Worth Watching in STEM by Profiles in Diversity Journal (2024) and Global Data Power Women by CDO Magazine (2026). Tali holds two master’s degrees, including Applied Analytics & Data Science from Columbia University. She is also a frequent industry speaker and panelist on topics including AI in the enterprise and data-driven transformation. She is deeply committed to developing the next generation of talent, actively mentoring and sponsoring women in data and technology. She also serves on the Advisory Council of the Koenig Childhood Cancer Foundation, advocating for children battling cancer and advancing leadership opportunities for young girls. ## Audi Rowe Americas AI Experience, Strategy, and Transformation Consulting Leader, EY Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/audi-rowe/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Audi is a leader of the EY Americas AI Experience, Strategy, and Transformation Consulting team. He is passionate about helping his clients achieve end-to-end transformations by developing new digital strategies, products and services, driving innovation through new venture formation, addressing gaps in business policies and processes, harnessing data to inform effective operations, and designing new constituent experiences for clients both domestically and internationally. Audi is experienced in helping clients solve their nuanced business issues through experience-led, digital transformation, strategy design and execution, process design, disruptive technology application and product and program management. Having led transformation programs for clients across industries including real estate and hospitality, industrial manufacturing, automotive and consumer products, Audi brings valuable insight and lessons learned. Audi holds a BBA in Strategy and Management Consulting, International Business and Entrepreneurship from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. ## Amber Rowland Associate Research Professor, University of Kansas Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amber-rowland/ Track: Product Design Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Amber L. Rowland, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Kansas. She is a strategic education leader with over 23 years of experience in cross-functional collaboration, product development, and research-based evaluation of innovative practices. Backed by more than $10 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Special Education Programs, and the Institute of Education Sciences, her work explores artificial intelligence, extended reality, progress monitoring, game-based learning, and universal design for learning to support all learners, especially those with disabilities. Dr. Rowland specializes in user-centered design and in developing evidence-based professional learning experiences. She is the CSO and co-founder of VOISS, an extended reality environment that teaches adolescents social skills through evidence-based practice, using valid and reliable summative and formative progress-monitoring tools. She also co-developed VECTOR, a virtual coaching model; co-designed APLM Online, an online coaching dashboard; and developed WRITE, one of the first auto-scoring writing tools for adolescents. She is a trusted advisor and coach who builds strong relationships, leads diverse teams, and develops tailored solutions to meet individual and systemic needs. A published author with over 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 150+ conference presentations, she brings extensive experience in research, development, and teaching in education. Her contributions have been recognized by organizations such as ISTE, CEC, NSF, and the U.S. Department of Education. ## Scott Rowlandson Founder, NetOrca Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-rowlandson/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: DevOps Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Scott Rowlandson is the founder and CEO of NetOrca (Netautomate Ltd), a self-service infrastructure orchestration platform used in production at Tier-1 financial institutions including NatWest Bank. With over 15 years of experience in network engineering, automation, and infrastructure operations, Scott has built NetOrca from a bootstrapped consultancy into a product company pioneering the use of AI agents to operate, not just monitor, enterprise infrastructure. The NetOrca platform supports over 450 teams and has processed more than 25,000 infrastructure changes in production. Its core innovation is Pack, a universal executor that uses large language models to read API documentation, generate and execute real API calls, and self-heal when things go wrong eliminating the need for hand-coded integrations. Pack is currently in production trial at a Tier-1 UK bank. Before founding Netautomate, Scott worked across enterprise networking and infrastructure roles in both Australia and the UK. He holds a background in network engineering and has spent the last decade focused on making infrastructure self-service and, increasingly, self-operating. He is a member of the Australia–United Kingdom Chamber of Commerce and splits his time between London and Sydney. Scott's talk at Ai4 2026 will cover practical lessons from deploying AI agents as infrastructure operators in a regulated banking environment — including what worked, what broke, and why the industry needs to move beyond dashboards and copilots toward truly agentic operations. ## Kristie Rowley Sr. Manager of AI/ML Engineering, BambooHR Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kristie-rowley/ Track: Software: HRTech Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Kristie Rowley, PhD currently leads AI Operations at BambooHR and is an AI, data, and technology leader with more than 30 years of experience helping organizations navigate technological transformation. She has advised hundreds of organizations—including Fortune 500 companies, startups, nonprofits, governments, and policy institutes—on how to use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-driven decision-making to create meaningful business and human impact. Her career spans academia, consulting, technical leadership, and team development. She has served as a professor, built and led engineering and AI teams, developed technical methodologies and educational programs, and authored more than 100 published works. This blend of technical depth and organizational insight gives her a distinctive vantage point on one of AI's most consequential applications: the systems that shape how companies hire, retain, and support the people who work for them. Within HR specifically, Dr. Rowley has advised HR software companies and HR business units on building and deploying AI applications across the employee lifecycle. She recently presented "AI Maturity Playbook: Build Trustworthy Tools for Recruiting, Rewarding, and Retaining Talent" at SHRM, a framework helping HR leaders assess their organization's AI maturity and apply AI responsibly to recruiting, compensation strategy, and retention, including predictive models for employee turnover and flight risk. Having worked through multiple waves of technological change, Dr. Rowley brings a long-view perspective to innovation, leadership, and the challenges of organizational transformation. She is particularly interested in helping leaders understand not only what is changing, but also the enduring human and organizational principles that persist amid disruption. She applies this lens directly to the promises and pitfalls of AI in HR. Through her writing and speaking, Dr. Rowley explores the human side of technology, organizational behavior, leadership in the age of AI, and the insights that emerge when innovation meets experience. Her work focuses on helping leaders build organizations that adapt, innovate, and thrive in times of rapid change, without losing sight of the people those systems are meant to serve. Kristie has been recognized as a member of Utah's AI 100, Utah Business' 30 Women to Watch, and Women Tech Council's AI Women Power List. ## Bhaskar Roy Chief of AI, Workato Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bhaskar-roy/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter With over two decades of expertise in the communication and collaboration sectors, Bhaskar Roy, Chief of AI & Product Solutions at Workato, has built and launched a wide range of enterprise and consumer products. He co-founded Qik and PlaceWare, two companies successfully acquired by Microsoft, and has held senior leadership roles at Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). At Workato, Bhaskar is a technology and thought leader in AI, believing that AI agents will first transform the tech industry and pave the way for broader applications, particularly in business processes. While recognizing AI's potential, he emphasizes that human intelligence will remain critical in guiding its evolution, with the greatest impact coming from companies bold enough to experiment and innovate. ## Anil Mathew Roy Senior Product Manager, Agentic AI, Zillow Group Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/anil-mathew-roy/ Track: Product Management Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Anil Mathew Roy is a Senior Product Manager in Agentic AI & Personalozation at Zillow, where he leads product strategy and innovation for agentic AI systems focused on personalization, user intelligence, and adaptive consumer experiences. He contributed to the launch of Zillow AI Mode, with a focus on its personalization layer and the intelligent skills that power contextual, preference-aware home search experiences. He has been instrumental in building the foundational infrastructure for how Zillow understands user intent and delivers intelligent decision-making at scale. With several years of experience spanning artificial intelligence, product management, and large-scale platform development, Anil has consistently bridged the gap between cutting-edge research and impactful product experiences. His work spans memory and preference systems, user journey modeling, and real-time personalization. Prior to Zillow, Anil led AI personalization and discovery efforts at Amazon Alexa, where he helped shape multimodal experiences and drive engagement through intelligent assistants. He is also a recognized thought leader in applied AI, frequently speaking at industry conferences, contributing to technology publications, and serving as a judge for AI innovation awards. His work centers on making AI approachable, responsible, and frictionless for consumers at scale. ## Nat Rubio-Licht Senior Reporter, The Deep View Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nat-rubio-licht/ Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Nat Rubio-Licht is a Senior Reporter at The Deep View, primarily covering AI through the lense of ethics and responsibility. Nat previously led CIO Upside, a newsletter dedicated to enterprise technology, for The Daily Upside. They've also worked for Protocol, The LA Business Journal, and Seattle Magazine. Reach out to Nat at nat@thedeepview.ai. ## Isaac Rudnick Alumnus, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/isaac-rudnick/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Hi! My name is Isaac Rudnick! I am a recent Computer Science graduate from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and the primary author of the "Discourse Analysis of Legislative Bill Discussions" paper. I concentrated in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and minored in Mathematics. When I’m not working on personal research projects, I enjoy hiking, wildlife photography, and boardgames. ## Terrence Ryan Developer Relations Engineer, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/terrence-ryan/ Track: Google Cloud Programming Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Other Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Terrence Ryan is a Developer Advocate for Cloud AI at Google, where for late, he spends his time building practical, agentic AI tools that actually fix real team headaches. A 15+ year veteran of developer relations, Terrence both deeply values AI but also is deeply skeptical about what the zeitgeist is saying about it as it begins to permeate the actual human experience of building software. Before his current role, he was an Engineering Manager for Google Cloud and a DevRel Manager for the Agent Development Kit (ADK). In those roles, he led the engineering teams tasked with making Generative AI models perform better in the real world—directing work on automated dataset creation, code-generation self-training, and the internal RAG systems that help power Gemini. Earlier in his career, he held technical and evangelism leadership roles at Adobe and The Wharton School. Terrence pairs his deep engineering background with a BA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, giving him a distinct focus on how people—not just systems—interact with technology. He’s also the author of Driving Technical Change (Pragmatic Bookshelf), a practical guide to the soft skills needed to convince skeptical teams to adopt new tech. ## Satvik Sabarad Advanced Manufacturing Engineer, Amazon Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/satvik-sabarad/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Satvik Sabarad is an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at Amazon Robotics, where he ramps up complex robotics solutions in partnership with design and contract manufacturing partners worldwide. Having experienced firsthand the multi-week delays that traditional hardware development cycles impose on program timelines, he has been working on shifting the design review process upstream in the product development lifecycle by integrating large language models directly into CAD — surfacing manufacturability, cost, and sourcing recommendations well before designs reach suppliers. Prior to Amazon, Satvik led process development and global manufacturing ramps for Tesla's power electronics programs, supporting the launch and scaling of several of the company's flagship vehicle platforms. He holds a Master of Engineering in Advanced Manufacturing and Design from MIT, and is a published researcher across multiple disciplines. ## Muthu Sabarethinam VP Data Science & Business Transformation, MiniMed Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/muthu-sabarethinam/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Muthu serves as Senior Vice President, Transformation & Analytics at MiniMed, where he leads the company's enterprise transformation, data, analytics, and AI strategy. Prior to joining the company in 2024, he served as Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Honeywell Connected Enterprise (HON), where he led the AI strategy for FORGE.AI and launched the company's first suite of generative AI applications. Previous to this, Muthu held leadership roles at TE Connectivity (TEL), Infosys (INFY), and Siemens (Xetra: SIE). Muthu earned a BA in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Annamalai University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. ## Tomer Sabo AI Staff Product Manager, Etsy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tomer-sabo/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Retail Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tomer Sabo is an AI Staff Product Manager at Etsy. He has over 10 years of experience developing AI enabled products across Ecommerce, logistics, finance, government, and healthcare. Before working on chat and agent based applications for Etsy's sellers, Tomer worked on deep learning computer vision products supporting cancer diagnosis at Paige.ai (acquired by Tempus), no-code NLP tools for government and financial analysts at dMetrics (helping grow the business from 0->$100M+ in revenue), and machine learning for Ecommerce returns logistics optimization at Optoro (acquired by Blue Yonder). ## Sarah Sachs AI Lead, Notion Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sarah-sachs/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Sarah Sachs leads AI Engineering at Notion, where she's building the teams and systems behind Notion AI — from model quality and evaluation to agents and search. She cares deeply about doing AI development with rigor and care, and is known for growing strong engineers while staying close to the work. Before Notion, she was Director of AI and Infrastructure at Tome and led NLP and generative AI at Robinhood. ## Atena Sadeghi Global Head of Data and AI, Fedcap group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/atena-sadeghi/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Atena Sadeghi is an Enterprise AI & Data Executive and former Data Scientist leading global AI-ready data platform transformation. She builds enterprise data foundations that enable AI at scale, partnering with executives to deliver governed, measurable business value. ## Pinaki Saha Founder & CEO, Anshar Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pinaki-saha/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Pinaki Saha is a serial entrepreneur and AI visionary, serving as Founder and CEO of both Anshar AI and TekFlix AI — two partner ventures united by a shared belief that research-grade artificial intelligence can fundamentally transform the way businesses operate and learn. At Anshar AI, Pinaki leads a global team of ML/AI engineers delivering custom, production-ready AI systems to enterprises across industries. Spanning offices in Chicago, Orlando, Gothenburg, and Pune, Anshar AI bridges the gap between cutting-edge research — drawing from institutions like Northwestern, Cornell, IIT, and IISc — and the speed of modern product execution, offering capabilities across LLMs, computer vision, NLP, and AI infrastructure. That same philosophy of making AI practical and impactful extends into TekFlix AI, where Pinaki channeled a bold conviction: people don't avoid learning, they avoid boring experiences. TekFlix is an AI-powered platform that transforms organizational expertise into Netflix-style, bite-sized video content — enabling enterprises to onboard, train, and upskill teams with dramatically higher engagement and retention. The two ventures are natural complements: Anshar AI provides the deep AI backbone, while TekFlix applies it to one of enterprise's most persistent challenges — knowledge transfer that actually sticks. With a strong foundation in enterprise software, product development, and business strategy, Pinaki continues to build at the intersection of AI research and real-world impact, helping organizations not just adopt AI, but truly harness it. *(Word count: ~215)* ## Lovedeep Saini Chief Analytics Officer, Conner Strong & Buckelew Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lovedeep-saini/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Insurance Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Lovedeep Saini is Chief Analytics Officer at Conner Strong & Buckelew, where she leads enterprise data and AI initiatives focused on making organizations “AI-ready” at scale. She specializes in building data foundations and AI platforms that enable real-time decision-making and measurable business impact in regulated industries. With a Ph.D. in experimental physics and experience at CERN, she combines deep technical expertise with practical execution to drive enterprise AI transformation. ## Bob Sakalas Innovation Strategist, SAP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bob-sakalas/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Bob Sakalas is an SAP Innovation Strategist with more than three decades of experience helping enterprise customers simplify complexity, improve business processes, and maximize the value of technology investments. Bob's mission sits at the intersection of big-picture innovation and practical execution: making AI, data, applications, and enterprise transformation easier to understand, evaluate, and act on. Sakalas helps business and technology leaders move from hype to structured progress — connecting new capabilities to trusted data, cleaner processes, and more adaptable operating models. ## Kader Sakkaria Global Head of Data Strategy, Marsh Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kader-sakkaria/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Insurance Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Kader Sakkaria is Global Head of Data Strategy at Marsh, where he helps shape enterprise data and AI strategy across a complex global organization. He is a technology and transformation executive with experience building global data, analytics, and AI capabilities, including scaling multidisciplinary teams, modernizing data platforms, and connecting technology investments to measurable business outcomes. Previously, Kader served as Global Head of Data Center of Excellence and Delivery at Gallagher, where he helped grow a global data organization and advance enterprise data and AI readiness. He has also served as Chief AI Officer for the State of Illinois and continues to contribute through board, academic, and civic leadership roles. Kader is an adjunct professor, author of “Chaos by Design,” and a recognized technology leader with experience across consulting, insurance, government, and entrepreneurship. His work focuses on helping organizations move beyond isolated AI experiments by aligning strategy, governance, data foundations, operating models, talent, and adoption to create sustainable enterprise value. ## Prashant Samant CEO, Akido Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashant-samant/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Prashant S. Samant is CEO and co-founder of Akido, a healthcare technology company that builds clinical AI and operates a multi-state medical network serving hundreds of thousands of patients. He co-founded Akido in 2015 through USC’s Digital Health Lab. In 2023, he and his co-founders received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year–Greater Los Angeles Award. Samant is also a co-founder and board member of Grid110, a nonprofit accelerator supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis. ## Jesse Sanders Director of IT Operational Excellence, Clayco Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jesse-sanders/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Jesse Sanders IT Director, Operational Excellence - Office of the CIO, Clayco As IT Director, Operational Excellence within the Office of the CIO at Clayco, I focus on strengthening how technology delivers value by improving performance, elevating service quality, and enabling the business to execute with greater speed, clarity, and confidence. I work across IT and the enterprise to define priority outcomes, establish performance measures tied to Clayco’s goals, and drive continuous improvement that advances operational discipline and innovation. My background in IT leadership, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation allows me to connect strategy with execution. I help teams adopt modern tools and practices, introduce frameworks that unlock productivity, and build cross-functional alignment around the initiatives that matter most. A key part of my role includes fostering responsible AI fluency across the organization, ensuring jobsites and teams are equipped to use emerging capabilities effectively within a broader culture of operational excellence. ## Trooper Sanders President, State AI Safety Roundtable Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/trooper-sanders/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Trooper Sanders is president of the State AI Safety Roundtable, a nonprofit organization working to support and strengthen the power and influence of states in AI safety and good governance. He also serves on a number of AI-connected boards and advisory committees including: the American Arbitration Association board of directors, the International Bar Association’s AI Task Force, the Partnership on AI’s Enterprise AI Steering Committee, and Carnegie Mellon’s Block Center for Technology and Society advisory board. Previously, Trooper served a term on the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, a federal advisory committee created by Congress to advise the President and administration on artificial intelligence (AI) and American competitiveness and progress, where he co-chaired the workforce and opportunity working group. He was CEO of the former Benefits Data Trust. During the Obama administration, Trooper was a policy advisor to first lady Michelle Obama where he led military family policy efforts including the creation of the Joining Forces initiative. He also served as former President Clinton’s post-presidential domestic policy advisor and a White House policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore. He is a graduate of the University of London, London School of Economics, and University of Michigan. ## Arian Sanghvi Intern, Parasol Cooperative Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arian-sanghvi/ ## Vijay Sankararaman Chief AI Officer | Board Advisor | Product & Technology, Novant Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vijay-sankararaman/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Vijay is an enterprise transformation leader who turns AI vision into impact. He has built a successful track of championing future shaping outcomes that makes a difference in the lives of real people. He currently serves as Chief AI Officer at Novant Health, overseeing Product, Technology and Platforms across the enterprise to reimagine patient experience, clinical care through intelligent AI capabilities. Earlier, he has led game changing efforts at Fortune 50 companies like Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's and helped a PE-backed start up reach IPO. Vijay is a Board Advisor at Acies Global and an Executive guest speaker on AI/digital transformation at MIT. As an alumnus of Harvard Business School (HBS), he serves on the board of directors at HBS Charlotte. ## Jahanvi Sardana Partner, Index Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jahanvi-sardana/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Cadmium Role: Presenter Jahanvi Sardana is an early-stage and growth investor at Index Ventures in New York, where she partners with founders building category-defining companies in AI, enterprise software, healthcare, and financial services. Since joining Index she has led investments across these categories and serves on the boards or works with companies including Sublime Security, Thatch, Crosby Legal, and others. Her investment philosophy is simple: invest for strength, not for the absence of weakness. “In the end, I think amazing success can be achieved by highly imperfect people,” she says. “What matters is finding alignment in values and conviction in a founder’s spike, an area of extreme competence or insight that will give them unfair advantage. The rest we can work on together.” Before Index, Jahanvi invested at Stripes, backing companies like Island, Axonius, Lithic, and Oyster. She holds a B.S. in Finance and Business Analytics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. ## David Savage Technology Evangelist, Nash Squared Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-savage/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Meet David Savage, Harvey Nash's Group Technology Evangelist and the voice behind 'Tech Talks'. A Top 100 Global Influencer in Technology (LEAP) and previously the Digital Ambassador of the Year (Computing), David is a film-maker and podcaster. An experienced conference chair and moderator, he brings sharp insight and a no-nonsense approach to dissecting technology’s biggest challenges and opportunities. Since launching in 2015, ‘Tech Talks’ has published over 800 episodes and become a global hit with listeners as one of the world's leading technology podcasts, regularly appearing on the Apple’s Technology Podcast charts. ‘Tech Flix’ evolved out of the stories discovered on the podcast, with 5 documentaries published to date being screened at tech festivals and alongside world-leading brands and institutions such as NASA, Amazon Web Services, London Tech Week and Columbia University. David has been with Harvey Nash since 2007, developing a deep understanding of the technology and talent markets. He was invited to become a member of the IADAS in 2025, and is a judge for the Lovie Awards. He has spoken at major global events including Web Summit, Collision, IFA Berlin, TechBBQ, London Tech Week, Web Summit Rio, Unleash World, Unleash Paris, Unbound, Big Data World, and Viva Tech. ## Piyush Saxena Director AIML, Advice, Wealth Management & AI CoE, Vanguard Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/piyush-saxena/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Piyush Saxena, is Director of AI/ML at Vanguard, where he leads AI/ML for the Advice & Wealth Management portfolio and heads the firm’s Enterprise AI Center of Excellence — Vanguard’s firm-wide priority for responsible-AI standards, model governance, and large-scale Generative AI testing. Before Vanguard, Piyush was Director of Data Science at Direct Supply, where his patented AI work generated new licensing revenue. He has served as a Research Assistant Professor at Marquette University and Adjunct Professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Sciences from Marquette University. ## Ankur Saxena Investment Director, TDK Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ankur-saxena/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Ankur Saxena is an Investment Director at TDK Ventures, leading early-stage investments in AI, Physical AI, and Advanced Computing. With over a decade of experience in venture capital investing across multiple countries, Ankur has built a successful track record in identifying, investing in, and nurturing high-potential technology startups. Prior to joining TDK Ventures, Ankur played a pivotal role at Cisco Investments, spearheading investments across AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, IoT, and robotics. His strategic insight has driven notable investments (over $150 million) and successful exits (over $3 billion), earning him recognition as one of Global Corporate Venturing’s Top 50 Emerging Leaders in 2023. Ankur holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. ## Jim Schiel CEO/Founder, Artisan Agility Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jim-schiel/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Learning & Development Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No For more than 40 years, Jim Schiel has shaped how organizations build software—and he's now at the leading edge of the shift redefining the field: the convergence of Agile and AI. His career has circled one question throughout, and AI has only sharpened it: how do organizations create teams that consistently perform at their best? A Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) since 2005, Jim has trained more than 24,000 professionals worldwide, helping leaders and teams put Agile principles to work in ways that produce real business results rather than process theater. His path began as a software developer in the mid-1980s. Between 2003 and 2008, he led one of the most ambitious Agile transformations of its era—guiding a 1,500-developer organization away from rigid waterfall delivery and into Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) at a scale few had attempted. In 2009, Jim founded Artisan Agility to help organizations meet 21st-century challenges through Agile coaching, leadership development, and consulting—work that has taken him inside Fortune 500 enterprises, early-stage startups, and government agencies across the globe. At the heart of that work is a distinct view of leadership: high-performing teams aren't managed into existence—they're cultivated. In his upcoming book, The 5X Effect, Jim lays out a framework for routinely building genuinely self-managed teams, shifting leaders away from directing the work and toward creating the conditions where exceptional work becomes the natural outcome. It's a philosophy that reframes the leader's job around capability, trust, and accountability rather than control. Today, Jim's central conviction is that AI is rewriting the economics of software development. When code is no longer an organization's most expensive asset, the durable advantage shifts to clear intent, sound judgment, and teams built to learn fast—exactly the strengths Agile was designed to cultivate. The organizations that win won't be the ones that bolt AI onto old delivery models; they'll be the ones that pair human judgment with AI-assisted development to lift both throughput and quality. Sierra Agility, which Jim launched in 2024, is where that conviction takes concrete form. An AI-powered Scrum platform with a built-in coaching engine, Sierra is designed to make Agile teams measurably more effective—surfacing the next best action, strengthening adoption, and meeting teams in the actual flow of their work rather than in a layer of administrative overhead. It reflects Jim's bet on where the discipline is going: Agile without the theater, amplified by AI. What hasn't changed is the throughline of his career: a relentless commitment to continuous improvement, leadership excellence, and team empowerment. Connect with Jim (jim@artisanagility.com) to explore how 21st-century leadership and AI-amplified business agility can transform your organization's performance. ## Drew Schlussel Vice President, Product & Solutions Marketing, Wasabi Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/drew-schlussel/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist While Drew’s career has focused primarily on storage, data protection, and security, his roles have spanned a broad spectrum, including engineering management, product management, and product marketing. Throughout he’s worked with SMBs and Fortune 500 enterprises, collaborating with customers from practically every industry vertical, including a few he’s not allowed to discuss. This broad experience provides a keen insight into understanding customers’ challenges and what is necessary to create customers for life. Drew and his family live in the mountains of Colorado and enjoy all the typical outdoor pursuits like skiing, mountain biking, and fly fishing. ## Ron Schmelzer AI Columnist / Host, Forbes / Scalebrate Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ron-schmelzer/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Ron has written about and covered AI since 1995 and at Forbes since 2018. He writes regularly as a Forbes AI Columnist and contributor to TechTarget and Cognitive World, where his articles reach millions worldwide. Ron is founder and head bot-wrangler at Scalebrate where he helps teams exponential scale using AI-powered tools, automation, systems, education, and community. He also writes for the Exponential Scale newsletter and host of the Exponential Scale podcast to share proven playbooks, stories, and insights from teams that have learned how to scale big without adding tons of headcount. Ron previously served as Global Head, Director of AI Partnerships & Outreach and General Manager of at the Project Management Institute (PMI) after their acquisition of his company Cognilytica, a research, advisory, and education firm focused on AI. At Cognilytica, he developed the CPMAI methodology, training, and certification for running and managing AI projects, now with thousands certified through Cognilytica and PMI. Previously, Ron founded and managed TechBreakfast, the largest monthly demo-focused tech event in the U.S. with over 50,000+ members. He also founded Bizelo, providing SaaS solutions for small business automation as well as ZapThink, an analyst and training firm covering XML, Web Services, and Service-Oriented architecture that was acquired by Dovel Technologies in 2011. Prior to that, Ron founded Zoptopz, a crazy idea for a fad-inspired baseball cap company that failed, and prior to that Channelwave, a pioneering ecommerce and enterprise software firm acquired by Click Commerce after $60M+ in funding. Channelwave acquired his first company, VirtuMall, which was an early e-commerce pioneer that has an entry in Wikipedia for one of the first e-commerce companies founded in 1994. Ron is a TechStars investor, A-Level Capital investor, SXSW Interactive Awards Judge, and author of XML and Web Services Unleashed (SAMS Publishing) and Service-Orient or Be Doomed (Wiley). He has a BSEE in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. ## Jacob Schofield Enterprise AI GTM, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jacob-schofield/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Jake Schofield leads the Google Cloud AI GTM West Enterprise and Semiconductor region. He focuses on AI and Agentic transformation across large enterprise partners powered by Google Cloud. Our team works with some of the largest organizations in the world to unlock the power of AI and Agentic Solutions to build competitive differentiation and drive value realization in the AI Era. ## Tim Schulz CEO, Starseer Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tim-schulz/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Tim Schulz is CEO and co-founder of Starseer, where he builds deep inspection tools that let security teams see inside AI models for supply chain validation and runtime monitoring. Previously, he founded Verizon's AI Red Team, where he led AI security research and testing in AI interpretability, model analysis, and adversarial ML. Tim's career spans offensive security roles at Scythe, MITRE, and Sandia National Labs, focused on building new capabilities to enable testing and evaluation of emerging technologies, from adversary emulation frameworks to security assessment methodologies. He now applies that same approach to AI security tooling. ## Ryan Schwartz Senior Manager, Product Marketing, Abnormal AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-schwartz/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ryan Schwartz Senior Manager, Product Marketing Ryan Schwartz is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Abnormal Security, having built a career in cybersecurity and technology supporting and educating Security and IT leaders on products across data security, endpoint management, and both corporate and consumer identity. He holds a degree in Music Industry from Drexel University, which was clearly a good investment, and lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and two children who are all aware of the importance of multi-factor authentication and not clicking suspicious links. ## Nancy Scola Veteran Technology Reporter, — Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nancy-scola/ Track: AI Policy Summit Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Nancy is a senior magazine reporter whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and politics. For more than a decade her deeply reported feature stories on the role technology plays in modern politics and the history that informs it have appeared in publications like New York, Wired, The Information, Washingtonian, and The Atlantic. She is currently a contributing writer at POLITICO Magazine, having previously served as senior technology reporter for POLITICO and a tech policy reporter for the Washington Post. ## Rob Scott Founder & CEO, HOLOVOX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rob-scott/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes For an AI4 audience of senior executives, investors, and enterprise buyers — the best style is **Executive Narrative**. Professional and credible up front, personal story in the middle, vision at the close. Here it is under 3,000 characters: --- Robert Douglas Scott is a serial inventor and entrepreneur who has spent his career solving problems others have not noticed yet. He started on the sales floor — not as a rookie, but as the closer. The one managers called when deals were slipping. He built a reputation for feeding other reps the exact right words at the exact right moment, turning hesitation into decisions in real time. That instinct never left him. Before technology, there were cars. Robert built West Coast Motors into one of the largest importers of American automobiles — Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti — into Italy, dominating the market until the 2008 financial crisis reshaped the global economy overnight. What followed was Armour Wear, where Robert invented bulletproof underwear for military and law enforcement — protecting areas of the body conventional armor had always left exposed. He is recognized as the first person in the world to apply carbon nanotube technology to protective armor, pioneering the use of one of the strongest materials known to science in wearable ballistic protection. Then his son got an Oculus Rift. Robert put on the headset and immediately saw something else: life-size holographic presence through consumer hardware, without studios or green screens. That vision became HOLOVOX 360. But as the product evolved, Robert recognized a more urgent gap. Not how people see each other — what they say to each other, in the moment it matters most. He returned to the sales floor mentally. The master closer. The second phone. The whisper in the ear at exactly the right second. What if that was available to every professional, in every industry, on every call? That question became Holo Assist — AI that listens to live conversations and delivers personalized coaching cards to the user in 1.2 seconds, invisible to the other party. Not post-call analysis. In the moment. While it is happening. HOLOVOX has filed three provisional patents covering real-time coaching, holographic presence, and the AI personality layer for humanoid robots. The company is in advanced partnership discussions with LEION, the world's leading AR glasses manufacturer, and is targeting a NASDAQ listing. Robert is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. He lived in Shenzhen, China for six months in 2019, building the manufacturer relationships that drive HOLOVOX's hardware strategy today. His belief is simple: AI should make people unstoppable — not obsolete but SUPER HUMAN ## Mark Sear Director of AI Forward Engineering, A.P. Moller - Maersk Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-sear/ Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight ## Beth Sebian Engineering Manager, Etsy Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/beth-sebian/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Retail Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Beth Sebian is an Engineering Manager at Etsy, where she leads seller-facing AI and data analytics products. Her career spans civic tech, enterprise software, eCommerce, and direct services — including roles at Big Cartel, Rally, Stitch Fix, and Two Chairs — with a through-line of building technology that serves the humans on the other end of it, from government agencies and nonprofits to small business owners and consumers. At Etsy, she focuses on shipping AI responsibly: using evals, gating, and trust-centered design to get meaningful features into users' hands — with clear eyes about the stakes of getting it wrong. She holds a Master's in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, which comes up more often in engineering conversations than you'd expect. ## Dane Seelen Faculty/Consulting, Central Lakes College, MN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dane-seelen/ Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: IT Company Size: 251-500 employees State: Minnesota Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Dane Seelen is a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at Metro State University, a Computer Technology Instructor at Central Lakes College, and a technology consultant. His work focuses on applying artificial intelligence in both higher education and real-world business environments. He explores how organizations can move beyond simply acquiring AI tools by preparing their employees, workflows, data, and governance systems to use AI effectively. Drawing from experience in education, cybersecurity, IT operations, and business consulting, he connects AI research with practical implementation. His work emphasizes responsible adoption, measurable value, and the continued importance of human judgment. ## Leo Sei Chief Product Officer, TomTom Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/leo-sei/ Track: Insurance Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Leo Sei is Senior Vice President, Product, UX & Marketing at TomTom and a member of the CEO leadership team, where he leads the company's product organisation across mobility and autonomy, location intelligence, and map foundation. He joined TomTom in 2022 after a decade at Google, where he held product and engineering roles across digital marketing, Android developer tools, and privacy and data governance. He started his career as a CTO and entrepreneur in the connected TV space. Leo holds an MSc in Advanced Computing with a specialisation in AI and Intelligent Systems from Imperial College London, and an engineering degree from Telecom ParisTech. ## Ben Seidl CEO, Autolane Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-seidl/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Retail Job Function: Supply Chain Company Size: 11-50 employees State: Oregon Cadmium Role: Presenter Ben Seidl is the CEO and Co-Founder of Autolane. Autolane is building the orchestration layer that connects autonomous vehicles to businesses. Mr. Seidl is a multi-time venture-backed founder, holding an MBA from UC Berkeley and a Fulbright scholarship from the US State Department. ## Mark Seither Solution Architect - APS Solution Sales, HPE Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-seither/ Track: Workshop Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Arijit Sengupta Founder and CEO, Aible Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arijit-sengupta/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Arijit Sengupta is the Founder and CEO of Aible, the leading autonomous agent solution for business users at enterprise scale. Aible is trusted by Fortune 500 enterprises across retail, healthcare, insurance, transportation, etc. and partners with NVIDIA, Dell, Cisco, HPE, Nebius and others. Previously Arijit founded BeyondCore (acquired by Salesforce.com to become Einstein Discovery). He co-created the Harvard Business School’s first MBA AI course and authored AI Is a Waste of Money, based on 1,000+ AI projects he led. He holds an MBA from Harvard and studied AI at Stanford before it was popular. ## Royal Sequiera VP, AI & Digital Transformation, FGF Brands Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/royal-sequiera/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Bob Serr Chief Technology Officer, Aristocrat Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bob-serr/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Bob Serr is Chief Technology Officer at Aristocrat, where he leads the company's Global Technology Strategy across land-based, social, and iGaming channels. He drives Aristocrat's enterprise AI strategy, embedding AI into content creation, game design, software engineering, and data, while overseeing platform consolidation and the security, governance, and resilience standards required to scale AI safely in a highly regulated industry. Before Aristocrat, Bob spent over 25 years leading technology at planet scale. As VP Engineering at Microsoft, he built Azure Communication Services and its AI-powered communication capabilities for Teams' 300M+ users. As Director of Software Development at Amazon, he led the Alexa Skills Kit team that grew the conversational AI ecosystem to over 100,000 skills. He has led large, complex engineering organizations, co-founded three startups (one acquired by Microsoft), holds a patent in communications systems, earned his MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. ## May Sethaphanich Global Senior Counsel, AI Legal Lead, McDonald's Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/may-sethaphanich/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Retail Job Function: Legal Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter May leads McDonald's Corporation's AI Legal team of attorneys who advise on AI product/system design and deployment, and the company's global AI governance program that covers the US and EU. May's work spans advisory on the intersection of antitrust, consumer protection, employment legal issues and AI, from machine learning algorithms to agentic systems for pricing, sales, supply chain, operational efficiencies and marketing with engineers and architects, to business and legal AI strategy for high business priority initiatives with senior executives. May has a background in technology transactions and privacy, and was previously based at McDonald's APMEA office in Singapore prior to relocating to the Chicago headquarters where she is currently based. She has written on AI governance topics, spoken at AI and legal conferences, and sits on the IAPP AI Governance Training Board. Outside of work, she volunteers as board chair of a global non-profit organization with a mission to mentor young professionals to impact of their cities and communities for good through their work. ## Vaibhav Sethi Product Manager, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vaibhav-sethi/ Track: Google Cloud Programming State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Manthan Shah Head of US Investments, WestBridge Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/manthan-shah/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Manthan Shah - Head of US Investments, WestBridge Capital Manthan Shah is the Head of US Investments at WestBridge Capital, an $8B global investment firm with over two decades of experience partnering with entrepreneurs across both private and public markets in the U.S. and India. Based in Silicon Valley, Manthan works closely with leading AI and SaaS companies such as Turing, Innovaccer, Goldcast, Nexthop, and several emerging startups. Before joining WestBridge, Manthan was an entrepreneur whose company was acquired in 2016. He later worked as an early-stage investor at Matrix Partners India and as an operator at Postmates, where he helped scale the company’s B2B business. Deeply passionate about the US-India corridor, Manthan is always looking to support founders building globally ambitious companies. He graduated from IIT Bombay. ## Ritesh Shah Chief Architect - AI/ML/GenAI, Vanguard Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ritesh-shah/ Track: Evaluation, Observability, & Interpretability [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ritesh Shah Chief Architect – AI/ML/GenAI, Vanguard Ritesh Shah is the Chief Architect for AI, Machine Learning, and Generative AI at Vanguard, bringing over 27 years of technology and architecture leadership experience spanning enterprise data, analytics, cloud platforms, AI, and machine learning. Throughout his career, he has led the design and transformation of large scale technology ecosystems that enable data-driven decision-making and innovation across the enterprise. Over the last decade, Ritesh has been at the forefront of architecting and scaling modern data and AI capabilities, including enterprise data platforms, data lakes, business intelligence and visualization solutions, cloud-based data and analytics platforms, and advanced AI/ML ecosystems. His expertise spans the end-to-end AI lifecycle - from data foundation and model development to production deployment, governance, observability, and operationalization at enterprise scale. Ritesh currently leads architecture strategy for Vanguard's AI and GenAI initiatives, with a focus on cloud-native AI/ML platforms, Generative AI, Agentic AI systems, and custom machine learning platforms. He has played a key role in enabling enterprise adoption of AI by designing scalable, secure, and governed platforms that accelerate experimentation while meeting the demands of reliability, compliance, and operational excellence. His work includes the development of enterprise AI solutions leveraging modern cloud AI services, foundation models, agent frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), model evaluation platforms, and AI governance architectures. Passionate about translating emerging technologies into business value, Ritesh helps organizations navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape while building trusted, production-ready AI solutions that deliver measurable outcomes. At AI4, Ritesh will share insights on how organizations can move beyond AI experimentation and establish a disciplined, scalable approach to evaluating and governing AI systems in production. Drawing from real-world enterprise experience, he will discuss how capabilities such as persona-based testing, Bring Your Own Judges (BYOJ), jury-based evaluations, human-in-the-loop review processes, adversarial testing, and continuous production monitoring can help organizations build trustworthy AI solutions. He will also showcase an enablement architecture that unifies evaluation, governance, observability, and operational workflows across the AI lifecycle, enabling teams to confidently measure, monitor, and improve AI systems from development through production. ## Megs Shah CEO, Parasol Cooperative Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/megs-shah/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Megs Shah is a pioneer in trauma-informed AI. As founder and CEO of The Parasol Cooperative and architect of Ruth AI, she built the world's first chatbot designed to address human pain at scale, a technology now operating across 170 countries and powering national hotlines serving survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and crisis. At Ai4 2025, Geoffrey Hinton called for AI with "maternal instincts", systems that genuinely care about humans. "We need AI mothers rather than AI assistants," he said. "An assistant is someone you can fire. You can't fire your mother." By then, Megs had already built it. Not from theory, but from lived experience: healing from child sexual abuse, nearly ending her own life at 18, parenting a son without passing on her trauma, and two decades building, shipping, and managing technology products and services, including AI, across highly regulated industries—biotech (CSL), pharma (Bristol-Myers Squibb), and consulting at Accenture serving federal and Fortune 500 clients. This combination of deep technical expertise and personal transformation is what makes Ruth different: AI built by someone who understands both the technology and the human beings it serves. In December 2025, Ruth was cited in Congressional testimony as a model for ethical, survivor-centered AI. Ruth was named a 2025 SXSW Innovation Awards Finalist. Ruth has been mentioned in a written testimony at a Congressional briefings on responsible AI, authored policy responses to the White House AI Action Plan, and delivered keynotes to organizations like the Girl Scouts. She has been featured by UN Women (named among women in science making a difference during the pandemic), Forbes, TechCrunch, and Euronews. At AI Con 2025, she received a 9.33/10 speaker score with attendees calling her session "the most important use of AI" at the conference. She speaks on AI liability, survivor-centered design, and building technology that minimizes legal risk and one that might actually protect lives. ## Chirag Shah Professor, University of Washington Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chirag-shah/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Chirag Shah is Professor of Information and Computer Science at University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. He is the Founding Director for InfoSeeking Lab and Founding Co-Director of Center for Responsibility in AI Systems & Experiences (RAISE). His research focuses on building, auditing, and correcting agentic information access systems. Shah is a Distinguished Member of ACM as well as ASIS&T, and a Senior Member of IEEE. He has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles and authored nine books, including textbooks on data science and machine learning as well as a recent general audience book titled 'Agent Nation -- How Autonomous AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Society―and What We Can Do About It' . He works closely with industrial research labs on cutting-edge problems, typically as a visiting researcher. The most recent engagements include Amazon, ByteDance, Getty Images, Microsoft Research, and Spotify. ## Sohaib Shaikh CEO, Virtue AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sohaib-shaikh/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Sohaib Shaikh is CEO of Virtue AI, the leading security, governance, and compliance platform for enterprise AI. Shaikh joined Virtue AI as Head of Sales in April 2026 after more than eight years at C3 AI, where he served as Group Vice President of Sales, and was named CEO in June 2026. Under Sohaib's leadership, the company continues to drive its mission forward, following 600% year-over-year growth since its 2024 Series A, and serving many of the world's top labs and enterprises. ## Rcrysta Shaneih Sr. AI/ML Engineer, Ryder Systems Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rcrysta-shaneih/ Track: Multimodal AI [Technical] Industry: Supply Chain Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Rcrysta Shaneih is a 5x award-winning AI/ML practitioner, international technology speaker, and PhD researcher specializing in AI infrastructure enablement, intelligent systems design and MLOps. She is celebrated for her ability to bridge the worlds of applied science, engineering, and enterprise-scale automation. Over the past decade, she has architected and led more than 100+ mission-critical AI/ML deployments across Fortune 500s, high-growth startups, and public sector environments spanning finance, supply chain and government. At Ryder Systems Inc, Rcrysta serves as the Senior AI/ML Engineer, where she spearheads the design and deployment of predictive AI workflows, embedded ML systems, and large-scale data & AI infrastructures. Her work empowers cross-functional teams to translate complex challenges into intelligent, production-ready systems that drive measureable business impact. Widely respected for formalizing cross-platform AI architectures, she brings a systems thinking approach to solution design, uniting precision engineering with strategic foresight. Her research and leadership continue to shape the future of scalable AI, earning her recognition as a thought leader in the convergence of automation, architecture and artificial intelligence. ## Mark Shank Google Cloud Leader, KPMG Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-shank/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Mayank Sharma CFO, EnergyX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mayank-sharma/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Other Job Function: Finance Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Mayank Sharma is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of EnergyX, where he has played a pivotal role in transforming the company from a pioneering lithium technology developer into one of the world's leading emerging lithium producers. Since joining EnergyX, he has led the company's financing strategy, securing approximately $410 million in equity investments across the corporate and project levels. This includes the recently announced $225 million strategic investment by Eni into EnergyX's Black Giant™ lithium project in Chile, bringing one of the world's largest international energy companies in as a strategic partner. He has also been instrumental in securing significant project financing support, including a $690 million U.S. EXIM Bank Letter of Interest, laying the financial foundation for the commercialization of EnergyX's proprietary GET-Lit™ direct lithium extraction technology and the development of large-scale lithium production projects. Prior to EnergyX, Mayank served as Chief Financial Officer of iM3NY, where he helped raise more than $100 million to finance one of the first independent lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities in the United States. Before entering the battery and critical minerals sector, Mayank spent over thirteen years as an investment banker at HSBC, advising major international energy companies on mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital markets, project finance, structured finance, and strategic transactions across the oil & gas, refining, petrochemicals, LNG, power, and energy infrastructure sectors. This unique combination of global energy investment banking expertise, battery manufacturing experience, and lithium project development has enabled him to successfully finance and develop complex industrial projects, positioning EnergyX as a leader in lithium technology and an emerging global producer of lithium. ## Khyati Sharma Associate Director of Technology, CURE Insurance Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/khyati-sharma/ Track: Insurance Industry: Insurance Job Function: IT Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: Michigan Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight Khyati Sharma is the Associate Director of Technology at CURE Auto Insurance, where she leads enterprise technology initiative, AI adoption, cloud operations, cybersecurity, and digital transformation programs across the organization. Khyati specializes in applying artificial intelligence to solve complex business challenges in the insurance industry, with a focus on improving operational efficiency, enhancing decision-making, and delivering measurable business value. She has led initiatives in predictive analytics, intelligent document processing, workflow automation, and enterprise AI adoption. In addition to driving technology innovation, Khyati oversees cross-functional teams to align technology with strategic business objectives. She is passionate about leveraging AI to improve customer experiences, streamline operations, and accelerate digital transformation. ## Akash Sharma VP Product Management, Enverus Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/akash-sharma/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Akash Sharma, specializes in AI-driven technology solutions and digital transformation. He leads Generative AI strategy across enterprise systems, implementing intelligent solutions that enhance decision-making and operational efficiency. With experience spanning data science, advanced analytics, and energy systems, Akash brings valuable perspective to discussions on AI implementation and grid modernization. He holds degrees in computational data analytics from Georgia Tech and engineering from the University of Houston, with widely cited research papers in technical publications. As a thought leader in digital transformation, Akash has presented at prestigious industry events including SPE, AEE, and INFORMS conferences. His work focuses on leveraging AI applications to optimize resources, improve energy efficiency, and support sustainable technology initiatives across complex systems. ## Vasu Sharma Head of AI, PocketFM Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vasu-sharma/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes I am presently the Head of AI at PocketFM working on long form video generation, content creation and understanding, building foundational models for expressive TTS, creative writing models and foundational research on AI x Narratology. PocketFM is a late stage, 500M$ ARR company which is the leader in long form AI native media entertainment platform. Previously, I worked as a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Tesla Optimus, working on building Causal, Dynamic, Real time World Models to enable closed loop RL training for humanoid robotics. I am also working on building Multimodal foundation models, efficient video generation models, Robotics Foundation models and high fidelity autolabelling pipelines working at massive scale to enable reliable training for Robotic action models and to develop true generalization capabilities in a diverse set of real world usecases. I have also worked as an Applied Research Scientist Lead at Facebook AI research, working on building Multimodal foundational generative AI models. I am also interested in the domain of self supervised learning. I have published 100+ papers across top AI conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, ACL, EMNLP, TMLR, ICLR, NAACL, COLM, EACL, WACV, Interspeech among others garnering over 16k+ citations. I routinely work with multi-billion scale datasets to train these massive multimodal models. In the past, I have also worked as Quantitative Researcher at Citadel where my work involved leveraging the power of Machine Learning and Statistical methods in an attempt to fathom the enigmatic world that is the financial markets. I have also worked at Amazon Alexa AI on large scale multimodal models and Embodied AI applications to bring smart robot intelligence to Alexa devices. I actively advise several early stage startups and often guest lecture at Stanford, CMU, MIT, Oxford, Oreilly among others. I graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur completing my Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering and then completed my graduate school in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at the Language Technologies institute at Carnegie Mellon University. ## Deepank Sharma Field CTO, Cresta Intelligence Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/deepank-sharma/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Deepank Sharma is Field CTO and Head of Technical Solutions at Cresta, leading enterprise technical strategy across Customer Engineering, Solutions Architecture, and the Field CTO practice. In this capacity he serves as the senior technical executive guiding the world's largest enterprises through the design and deployment of production-grade, agentic AI for the contact center. He partners with C-suite leaders at Fortune 500 companies across financial services, telecom, healthcare, and hospitality translating frontier conversational-AI capabilities into measurable business outcomes at scale ## Arman Sharma Deputy Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arman-sharma/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Government Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Arman Sharma serves as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. He leads implementation of the HHS AI Strategy, AI policy, and adoption of artificial intelligence across the Department. He also works across HHS Divisions to enable AI and technology adoption across the health and human services sector. ## Daniel Shea Deployed Engineer, LangChain Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/daniel-shea/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Daniel Shea is a Deployed Engineer at LangChain ## Emmett Shear Founder, Softmax Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/emmett-shear/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Emmett Shear is the co-founder and CEO of Softmax, an independent research lab building a massively multiplayer benchmark for social intelligence and alignment. Before Softmax, he co-founded Twitch, was a partner at Y Combinator, and briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI. He studied computer science at Yale and reads a lot of books. ## Benjamin Shi VP, Growth & Strategy, TextQL Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/benjamin-shi/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: Operations Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Jonathan Shieber Journalist, Resilience Media Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jonathan-shieber/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Jonathan Shieber is an editor-at-large for Resilience Media and a Senior Strategist at LaunchSquad. He previously worked as a Venture Partner at FootPrint Coalition and spent 20 years covering emerging tech ecosystems in New York, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and Atlanta for Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and TechCrunch. ## Kaushik Shirhatti VP, AI Factory, Nvidia Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kaushik-shirhatti/ Cadmium Role: Keynote Speaker Kaushik Shirhatti serves as the Vice President of AI Factory where he leads strategic initiatives to evangelize, activate, and operationalize AI factories around the globe. Kaushik champions the practical application of AI to solve complex challenges, helping organizations build robust AI factories that deliver measurable business value. ## Tusheet Shrivastava Founder, CTO, GeoIQ - A Lenskart Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tusheet-shrivastava/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Retail Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Tusheet Shrivastava leads AI initiatives at Lenskart, one of the world's largest omnichannel eyewear retailers, and is the Co-Founder & CTO of GeoIQ, the location intelligence company Lenskart acquired, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur. He has spent over a decade building AI systems at scale: predictive models in finance, large-scale recommender systems in edtech, and hyperlocal location AI at GeoIQ, which powered Lenskart's expansion from 700 to 3,000+ stores across India. Today he builds intelligent systems across the business: multimodal voice and video, text agents that assist customers online, and Saathi, an AI assistant empowering 20,000+ store staff on the ground. ## Shubham Shukla Data Scientist II, Nordstrom Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shubham-shukla/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Shubham is a Data Scientist II at Nordstrom and holds an M.S. in Computing & Information Science with AI specialization from Cornell University. He architects large-scale multimodal AI systems serving millions of customers, with his work on vision-language models and recommendation systems driving significant measurable business impact across the retail domain. He also leads the development of enterprise multi-agent AI platforms at Nordstrom. Shubham serves as a peer reviewer for leading venues including NeurIPS, ACL, and EMNLP, and has been a recurring contributor to the AI4 conference series since 2023. He is passionate about advancing responsible AI adoption in retail and mentoring the next generation of applied AI practitioners. ## Ariel Shulman Chief Product Officer, Bright Data Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ariel-shulman/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Ariel Shulman - Chief Product Officer (CPO) Ariel Shulman is an accomplished executive with extensive experience in technology management, business development, marketing, and strategy. Since joining Bright Data in 2021, Ariel has leveraged his networking, security, and Internet expertise to drive innovation to access high-quality public web data solutions at scale. He now serves as VP of Product, responsible for Bright Data’s AI-integrated product suite that leads innovation. Fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Hebrew, and with professional experience across multiple countries, Ariel plays a pivotal role in shaping Bright Data's global positioning. ## Mary Sibley RVP, SAP Cloud ERP Customer Advisory, SAP Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mary-sibley/ Track: CFO & Finance Industry: Software Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Mary is a Regional Vice President in SAP Cloud ERP Customer Advisory, where she helps organizations reimagine how they operate by translating the promise of AI into the path of the Autonomous Enterprise. She is known for connecting strategy, technology, and execution through clear thought leadership, trusted expertise, and compelling executive engagement. With over four decades of experience, Mary has built and led high-performing teams across enterprise software, consulting, and corporate finance. Her career spans senior leadership roles at SAP, Oracle, PwC, and Schlumberger, giving her a uniquely holistic perspective on digital transformation—from boardroom vision to operational reality. Throughout her career at SAP, Mary has shaped global presales excellence, sales enablement, and customer advisory programs, influencing how organizations adopt and derive value from cloud ERP at scale. Her work is grounded in both strategic insight and financial rigor, enabling leaders to align innovation with sustainable business value. Mary is a CPA and holds an MBA in Finance from Babson College, along with a BS from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, Honors Program, with concentrations in Accounting and Computer Science. She is a recipient of SAP’s Distinguished Leader Award and has been recognized in Who’s Who Women in Business. ## Frederic Siboulet Financial Services Strategy, Major US Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/frederic-siboulet/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: No Frederic is Managing Director of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency, and Financial Risk Management at iEpsilon, and a Professor of Quantitative Finance, Derivatives and Risk Management at NYU's Master of Finance and Risk Engineering program. A trusted C-suite advisor, he specializes in directing and delivering strategy, business and operational frameworks, including data, modelling and analytics, and technology initiatives across the financial services industry. Frederic brings deep, multi-asset expertise spanning trading, banking, operations, investment management, risk management, modelling, analytics, and emerging technologies including blockchain, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. His career spans globally recognized organizations — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Reuters, and IBM — as well as leading fintech firms such as Murex and Algorithmics. He has been collaborating extensively with tier-one financial institutions on both the buy-side and the sell-side, such as JPMorgan and Citibank. His expertise and leadership extend beyond traditional quantitative finance to encompass advanced machine learning, generative, and agentic AI. He has a proven record of leading high-performance, cross-functional teams, driving complex projects from concept to delivery, and building business cases that bring senior leadership on board. He is equally known for cultivating trust across peers, motivating teams, and fostering cultures of continuous innovation. Passionate about education, Frederic brings this same rigor and forward-thinking perspective to the classroom at NYU, preparing the next generation of finance and risk professionals for a rapidly evolving, technology-driven landscape. ## Fanny Sie Digital Health Businesss Architect - AI Enablement/Trusted Environments, Roche Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/fanny-sie/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Fanny Sie is a Digital Health Business Architect for Roche Information Solutions (RIS), specializing in forging strategic partnerships. Her current work focuses on leveraging Trusted Research Environments to accelerate the development and scaling of AI solutions within healthcare delivery systems. Fanny has a significant history with Roche, beginning in 2019. She previously served as the Head of AI and Emerging Technology, focusing on M&A engagement with external innovators (academia, start-ups). Prior to that, she was the Head of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health for Roche Canada and is the founder of the Roche Global AI Centre of Excellence (AI with Roche). Bringing extensive experience as a clinician, researcher, and business development professional, Fanny's expertise spans medical devices, AI and analytics, and digital health assets. Her diverse career highlights include treating patients as a Radiation Therapist, leading Research and Development of medical imaging technologies, driving Commercialization for 15 academic institutions, and managing government relations for federal digital health programs. Committed to advancing technology and inclusion, Fanny is also a board member for Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster (DIGITAL) a non-profit consortium focused on accelerating Canadian solutions in critical sectors like health and AI, and a board member for Hackergal, a national organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in tech by providing coding experiences for girls and gender-diverse learners. Additionally, she serves as an advisor and mentor to start-ups in the AI biotech space. ## Seth Siegler Chief Innovation Officer, eXp Realty Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/seth-siegler/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Seth is the Chief Innovation Officer at eXp Realty with a history that includes two startup exits and a couple of technology patents. At eXp, he leads innovation initiatives focused on applying AI, automation, and other emerging technologies to drive operational efficiency, reinvent the way work happens and help real estate agents work smarter, grow their businesses. He started in the real estate industry as a broker, but spent most of his career as a startup founder in the proptech space. After acquisitions, exits, and leadership roles, he joined eXp six years ago to focus on innovation at scale. Seth lives in San Diego, CA, with his wife, 8-year-old son, and a very mischievous goldendoodle. ## Sam Siewert Professor, California State University Chico Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sam-siewert/ Industry: Education Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: California Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Dr. Sam Siewert Professor at California State University Chico Associate Professor Adjunct at University of Colorado at Boulder Dr. Sam Siewert is a Professor of Computer Science at California State University and an Associate Professor Adjunct of Computer Engineering at University of Colorado. He has a B.S. in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from University of Notre Dame and M.S., Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Colorado. He worked in the computer engineering industry for twenty-four years before starting an academic career in 2012. Dr. Siewert spent half of this time on NASA astronautics and deep space exploration programs and the next half on commercial product development for high performance computing and networking. Research interests include computer vision, sensor fusion, machine learning, and real-time and interactive systems. Dr. Siewert is a co-founder of the Embedded Systems Engineering graduate program at the University of Colorado and is the Computer Science graduate curriculum committee chair at California State University Chico. ## Aartee Simran Dhomeja Senior Data Scientist, FedEx Express Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aartee-simran-dhomeja/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Aartee Simran Dhomeja is a Senior Data Scientist at FedEx Express Corporation, where she develops enterprise Generative AI and machine learning solutions focused on knowledge discovery, intelligent search, workflow automation, and decision support. Her work centers on Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic retrieval systems, AI-powered assistants, evaluation frameworks, and the deployment of reliable AI applications in complex enterprise environments. At FedEx, Aartee has led the development of AI-powered knowledge platforms that integrate foundation models with large-scale enterprise content, enabling employees to efficiently access and reason over operational and business information. Her work includes designing retrieval architectures, improving relevance and grounding, developing evaluation methodologies for LLM-based systems, and addressing practical challenges related to scalability, governance, and user adoption. She is particularly interested in AI assistants, agentic workflows, and the evolving role of Generative AI in augmenting knowledge work and software development. Prior to specializing in Generative AI, Aartee developed and deployed machine learning, forecasting, optimization, and decision-support systems across logistics, supply chain, healthcare, and retail environments. This breadth of experience informs her approach to enterprise AI, where she focuses on building reliable, scalable systems supported by strong evaluation frameworks, governance practices, and real-world operational impact. Aartee holds a Master of Science in Data Analytics Engineering from Northeastern University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from SZABIST. ## Mudit Singh Co-Founder and Head of Growth, TestMu AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mudit-singh/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Mudit Singh, Co-Founder and VP of Growth at TestMu AI, is a dynamic force in the world of software innovation. With over a decade of expertise in building and scaling remarkable software products, Mudit has played a pivotal role in LambdaTest’s mission to transform the software testing landscape. His strategic vision centers on shifting testing ecosystems to the cloud, optimizing efficiency, and driving tangible business outcomes. Known for his hands-on approach to product development, Mudit thrives on creating solutions that deliver immense value to customers. When he's not pushing the boundaries of product and growth, Mudit enjoys exploring the intersection of technology and business trends, always staying ahead of the curve. ## Ajit Singh Chief Architect, The Friedkin Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ajit-singh/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Other Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Ajit Singh, MS, MBA, is Chief Architect & Technology Officer at The Friedkin Group, a diversified international conglomerate headquartered in Houston, where he leads enterprise architecture, software engineering, cloud, and data & AI platforms across operating companies spanning financial services, logistics, and retail. He established the group's Centers of Excellence for Cloud, Analytics, and AI and is now three years into an enterprise-wide AI program judged by a single standard: measurable bottom-line impact. His perspective on governing AI was shaped by more than two decades running mission-critical technology in regulated industries. Over 15 years at JPMorgan Chase, he rose from software engineer to Global Technology Executive for Margin and Collateral Management, leading organizations of 500+ technologists across 10+ mission-critical products serving corporate, investment, commercial, and government banking. As CIO & CISO of Southwestern National Bank, he rebuilt a community bank into a 100% digital, 100% cloud-native institution within a year — improving its regulatory rating from 5 to 2 and delivering the best profits in the bank's history. Earlier, as Head of Professional Services at the AI fintech Digital Reasoning, he led a 100+ member global team delivering insider-threat AI solutions to some of the world's most complex financial institutions. Ajit holds an MBA from Rice University and an MS in Systems Engineering from IIT Delhi, with executive credentials in cybersecurity, AI, and data strategy from Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin. His message for the age of AI agents: stop drawing blueprints — start writing constitutions. ## Navrina Singh CEO/Founder, Credo AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/navrina-singh/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Navrina Singh is the Founder & CEO of Credo AI, the category-defining leader in AI Governance, recognized by TIME as one of the Top 100 AI Leaders in the World in 2025. Under her leadership, Credo AI is setting the global standard for Trusted AI, equipping enterprises with a unified AI Governance platform and advisory services to confidently scale Generative and Agentic AI while managing AI risks and aligning with global regulations and company values. A technology leader with 18+ years at Microsoft and Qualcomm, Navrina has shaped the future of AI policy and governance as a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC), a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, UN AI expert , OECD AI expert and a former board member of the Mozilla Foundation. She holds an M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MBA from USC Marshall, and a B.S. in Electronics & Telecommunications from India. ## Richa Singh Head of AI & Data, Lexington Partners Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/richa-singh/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: RAG & Proprietary Data Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Richa Singh is Head of AI & Data at Lexington Partners, where she leads firmwide engineering initiatives across AI, data, and digital transformation. Since joining Lexington in 2024, she has built the function and global team from the ground up. Her work focuses on modernizing the firm’s technology foundation, applying AI to real business problems, and building solutions that improve how teams work and make decisions. Richa has 17 years of experience in technology and financial services. She is also a Guest Lecturer at Columbia Business School, where she contributes to GenAI in Business courses and shares a practitioner’s perspective on how emerging technologies are being applied within enterprises. Before joining Lexington, Richa was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs in Investment Banking Engineering, where she led the AI Center of Excellence and data platform teams supporting Investment Banking. Earlier in her career, she spent 3 years at IBM working on enterprise technology and analytics. Over the course of her career, she has built and led teams across software engineering, AI, data platforms, architecture, analytics, and digital products. Richa holds a master’s degree in Operations Research from Columbia University, with a focus on machine learning and data science. ## Rampal Singh SVP & Global Business Head, Hybrid Cloud Services and AI Factory, HCLTech Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rampal-singh/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Rampal Singh is a Senior Vice President and Global Business Head for Hybrid Cloud, Sovereign Cloud, AI Data Centres and AI Factories at HCLTech. He is a senior global business and technology executive, responsible for shaping strategy, driving P&L performance and accelerating growth across a global portfolio that enables enterprises and governments to build the digital infrastructure powering the next generation of AI. With over two decades of experience, Rampal has built and scaled global technology businesses, leading multi-billion-dollar portfolios and delivering sustained growth in revenue, profitability and market share. He has consistently led large-scale enterprise transformations, redefining operating models, strengthening portfolio strategy, accelerating go-to-market execution and building high-performing, disciplined organisations. His career reflects a C-suite leadership profile with deep exposure to board-level priorities, enterprise value creation and end-to-end business accountability. His expertise spans business strategy, P&L leadership, AI and cloud infrastructure, data centres, sovereign cloud, business development, portfolio management, commercial strategy, alliances, outsourcing and ecosystem partnerships. He has built and led globally distributed leadership teams anchored in accountability, collaboration and customer success. Recognised as a thought leader in enterprise AI, Rampal is a frequent contributor to leading global business and technology forums and publications. His perspectives on Sovereign AI, AI infrastructure economics, AI Factories and digital sovereignty are shaping how organisations move beyond experimentation to achieve AI at scale and industrialise AI adoption. At the core of his leadership philosophy is a belief that enduring success is built through developing people, creating resilient organisations and delivering long-term value for customers, partners and shareholders. A lifelong learner, he remains focused on translating emerging technologies into scalable, high-impact businesses that deliver sustained competitive advantage. ## Ansh Singh Chief of Staff, Simplismart Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ansh-singh/ Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Aanish Singla Partner & Director - AI and Data Science, Nagarro Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aanish-singla/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: AI & Data Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Aanish leads the Data Science and AI practice at Nagarro, where his goal is to help global enterprises transform AI into measurable business outcomes. With over 22 years of experience in data science, analytics, and Generative AI, he specializes in causal modeling, forecasting, Agentic AI, and building scalable AI solutions that solve complex business challenges. Working across industries including Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Automotive, Retail and CPG, Aanish guides organizations throughout their AI journey, from strategy and use case discovery to ROI assessment, stakeholder enablement, and enterprise-wide implementation. He is particularly passionate about applying AI to transform supply chain operations, helping organizations improve efficiency, resilience, and decision-making through data science. ## Amit Sinha Head of Artificial Intelligence, TRC Companies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/amit-sinha/ Track: Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Amit Sinha is the Head of Artificial Intelligence at TRC Companies, where he leads AI initiatives across engineering and business operations. His work spans computer vision for the AEC industry, utility asset management, 3D digital twins for site and infrastructure monitoring, and agentic AI for automating coordination from engineering drawing to build. He has a PhD in optimization, simulation, and automatic differentiation in AI, and has lived through the AI winter of the nineties and the current wave of generative AI — which makes him a realist about what it takes to actually deploy AI in environments where data governance and standardization remain an open challenge. He has been instrumental in bringing new multimillion-dollar revenues using AI at his company and has delivered up to 10x impact in solving large-scale engineering problems using AI. ## Kumaran Siva Corporate Vice President, Enterprise AI, AMD Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kumaran-siva/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kumaran Siva oversees strategic business development and product management for AMD’s software and systems solutions. Earlier roles at AMD include leading the Enterprise Strategic Business Development, and Cloud Business Group. He has deep experience spanning processors and networking, having held positions at Inphi, Broadcom, Arm, and PMC-Sierra. Kumaran earned a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an M.S. in Software Engineering from Harvard University. ## Lex Sivakumar VP, Growth, Regal AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lex-sivakumar/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Lex Sivakumar is VP of Growth at Regal, where he leads Marketing, Business Development, and Revenue Operations. Before Regal, Lex held GTM Strategy and Operations roles at UiPath, Google, and LinkedIn and began his career in healthcare consulting at IQVIA. He brings over a decade of experience scaling growth programs at enterprise software companies, and has helped Regal grow from early-stage startup into the voice AI platform powering 400M+ calls. ## Peter Sloterdyk Chief Marketing Officer, Gist Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/peter-sloterdyk/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Peter Sloterdyk is the Chief Marketing Officer of Gist, a visibility platform designed to track, measure, and optimize brand visibility across major AI answer engines. He leads global brand strategy, marketing, communications, and growth. Sloterdyk brings more than two decades of marketing leadership across technology, media, and consumer platforms, with a track record of scaling emerging companies into trusted global brands. Prior to his current role, Sloterdyk served as Global Chief Marketing and Technology Officer at Koala, the Australia-founded direct-to-consumer furniture brand, where he helped guide the company’s international expansion and digital-first marketing strategy. Before that he spent time at Netflix, leading original series marketing across multiple countries, devising campaigns that expanded and engaged the audience. He formerly led the global marketing organization for the Grindr family of brands, overseeing worldwide marketing, user growth, and brand strategy during a period of rapid international expansion. His leadership helped scale Grindr into one of the largest social networking platforms, supporting its global growth leading up to its acquisition by Kunlun Tech. In addition to his corporate leadership, Sloterdyk serves on several boards and actively advises growth-stage startups across sectors such as real estate, entertainment, AI, and consumer tech. Gist is a suite of visibility tools that helps brands, publishers, and creators understand how they are discovered and recommended in generative AI. Its parent company, ProRata, provides the attribution layer underneath to help publishers and creators understand where, when, and how their content is used across AI answers. ## Chris Slovak Field CTO, Unframe Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-slovak/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Bridges the technical and commercial to help strategic enterprises unlock the full potential of AI. With 15+ years scaling businesses from early-stage to unicorn, he's built global technical teams, secured patents, and originated category-defining strategies across data, analytics, and SaaS. ## Bryan Smith CEO, Expedient Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bryan-smith/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Bryan Smith Chief Executive Officer Bryan Smith serves as Chief Executive Officer at Expedient and brings more than 25 years of experience in the Telecommunications and Technology industries to his role. Prior to taking on the role of CEO, Bryan served as SVP and Chief Strategy Officer of Expedient overseeing strategic growth planning, product design, marketing, and business development for Expedient. Bryan was one of the initial employees of Expedient in 2001 and has been instrumental in identifying expansion/acquisition opportunities. He has been involved at every stage of Expedient’s growth from the initial start as a fixed-wireless Internet Service Provider (ISP) to a leading data center and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. In 2013, he was honored as one of the Top 20 People to Know in Technology by Business First. Bryan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from Baldwin Wallace College and an Executive MBA from The Ohio State University. ## Shane Snider Senior Writer, DCK Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shane-snider/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes None ## Ilai Soloducho Chief AI Officer & Chief of Staff to Group CEO, Strauss Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ilai-soloducho/ Track: Food & Agriculture Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Ilai Soloducho, MPA, is the Chief AI Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Strauss Group, a leading food and beverage companies. He leads the company’s enterprise AI strategy, focusing on measurable business impact, organizational transformation, and the responsible adoption of AI at scale. Previously, Ilai held leadership roles at Google X and Google Labs, where he helped build and scale agentic AI products, including Google’s Data Science Agent and Colab AI. Earlier in his career, he worked at Palantir Technologies and served in an elite technology unit. Ilai holds an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School and a BSc in Computer Science from Reichman University. ## Monisha Somji Digital & AI transformation Executive, Enterprise AI & Digital Transformation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/monisha-somji/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Systems Engineering/Network Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Monisha is a senior technology executive with 20+ years of experience leading digital and AI transformation for large-scale, high-growth organizations. She specializes in translating complex technology strategy into enterprise-wide outcomes — and in building the technology solutions that bring that strategy to life, bridging the gap between vision and execution across diverse business functions. At Waymo, Monisha’s role as a leader for Digital and AI Transformation encompassed strategy realization, data and technology platform enablement, and portfolio delivery across 12+ business functions, with direct advisory responsibility to the C-suite and senior leadership on roadmap development, investment prioritization, and initiative performance at scale. Her executive skill set spans digital and AI portfolio governance, data architecture and platform strategy, investment prioritization, right-sizing teams for delivery, cross-functional alignment, and the end-to-end operationalization of these initiatives—supported by a track record of translating complex technology and data-driven transformation narratives into clear, decision-ready insights for boards, executive committees, and senior stakeholders. Monisha’s work sits at the intersection of technology, data, and business growth—architecting the enterprise capabilities, scalable platforms, governance frameworks, and adoption strategies required to move from AI ambition to measurable, sustained impact. She is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, a member of Chief, and a sought-after speaker on AI governance, data-driven transformation, human-centered AI, and the future of the digital enterprise. ## Kunal Sonalkar Data Scientist, Nordstrom Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kunal-sonalkar/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Industry: Retail Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Kunal Sonalkar is a data scientist at Nordstrom focused on e-commerce search relevance, sponsored product advertising, and recommendation systems. He enjoys building practical AI systems that improve how people find products, measure impact, and make better decisions at scale. His work has centered on hybrid search, sequential recommendation systems, query understanding, and multi-touch attribution, with a strong emphasis on turning research into solutions that actually work in production. ## Nitesh Soni Global Head of Data Science (Digital Commercial), Sanofi Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nitesh-soni/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Nitesh Soni is a globally recognized AI and Digital Transformation leader with over 20 years of experience architecting and scaling enterprise‑grade AI capabilities that generate hundreds of millions in annual business value. A forward‑thinking leader in Generative AI and Agentic AI, he brings extensive hands‑on expertise across the complete AI lifecycle and consistently turns cutting‑edge innovation into tangible operational and financial outcomes. With a current focus on advancing AI in the pharmaceutical sector, Nitesh partners with senior leadership to shape enterprise strategy, guide investment decisions, and champion responsible AI adoption. Earlier in his research career, he was honored as one of the Top 100 Scientists, with publications accumulating over 1,000 citations. He is also a highly sought‑after global speaker influencing the direction of AI‑driven transformation ## Daniel Sonner Co-Founder, Tauroi Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/daniel-sonner/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Daniel is a co-founder of the algorithmic trading hedge fund Tauroi Technologies. Prior to cofounding Tauroi Technologies, Daniel spent four years writing highly concurrent, highly reliable code for Pure Storage's data replication features and has a patent as the primary inventor for the integration of the Quality of Service Fairness with Replication. At Pure Storage he wrote software that was robust against unexpected failure conditions and that ran in a highly concurrent and performance sensitive environment. Daniel is an accomplished bridge player who became a life master at age 22 and won the World Bridge Federation Junior Online World Championship in 2019. ## Keith Soura CTO, Arch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/keith-soura/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Keith Soura is the Chief Technology Officer of Arch (arch.com) and Senior AI Advisor to Better Mortgage. At Arch, he leads the R&D organization, and at Better he advises on weaving predictive and conversational AI models into highly regulated lending products — fostering a culture that unlocks continuous AI-driven innovation in a responsible, consumer-focused way. With more than a decade of fintech and prop-tech experience, Keith previously led Engineering at Better Mortgage, served as CTO of VERO, and was a platform engineer at Blend — experiences that honed his expertise in scaling cloud SaaS architectures and data-driven decision engines. He has also served on the Board of MISMO, the mortgage industry's standards organization, where he worked alongside other incredible professionals to help democratize data access across the banking industry. He is an inventor on U.S. patents for secure, event-driven financial data exchange, underscoring his focus on trustworthy AI and integration at enterprise scale. ## Andrea Spielvogel Professor, Nürtingen-Geislingen University (NGU) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrea-spielvogel/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Education Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator I'm Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Business Practice at HfWU Nürtingen-Geislingen and founder of Spielvogel.AI GmbH. My work focuses on AI-supported digital innovation, customer-centric business models and the transformation of organizations through data-driven and generative AI approaches. I combine academic teaching with more than two decades of leadership experience in mobility, financial services, consulting and digital business development. In previous roles at Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Mobility, car2go/moovel, Zühlke Engineering and Auto Club Europa, I led digital transformation initiatives, built innovation teams and solution centers, developed AI-based services and supported organizations in translating emerging technologies into practical business applications. By way of background, my research currently focuses on two areas. The first is governing prompt-based innovation. As generative AI and vibe-coding tools enable non-technical users to develop digital products at unprecedented speed, responsibility for regulatory compliance, data protection, risk management, and documentation increasingly shifts to innovators who may lack the necessary specialist expertise. My research examines how regulatory and governance blind spots can be identified and explained during early-stage innovation, how proportionate actions can be recommended, and how human oversight can be supported without unnecessarily slowing down the innovation process. I will be presenting this research at the Open and User Innovation Conference at Harvard Business School shortly before Ai4. My second area of interest examines AI use through a leadership lens. In this perspective, the human user takes on the role of a leader, while AI agents function as a team that must be selected, instructed, coordinated, and evaluated. This shifts the focus from merely using individual AI tools to leading an AI-based workforce and raises important questions about leadership capabilities, delegation, decision-making, trust, and accountability. ## Marcus Spillane SVP Innovation, Howard Hughes Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marcus-spillane/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Marcus Spillane is Senior Vice President of Innovation, where he leads HHX, the Innovation Hub at Howard Hughes. He oversees the company’s innovation strategy and is responsible for leveraging emerging technologies to strengthen the company’s main business lines. Prior to joining Howard Hughes Mr. Spillane was a 5-time founder, a startup advisor and angel investor. With a keen eye for spotting emerging technologies and leveraging them for business growth he has worked extensively with startups to develop and commercialize innovations in areas like blockchain, fintech, and web3. With over 25 years of diverse experience, he has held numerous roles including the head of business development at a fintech startup pioneering a blockchain platform for corporate bonds, managed the acquisition and operation of a major heavy civil engineering firm in the UK and successfully co-founded a unified communications enterprise which he sold in 2021. Mr. Spillane holds a B. Comm from University College Cork and is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland. ## Prashanth Srinivasan Senior ML Engineer, DoorDash Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashanth-srinivasan/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Arjun Srinivasan SVP AI & Data Science, ShipStation Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arjun-srinivasan/ Track: Transportation & Logistics Industry: Private Equity Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Panelist Job Level: Executive: C-Suite, Founder, Top most leader Company Revenue: $1B-$5B Role in Decision-Making Process: Budget owner or final decision maker Arjun Srinivasan is a distinguished Data+AI executive with over 20 years of experience spanning energy, retail, tech, supply chain and logistics. Currently as the SVP of AI & Data Science at WWEX Group, Arjun spearheads the strategy and execution of AI, Automation & Data Science, driving business value and operational efficiency. His work at Wesco, Amazon and ExxonMobil has set benchmarks in Deep Tech, Data and AI driven business strategies, significantly boosting revenues, driving substantial cost savings and realizing operational efficiencies. A recognized voice in the Data and AI community, Arjun has earned accolades such as the 2025 Product Leaders Award, 2025 OnCon Icon Award Top 50 Data & Analytics Professional, AI 100 Distinguished Leader Award for 2024 and LinkedIn Top Voice in AI and Data Science for his contributions. His strong engineering background with robotics and machine learning specialization, coupled with an Ivy League MBA, positions him uniquely to drive enterprise wide technology strategy with a keen focus on driving business value. Arjun is also an active member of several Data+AI leadership councils and engages extensively with C-level executives to shape AI-centric strategies that foster sustainable and ethical technology use. His commitment to AI education and democratization reflects in his mentorship and public speaking roles at industry conferences and roundtables. His visionary leadership continues to influence both the current technological landscape and the next generation of AI innovation. ## Sanchit Srivastava Sr. Manager Data Analytics & Architecture / Principal Architect, General Mills Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sanchit-srivastava/ Track: Synthetic Data & Data Generation [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sanchit Srivastava is a Data & AI leader at the forefront of enterprise AI transformation, specializing in building intelligent data foundations that make AI systems trustworthy, scalable, and production-ready. With deep expertise spanning data architecture, machine learning pipelines, and AI enablement, he has led initiatives that translate complex AI models into real-world business impact across large-scale technology ecosystems. Sanchit believes that the future of AI isn't just about better algorithms — it's about creating the right conditions for AI to thrive at enterprise scale. His work bridges the gap between AI research and production deployment, helping organizations move from AI experimentation to measurable, sustainable intelligence ## Paul St Vil Field CTO for AI, Rubrik Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/paul-st-vil/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Tracy St.Dic Global Head of Talent, Zapier Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tracy-st-dic/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: HR Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Tracy St.Dic is the Global Head of Talent at Zapier, the most connected AI orchestration platform. She oversees talent acquisition and intelligence, onboarding, employer branding, diversity partnerships, internal mobility, and executive talent planning. She also leads Zapier's global staffing strategy and AI fluency initiatives, helping shape how the company builds and prepares its workforce for an AI-native future. Prior to transitioning to tech, Tracy was the SVP of national recruitment for Teach For America, an education non-profit responsible for the largest, most diverse teacher pipeline in the country. ## Aaron Stanley Managing Director, Promenade Advisory Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aaron-stanley/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Aaron Stanley is the founder of Promenade Advisory, a narrative architecture and strategic advisory firm. He also serves as Executive Producer of USA House events in Davos at the World Economic Forum and at the Organization of American States General Assembly in Panama City. Previously, he was a Washington bureau correspondent for the Financial Times, Managing Director at CoinDesk, and a Forbes Digital Assets columnist. He also hosts Bits and Borders, a podcast covering digital assets and fintech in Brazil and Latin America. Aaron is based across the U.S. and Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese. ## Garence Staraci Managing Director, Wellington Management Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/garence-staraci/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Financial Services: Asset Management Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Steve Stein Product Marketing, NVIDIA Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steve-stein/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Steve Stein is a senior product marketing leader at NVIDIA specializing in Agentic AI, enterprise AI systems, and data center AI platforms. He drives go-to-market strategy, positioning, and messaging for AI infrastructure and solutions that help enterprises deploy intelligent, automated workflows at scale. Steve brings deep expertise in sales enablement, launch strategy, and OEM partner co-marketing, with a focus on translating complex AI capabilities into clear business value. He has held senior marketing roles at Microsoft, Intel, HPE, and Google, and brings additional leadership experience from the U.S. Air Force. ## Devin Stevens Head of Solutions Engineering & Implementation, Scrunch Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/devin-stevens/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Devin Stevens leads Solutions Engineering & Implementation at Scrunch, where he works daily with Fortune 100 companies to help them understand and improve how AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude represent their brands. Speaking with ten to fifteen companies a week navigating the shift from traditional search to AI-driven discovery, Devin brings a practitioner's perspective on what actually drives ROI — and where enterprise AI deployments tend to stall. He comes to this work with more than a decade of enterprise SaaS experience, having led solutions consulting and professional services teams at Gainsight, Hearsay Systems (acquired by Yext for $220M), and Yext — building a career around helping complex organizations move from promising technology to production at scale. ## Chris Stevens President, US Automation, Siemens Digital Industries Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-stevens/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Colorado Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Chris Stevens is President of US Automation for Siemens Digital Industries, where he helps manufacturers turn automation, software, and AI into measurable business outcomes on the shop floor. His teams parter with operations and IT/OT leaders to move beyond pilots and deliver at scale by connecting data, people, and machines to lift throughput and yield, stabilize quality, and reduce energy intensity while protecting safety and compliance in mission critical events. As a trusted industry voice, Chris focuses on production grade AI that is governed, observable, and reversible, augmented by workforce copilots that make complex systems intuitive for frontline teams. Before leading US Automation, his career began in automotive assembly and test systems. He then spent over two decades in Siemens’ industrial software business, where he ultimately served as Vice President for strategic verticals. Chris holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University and lives in the Detroit metro area with his family ## Richard Stiennon Chief Research Analyst, IT-HARVEST Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/richard-stiennon/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Richard Stiennon is Chief Research Analyst for IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 4,070+ vendors that make up the IT security industry. He has presented on the topic of cybersecurity in 32 countries on six continents. He was a lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (Bloombury, 2010) and Washington Post Best Seller, There Will Be Cyberwar. His research appears on Substack. Stiennon was Chief Strategy Officer for Blancco Technology Group, the Chief Marketing Officer for Fortinet, Inc. and VP Threat Research at Webroot Software. Prior to that he was VP Research at Gartner. He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, and his MA in War in the Modern World from King’s College, London. His latest book Guardians of the Machine Age: Why AI Security Will Define the Future of Digital Defense is coming out in January, 2026. ## Matt Stiles Senior Data Editor, CNN Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/matt-stiles/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Member of the Press: Yes Matt Stiles is a senior data and graphics editor for CNN Digital’s Visual News team. In his role, he helps lead a team of visual journalists around the world and is responsible for anticipating and executing data-driven visual coverage. Prior to joining CNN, Stiles served as a senior reporter for the Los Angeles Times where he combined traditional reporting with computer programming, data analysis and data visualization. Stiles also previously wrote about national economics at The Wall Street Journal, served as data editor at NPR and was the founding news applications editor at the Texas Tribune. He lives in Los Angeles. ## Elizabeth Stockton Director of Government Solutions, Overlap Holdings Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/elizabeth-stockton/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Operations Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Elizabeth Stockton is the Director of Government Solutions at Overlap Holdings. Overlap is an early-stage venture firm, entirely focused on frontier tech. In this role, Elizabeth supports Overlap portfolio companies and non-portfolio companies in identifying and connecting with the right government offices for their business. Prior to joining Overlap, Elizabeth spent four years in the Pentagon as a civilian, including as the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy. This office managed billions in industrial base investments via the Defense Production Act and Industrial Base Fund. Before serving in government, Elizabeth worked in operating roles at hardware and software startups. She earned her Masters of Arts in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, and is an avid cyclist and squash player. ## Aleksandar Stojanovic Director General, DARI Foundation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aleksandar-stojanovic/ Track: Secret Content Industry: Other Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Aleksandar is a creative strategist and visionary thinker who works where technology meets human life. After three successful exits and twenty-five years of shaping digital innovation and AI, he now leads the DARI Foundation, an institution dedicated to preparing humanity for life alongside superintelligent AI and safeguarding what it means to be human in that future. His journey began far from the usual paths of tech leadership. Born into a Gastarbeiter family in Germany, he first made his mark as a teenage rapper and producer, collecting gold and platinum records and a golden Effie. When the music world was heavily hit by digital disruption, he saw not a crisis but a chance and turned toward technology. Delivering his first major digital project for EXPO2000, he introduced one of the earliest AI chatbots and brought live video streaming to a global audience. It marked the beginning of decades of breaking new grounds across industries. He defined and implemented digital strategies for banks, pharma giants, retailers, industrial leaders, luxury brands. After selling his digital strategy think tank to Publicis Groupe, he joined the leadership of the creative tech powerhouse Razorfish. In 2014 he co-founded AVA, widely described as Europe’s answer to Palantir. AVA predicted and monitored security risks for global players such as DHL, Bayer, and Swiss Re, and supported the London Police in the fight against organized child exploitation. Aleksandar has contributed to shaping long-term thinking in education and public policy. He served on the AI board of Cornelsen, Germany’s leading educational publisher, and sits on the global advisory board of the Edgelands Institute at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. He expanded his macroeconomics training at Stanford GSB and Singularity University, and holds global patents in AI. Throughout his life runs a distinct pattern. Aleksandar has an unusual ability to sense what is emerging long before it becomes visible. This and his capacity to instill optimism and hope helped him guide leaders, corporations, and governments through radical technological shifts that reshaped entire markets and ways of living. With the DARI Foundation Aleksandar follows a long neglected inner call to use this ability to help humanity build long-term readiness and resilience for a world soon reshaped by superintelligent AI. In a century defined by AI, he works with DARI to ensure that being (a) human remains a sovereign, purposeful, and dignified experience. ## Igor Stolbikov Executive Director Cloud Security, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Security Architect, Lenovo Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/igor-stolbikov/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consumer Electronics Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Igor Stolbikov is a Distinguished Engineer and Chief Security Architect at Lenovo. He is an expert in AI Security, Agentic AI Security, Cloud Security, and Applied Cryptography. With more than 25 years of experience, he has led the design and implementation of enterprise security architectures protecting Fortune 500 organizations and millions of users worldwide. At Lenovo, Igor leads security architecture for cloud platforms, applied cryptography, AI initiatives, and Agentic AI security, driving secure-by-design engineering practices and security governance for next-generation technologies. Prior to Lenovo, Igor held senior security architecture positions at Cisco, where he developed the Cisco Cloud Security Lifecycle, and has led security transformation initiatives across telecommunications, energy, software, and cloud industries. A prolific inventor, Igor is named on more than 100 U.S. and international patents spanning cybersecurity, authentication, cryptographic protocols, distributed systems, and secure communications. ## JoAnn Stonier President, Cantellus Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joann-stonier/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter JoAnn C. Stonier serves as President at Cantellus Group, a technology-forward consulting organization, where she focuses on Data, AI and Privacy, having previously served as Mastercard’s Chief Data Officer and Chief Privacy Officer and as a Fellow of Data & AI. She is a recognized global data strategist with extensive experience in artificial intelligence, data governance, data science, and privacy as well as in the development of data services and platforms, all created with an emphasis on responsible data design. A lawyer and privacy professional, she also keeps pace with the changing data and AI regulatory landscape with an eye toward practical implementation solutions. She has advised industry executives, governments and NGOs on both commercial and non-profit solutions. As a recognized expert, JoAnn has also led global efforts on data and AI including co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future’s Councils on Data Policy and on Data Equity; chair of the USCIB Data policy group, and member of the United Nations Expert Group on Governance and Artificial Intelligence. Ms. Stonier teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in several of their Data Officer professional programs, and is an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute, where she teaches in their Design Management Master’s program. She also acts as a board and strategic advisor to several institutions including: Omnicom Group, MoBagel, Keebo, Lytical Ventures, Elementum and the Institute for Advertising Ethics. JoAnn received her Juris Doctorate from St. John’s University and her Bachelor of Science degree from St. Francis College. She holds memberships in the Bar of the State of New York and the Bar of the State of New Jersey. She is based in New York. ## Mark Stutzman Chief Operating & Technology, AREA15 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mark-stutzman/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Retail Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Mark Stutzman is Global Chief Technology Officer at Fisher Brothers and Chief Operating & Technology Officer at AREA15, where he leads technology strategy, operational innovation and digital transformation across the organizations. An experienced entrepreneur, product executive and technologist, he brings more than two decades of experience developing digital platforms, building technology-driven businesses and applying emerging tools to complex operational challenges. At AREA15, Stutzman oversees the technology and operating infrastructure behind the immersive entertainment district while supporting its continued growth and expansion. ## Yong Meng Sua Chief Technology Officer, Quantum Computing Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yong-meng-sua/ Track: Emerging Parallel Technologies Industry: Other Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Yong Meng Sua is the Chief Technology Officer at Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), where he leads the development and commercialization of quantum technologies. He is also a Research Assistant Professor of Physics at Stevens Institute of Technology and previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at QPhoton, Inc. He has authored 100+ publications, co-invented 8 patents, and led federally funded research programs with various federal agencies and industry partners in driving fundamental research towards impactful and practical quantum technology. ## Lucia Subatin Developer Advocate, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lucia-subatin/ Track: Google Cloud Programming Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Sandhya Subramani Sr․ Developer Advocate, GenAI, Amazon Web Services Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sandhya-subramani/ Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sandhya Subramani is a Sr. Developer Advocate with 8+ years of experience in Applied AI Research, specializing in Large Language Models and agentic AI systems. She has developed and deployed AI solutions at organizations including Amazon, Warner Bros, and Fidelity Investments. Her work centers on turning cutting edge research into practical applications, and she is passionate about helping developers build intelligent systems that solve complex problems at scale. ## Yen Sullivan Senior Director Product, Experian Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/yen-sullivan/ Industry: Automotive Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Job Level: Senior Leadership: SVP, VP, Director, Head of, Setting strategy, P&L oversight ## Shawn Surber Director, Solutions Engineering, Island Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shawn-surber/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Shawn Surber is Director of Solutions Engineering at Island, where he leads a high-performing team driving innovative enterprise security and IT modernization initiatives. With more than 20 years in IT and security—including 15 years as a security administrator and architect along with senior leadership roles at Tanium and Fortinet—Shawn brings rare credibility in bridging strategy and execution. He has built and led global pre-sales organizations, founded technical evangelism programs, and helped Fortune 500 companies modernize securely. A frequent industry speaker, Shawn is known for making complex technical concepts clear, actionable, and relevant to executives and practitioners alike. ## Sagarika Suresh Manager, Applied AI R&D, The Vanguard Group Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sagarika-suresh/ Track: AI Research Summit [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sagarika Suresh is a leader in Applied AI Research & Development at Vanguard, where she helps develop next-generation AI systems spanning proprietary language models, Large World Models (LWMs), agentic AI, enterprise reasoning, and AI governance. She works at the intersection of research and production, guiding teams that transform emerging AI advances into scalable enterprise capabilities. Her current focus includes institutional intelligence, world modeling, AI decision support, and enterprise AI platforms designed for high-consequence environments such as financial services. Prior to Vanguard, Sagarika served as a Senior Quantitative Research Associate within JPMorgan’s Finance Decision Optimization team, where she developed machine learning, optimization, and decision intelligence solutions to support large-scale financial decision-making and wealth management initiatives. She holds a Ph.D. in Management Science and a Master’s degree in Information Science from the University at Buffalo. Her doctoral research focused on the design and development of artificially intelligent systems with an emphasis on democratizing AI and improving accessibility for underserved and marginalized healthcare populations. Sagarika regularly collaborates with academic and industry partners to advance practical AI innovation and accelerate the translation of frontier research into real-world impact. ## Rohan Suri Chief Product Officer, Nooks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohan-suri/ Track: Product Management Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Rohan Suri is Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Nooks, where he leads product strategy and AI innovation for one of the fastest-growing AI platforms in revenue technology. He co-founded the company while attending Stanford University with the vision of using AI to eliminate the manual work that prevents sales teams from spending time with customers. Today, Nooks helps thousands of sellers automate prospect research, outreach, dialing, coaching, and workflow execution through AI-powered agents and intelligent automation. Under Rohan's product leadership, Nooks has grown rapidly, serving leading B2B organizations while helping redefine how AI fits into modern sales organizations. In recognition of his work, Rohan and his fellow founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 AI list. He frequently shares his perspectives on AI, product development, and the future of human and AI collaboration in go-to-market teams. ## Ajay Swamy Senior Executive Director - GenAI and Governance | Founder of FundLens.AI, JPMorganChase | FundLens.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ajay-swamy/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Ajay Swamy is Senior Executive Director of GenAI Enablement and Governance at JPMorgan Chase, where he builds the firm's AI Governance Platform, driving firmwide LLM adoption and data-access controls anchored on an enterprise data catalog. He is also the founder and CTPO of FundLens.ai, a patent-pending AI platform for institutional investment diligence (private equity and public equity) that he architected and built end to end. Previously, Ajay led GenAI Solutions at AWS as a Principal, owning a $101M+ revenue AI product P&L across 3,000+ deployments, and built AI startups inside McKinsey's New Ventures incubator. He is a frequent speaker and writer on enterprise AI and he has published 10+ pieces for AWS and also taught at the Product School. ## Tom Swartz CTO, Voltava Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tom-swartz/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Automotive Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Tom Swartz, Chief Technology Officer Tom Swartz is a technology and business transformation executive with more than 30 years of experience building high-performance organizations, modernizing enterprise systems, and enabling growth through digital innovation. Throughout his career, he has strengthened enterprise value by developing strong leadership teams, advancing cybersecurity and infrastructure capabilities, and delivering scalable solutions that improve operational performance and customer outcomes. Swartz is the Chief Technology Officer of Voltava, formed in December 2025. In this role, he leads the company’s global technology strategy, including information technology, cybersecurity, data and analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation. He plays a key leadership role in integrating legacy organizations, standardizing systems, and building the digital capabilities needed to support Voltava’s customers and future growth. Voltava employs approximately 5,500 people across 21 global locations, positioning the company to serve OEM partners worldwide. Prior to Voltava, he served as CTO for Detroit Manufacturing Systems. He previously served as Executive Director of Advanced Engineering & Systems at DMS where he led advanced engineering, enterprise systems, and technology initiatives that enhanced manufacturing performance and operational scalability. Earlier in his career, Swartz held leadership positions with International Automotive Components, where he served as Director of Engineering, Global Strategies and Standards. In that role, he led a broad portfolio of engineering and operational initiatives focused on growth, profitability, and enterprise standardization across global operations. Swartz holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Ferris State University. He also earned certification from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy, along with Six Sigma Champion Training. Tom is married and the father of two. He enjoys time with his family, running, podcasts, music, and travel. ## Nicholas Swope Dr.PH Student, East Tennessee State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nicholas-swope/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1-10 employees State: Tennessee Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Job Level: Individual Contributor: Can be a senior role, but no direct reports nor P&L management Nicholas Swope, MS, MCHES, RPCV, is an applied AI practitioner and public health educator, founder of Backyard-AI Public Health, and a Doctor of Public Health student at East Tennessee State University. With over a decade of experience in public health practice, teaching, and program leadership, he specializes in the practical, responsible integration of artificial intelligence into research, education, and community health. At ETSU, he founded the university's AI interest group and serves on the AI task force, building tools that help faculty, researchers, and community organizations put AI to work. His applied projects include Jesse AI, a substance use recovery chatbot developed for Recovery Resources Tennessee, as well as custom research workflows that compress weeks of manual qualitative analysis into hours for partners such as the National Coalition of STD Directors. Drawing on earlier roles leading public health teams in North Idaho and teaching in a CEPH-accredited MPH program, Swope brings a rare blend of frontline practice, graduate instruction, and hands-on AI development to his work advising health departments, nonprofits, and universities on mission-aligned AI adoption. ## Mallory Sword Glenn Director, Okta for AI Agents Product Strategy and GTM, Okta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/mallory-sword-glenn/ Track: Workshop Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Mallory Sword Glenn, Director, Okta for AI Agents Product Strategy and GTM, is building a go-to-market strategy for a solution that helps enterprises see, manage, and govern agent identities. She's shaping how the market approaches AI agent security, a space with no established playbook. Working directly with customers, she's defining positioning, messaging, and sales strategy as organizations move from experimenting with agents to deploying them at scale. Previously at Adobe and HPE, she built GTM, pricing, and deal strategy for emerging product categories across sales, marketing, and strategy teams. ## Julia Taconet Co-Founder, Tactimetry Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/julia-taconet/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Julia Taconet is the Co-Founder and COO of Tactimetry, the AI Creative Engine for Performance Marketing teams. Tactimetry’s mission is to help brands and agencies decide exactly what creative assets to make next and produce on-brand assets at the precise scale performance testing actually demands. With over a decade of experience in leading roles at distinguished organizations such as Google and Salesforce, Julia is a recognized expert in the fields of growth marketing and artificial intelligence. Her original business-related contributions include co-building machine-learning-driven marketing tools and designing AI-driven sales automation architecture. Her original contributions are used daily by thousands of GTM professionals. Through her work, Julia earned an award at Google's premier AI Innovation Championship. Always looking to contribute to the industry, Julia has served since 2019 on the HEC Paris Admission Jury, which celebrates academic excellence in fields such as Growth Marketing and Artificial Intelligence for Business. Julia has been invited to speak around the world at conferences including VivaTech, Toronto Tech Week, the Salesforce World Tour, the Maddyness Keynote, and the international Emmy Awards Education Initiative. She holds a Master of Science in Innovation Management from Ecole Polytechnique, and a Master in Management from HEC Paris, where she graduated as the youngest female master's degree recipient in her program's history. Meet Julia and Tactimetry’s team at booth #K423 (top northwest corner of the Startup section) ## Ashit Talukder Global Head of AI and Automation, S&P Global Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ashit-talukder/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Ashit Talukder is a visionary AI executive and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience driving AI, machine learning, data and technology innovation and multi-million dollar revenue growth across the Fortune 100, federal government, and startup ecosystems. Currently serving as the Global Head of AI at S&P Global Ratings, Ashit leads the strategic deployment of enterprise-scale ML and Generative AI initiatives. He previously served as Managing Director of AI Strategy and Products at Moody’s, where he specialized in transforming complex legacy frameworks into high-yield, AI-driven commercial products. Ashit’s career bridges elite federal research and commercial execution. He served as Chief Technology Officer for the US Department of Labor and founded the Data Science Initiative at NIST, where he scaled and led a technology division of over 150 personnel to establish national data science, AI benchmarks in partnership with industry leaders. He launched his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, directing high-stakes DARPA, NASA, and NIH AI, ML, autonomous systems and robotics research. An entrepreneur at heart, Ashit is the co-founder of two successful AI startups, holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, owns two patents, and has authored over 80 publications. He is a sought-after advisor for organizations looking to scale AI safely, profitably, and disruptively. ## Hok Hei Tam CTO, Montai Therapeutics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hok-hei-tam/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Hok Hei Tam is Science Partner at Flagship Pioneering and Chief Technology Officer at Montai Therapeutics, where he builds AI-native discovery platforms at the intersection of machine learning, chemical biology, and human health. As co-founder and CTO of Montai, Hok Hei helped architect CONECTA®, the company’s AI platform for decoding diverse, untapped chemistry and translating it into new therapeutic programs for chronic disease, some of which are entering clinical trials. At Flagship, Hok Hei originates and builds platform companies that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and engineering to transform nature’s innovations into products across human health, agriculture, and sustainability. His work spans AI-enabled discovery, chemical and biological engineering, informatics, and platform company creation, with a focus on turning complex biological and chemical data into actionable product engines. Hok Hei has co-founded and developed key technologies across multiple Flagship companies, including Montai Therapeutics, Invaio Sciences, Inari Agriculture, Terrana Biosciences, and Senda Biosciences, now Sail Biomedicines. Across these companies, he has helped create platforms that combine proprietary datasets, computational models, and experimental systems to discover and develop new products. His research and inventions have led to 21 patent families and 20 publications in leading journals including PNAS, Nature Materials, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Medicine. Hok Hei earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT, where his graduate research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and holds B.Sc. degrees in mathematics and chemical engineering from The Ohio State University. ## Andy Tang Partner, Draper Associates Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andy-tang/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Andy Tang is a Partner at Draper Associates, where he focuses on investing in early-stage technology companies and guiding their growth, strategic development, and partnerships. He is also a Founding Partner at Draper Dragon and serves as Chairman of the Executive Committee at Draper University, a Silicon Valley accelerator and entrepreneurship education program where he teaches finance and fundraising to aspiring entrepreneurs. In addition, Andy directs VCx, an invite-only alliance of family offices that promotes generational relationship building, education, and co-investing. VCx now includes over 50 member families across the globe, whose core businesses span retail, real estate, food and beverage, insurance, mining and resources, industrial, transportation, and banking sectors. With over two decades of experience spanning operations, R&D, investment banking, and venture investing, Andy has played a pivotal role in seeding over 20 unicorns and several decacorns, including Polymarket, Colossal, and Oklo. His current investment interests include Bleeding Edge Technology (BET), AI infrastructure, Digital Health, and Digital Assets/Web3. His portfolio features notable technology unicorns and decacorns such as Oklo** (NYSE: OKLO), Polymarket**, Colossal**, NovelBeam* (SSE: 688677), Otter.ai*, Splashtop*, Yeepay*, Jing Jin Electric* (SSE: 688280), AltoBeam, Vicarious Artificial Intelligence, Broadbus (MOT), Unstoppable Domains, and 1047 Games*. Andy has also led and managed major digital investments in companies such as Carv ($CARV), Galxe* ($GAL), EtherFi* ($EETH), HighStreet ($HIGH), Arkham* ($ARKM), VeChain* ($VET), Tezos ($XTZ), Certik* ($CTK), QuarkChain* ($QKC), Ripio* ($RPC), Ledger, Coinbase, QTUM*, OASIS* ($ROSE), IOTEX*, Gemini, Lemon Cash, and CoinDCX, among others. His recent Bleeding Edge Technology investments include Gravitics, Firehawk, Outpost, MaxSpace, Slingshot, Venus Aerospace, and Iceye*, while his Digital Health investments include Clinchoice*, EDDA*, Atomwise, Verge Genomics, Ten63 Therapeutics, Imprimed, and Pretty Litter. Before joining the Draper investment platform in 2006, Andy was a partner at ABB Technologies Ventures and Infineon Ventures. Earlier in his career, he worked in investment banking with Credit Suisse First Boston’s technology group in Palo Alto, where he contributed to the Magma IPO (SNPS) and the Cyras (CIEN) acquisition under the leadership of Frank Quattrone and George Boutros. Before banking, Andy served as a senior engineer and marketing manager at Intel, focusing on chip design and market enabling for the Pentium and Itanium processors. Originally from Taiwan, Andy moved to Arlington, Texas at age 13. He holds degrees from UT Austin (B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering), MIT (M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) under the guidance of President Rafael Reif, and Wharton (MBA). He also holds a U.S. patent in silicon germanium thin film materials and was honored as a Distinguished Young Alumni by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Andy lives in Menlo Park, California, with his wife Emily and their two sons. He is an avid skier, animal lover, and dedicated meditation practitioner. ** Denotes decacorn companies seeded * Denotes unicorn companies seeded ## Rahul Tanniru Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, JP Morgan Chase Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rahul-tanniru/ Track: Coding Assistants & Vibe Coding [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes I am a Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at JPMorgan Chase, specializing in enterprise scale cloud platforms, distributed systems, and AI enabled infrastructure. I lead and contribute to the design of secure, scalable, and highly resilient cloud-native architectures supporting mission critical financial systems. My expertise spans Artificial Intelligence, AWS, Kubernetes, platform engineering, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering, with a strong focus on building self-service infrastructure platforms and enabling large engineering organizations to operate at scale. I work extensively on multi-account cloud architectures, infrastructure automation, reliability engineering, and integrating AI and machine learning workloads into modern cloud environments. Over the past decade, I have focused on designing high performance systems that improve scalability, operational efficiency, and platform reliability in complex enterprise environments. I am passionate about advancing cloud architecture standards, mentoring engineers, evaluating innovative technology solutions, and contributing to the broader technology community through speaking, technical publications, and industry judging initiatives. ## Maik Taro Wehmeyer Co-Founder & CEO, Taktile Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/maik-taro-wehmeyer/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Maik Taro Wehmeyer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Taktile, the leading AI-powered Decision Platform built to empower financial institutions and insurers to make faster, more accurate decisions in risk management. Over the last few years, Maik and his Co-Founder, Maximilian Eber, have transformed their vision of improving automated risk decision-making into a disruptive and category-defining product that has transformed the way banks and fintechs around the world approach building and experimenting with automated decisions — recently completing a $110M Series C round led by Goldman Sachs to continue scaling both the organization and the product to expand across use cases and industries. Today, Maik steers the global vision and executive team for Taktile, bringing deep expertise at the intersection of machine learning and financial services. He is a member of the AI Alliance at the EU Commission and a founding member of the German AI Association. Maik firmly believes that by improving decision-making processes across industries, we can build a better future for businesses and the customers they serve. ## Aaron Tate Director, Center for BrainHealth, The University of Texas at Dallas Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aaron-tate/ Industry: Education Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees State: Texas Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Aaron Tate is a technologist and applied AI researcher at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas, where his work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, game development, wearable technology, and AI-driven behavioral coaching. His research began with integrating biosensors into interactive interfaces, an early thread that runs through everything he builds today. The BrainHealth platform integrates wearable data from devices like the Oura ring with ML-powered cognitive assessment, automating scoring across 22 measures and achieving inter-rater reliability with clinical gold standards. The ACCESS scoring system, now in active commercial use by an external partner, was a major milestone in translating clinical research into production AI. The BrainHealth Agent is currently in active development, applying large language models to personalized cognitive health guidance with the goal of delivering AI coaching at scale. On the social intelligence side, Charisma is a game-based platform built in Unreal Engine that uses AI to evaluate and coach social competencies in immersive virtual environments. The system analyzes real-time behavioral signals to deliver feedback on social cognition, a research area with implications for clinical populations, workforce development, and human-AI interaction. Charisma shipped two Unreal Engine upgrades, a full cloud migration, and a new avatar system in 2025. Aaron holds several pending patents covering AI-driven interfaces, deep learning for social competency evaluation in immersive environments, and recursive database systems. He has co-authored 7+ peer-reviewed publications and presented at SXSW, IVRHA, and ECGBL. He is a 2025 Global Innovation Management Institute Finalist, 2021 Fast Company Innovation by Design Finalist, Oculus Launch Pad Fellow, and Epic Games MegaGrant recipient. ## Edward Tavares CIO and CISO, Hawaiian Electric Company Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/edward-tavares/ Track: Energy Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: IT Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Edward Tavares is an accomplished executive with more than 35 years of experience in energy utilities, telecommunications, federal contracting, and cybersecurity. He currently serves as CIO and CISO of Hawaiian Electric, where he leads enterprise-wide IT, integration of AI, digital transformation, and cybersecurity strategies that safeguard Hawaii’s critical infrastructure and ensure regulatory alignment. ## Andrew Taylor WW Director Nvidia Alliance, HPE Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andrew-taylor/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Andrew Taylor Worldwide Director, NVIDIA Alliance – Hewlett Packard Enterprise Andrew Taylor leads the global partnership between NVIDIA and HPE, where he drives enterprise AI strategy, field execution, and ecosystem development across AI infrastructure and Private Cloud AI. At the center of HPE’s AI Factory go-to-market, Andrew has focused on scaling enterprise deployments by aligning NVIDIA GPU innovation with ISV solutions and real-world customer outcomes. His work bridges cutting-edge GPU innovation with enterprise readiness, making him a key force in operationalizing AI at scale. ## Zachary Taylor Imaging AI Core Researcher, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/zachary-taylor/ Track: Healthcare: Care Providers Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Zachary P Taylor (B.S.) is an Imaging AI Core Researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Artificial Intelligence Imaging Research (CAIIR) Center. He alongside his team has developed and trained multiple medical imaging models currently in use in daily radiologist clinical workflows, aiming to use technology to attain better outcomes in pediatric health. ## Natalie Telson Head of US, Forward Deployed Product Management, Parloa Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/natalie-telson/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Natalie Telson is Head of US Forward Deployed Product Management at Parloa, a Series D agentic AI company specializing in conversational customer experience. Natalie sits at the intersection of product strategy and enterprise AI deployment, identifying complex, off-platform customer needs and translating them into scalable, reusable, revenue-generating solutions. Her work spans Parloa's $50M+ ARR enterprise engagements across retail, insurance, and financial services — from driving a 200%+ improvement in voice AI agent alphanumeric capture accuracy to architecting context intelligence solutions that push cross-sell rates from 10% to a target of 25%+. Prior to Parloa, she was a Senior Technical Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, where she led 0-to-1 AI product development for AWS Finance. Natalie holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Columbia University. ## Dan Temkin Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager, Kong Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dan-temkin/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dan Temkin - Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager at Kong (KongHQ) With over two decades of experience in API management and enterprise integration, Dan brings deep technical expertise to Kong's strategy, messaging, and business alignment across its API, AI, and Event Gateway products. His current focus is on Kong Konnect's Metering and Billing capability, where he writes and speaks on AI cost attribution, monetization, and the financial dynamics of token-based pricing, including how enterprises can translate AI Gateway metrics into terms their CFO understands. Known for being deeply technical yet highly strategic, Dan specializes in translating complex technology into clear, actionable narratives, and is a frequent speaker on API management, AI Gateway architecture, and agentic consumption patterns. ## Robert Thacker Head of Americas Solution Architects, ARIS Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/robert-thacker/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Software Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Robert Thacker, Head of Americas Solution Architects at ARIS, is an accomplished business transformation leader with over 25 years of experience driving process improvement and growth across diverse industries. He specializes in delivering successful solution implementations and driving SaaS adoption. He has led global teams with a proven track record in driving business results, optimizing processes, and consulting across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and aerospace. An engaging speaker and storyteller, he is the author of “Mastering Business Process Management – A Comprehensive Guide to Streamlining Your Organization”. ## Avi Thaker Co-Founder, Tauroi Technologies Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/avi-thaker/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Avi Thaker, co-founder of Tauroi Technologies, boasts a diverse career. He built quant trading strategies for hedge funds, machine learning systems for drug discovery at GSK, and Microsoft's cognitive services and improved ads. His ad knowledge graphs boosted revenue while reducing ad shown. A patent holder and published author, Avi earned his engineering degree from Harvey Mudd College and lectures on deep learning & quant trading. ## Sidharth Thapar Manager AI/ Senior Applied Scientist, Staples Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sidharth-thapar/ Track: Recommendation & Ranking Systems [Technical] Industry: Retail Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Sidharth Thapar is an AI Manager and Senior Data Scientist at Staples, where he leads enterprise-scale AI initiatives in semantic search, retrieval systems, and dynamic pricing. He architected Staples’ first GenAI-powered product matching and multi-stage ranking platform (XREF), now central to the company’s B2B and public sector quoting strategy and delivering sustained, large-scale business impact since its launch. Previously, Sidharth built applied AI systems across finance, manufacturing, and security. At FINRA, he developed anomaly detection models supporting market integrity and investor protection. At Stanley Black & Decker, he spearheaded global pricing optimization and delivered an AI-powered audio analytics engine for intrusion detection, deployed across central monitoring stations supporting more than 20,000 locations. His contributions have been recognized with multiple innovation awards, including Staples’ Believe & Achieve Award and Stanley Black & Decker’s AIDA WIN Award for AI excellence. In 2025, he was granted a U.S. National Interest Waiver (NIW) for sustained contributions to applied AI with national-scale impact. Beyond industry delivery, Sidharth serves as an Industry Advisor and curriculum designer for Northeastern University and Manipal University, helping shape industry-aligned AI education. He also contributes through peer review and technical judging, bringing a practitioner’s lens at the intersection of technical rigor, operational readiness, and real-world impact in AI recommendations and retrieval. ## Sriram Thiagarajan Chief Technology Officer & EVP, Product and Technology, Ancestry Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sriram-thiagarajan/ Track: CAIO, CIO, & IT Leaders Industry: Other Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sriram Thiagarajan currently serves as the CTO and EVP of Product & Technology at Ancestry, leveraging his over 30 years of experience in scaling B2B and B2C businesses to lead the company’s technical advancement. In his current position, he oversees the strategy and execution of all aspects of product development – playing an instrumental role in Ancestry's evolution into an AI-powered enterprise and applying machine learning and proprietary AI capabilities to fundamentally reshape how people discover and engage with their family histories. Since joining Ancestry in 2017, Sriram has continued to play a pivotal role in evolving the organization's digital transformation efforts. ## Murray Thom VP Quantum Technology Evangelism, D-Wave Quantum Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/murray-thom/ Track: Generative AI: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Other Job Function: Communications Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Murray Thom, VP of Quantum Technology Evangelism at D-Wave, has more than 20 years of experience in the quantum computing industry. A globally recognized speaker and thought leader, Murray helps businesses and organizations around the world understand quantum computing and the transformational impact it can have for them today. In previous roles at D-Wave he was responsible for the development and delivery of the Leap quantum cloud service and the Ocean open source tools. He has led teams engaged in customer projects related to applications, algorithms, and performance testing. He has even assembled a few early quantum computers by hand. ## John Thompson Author, Professor, AI Innovator, University of Michigan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/john-thompson/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter John Thompson is an international technology executive with over 38 years of experience in data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). He teaches in the executive education programs at Penn State University and the Ross Business School at the University of Michigan. Previously, John was the global head of AI at EY, leading the design, development, and implementation of innovative AI solutions including Generative AI, Traditional AI, and Causal AI. Prior to EY, he led AI and advanced analytics at CSL Behring, was an Executive Partner at Gartner, and headed the advanced analytics business unit of Dell Software Group. John is the author of five books including The Path to AGI, Causal Artificial Intelligence, Building Analytics Teams, and the bestselling Analytics: How to Win with Intelligence. Thompson holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Ferris State University and an MBA in Marketing from DePaul University ## Rebecca Thomson National Vice President, Professional Development, Coldwell Banker Realty Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rebecca-thomson/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Management Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Rebecca Thomson is the National Vice President of Professional Development at Coldwell Banker Realty, part of Compass International Holdings. She leads enterprise-wide strategy for how nearly 50,000 real estate professionals leverage a best-in-class technology platform and targeted professional development to grow and scale their businesses. Recruited to reimagine professional development at scale, Rebecca has shifted it from traditional training into a growth-focused discipline that drives productivity, adoption, and long-term competitiveness. A strategic transformation and change management leader, Rebecca helps organizations modernize how they operate and lead through sustained market disruption. Her work connects business strategy, technology adoption, and leadership practices, with a particular focus on integrating AI and advanced digital tools into both day-to-day business operations and executive decision-making. Rebecca is a nationally sought-after speaker, regularly invited to executive forums and industry conferences for her practical perspectives on leadership, innovation, and organizational transformation. She also serves as a mentor with Second Century Ventures’ REACH accelerator, advising technology founders on scaling and integrating solutions within large, complex brokerage and enterprise environments. Previously, Rebecca served as a Regional Vice President for Coldwell Banker Realty, leading one of the company’s largest multi-market regions across Chicagoland, Milwaukee, Northwest Indiana, and Southwest Michigan, supporting more than 2,000 agents. The leadership and operating models she built in that role were later adopted across the enterprise. A former President of the Chicago Association of REALTORS®, Rebecca has been recognized as a RISMedia Newsmaker and named to the Swanepoel Watch List, among other national honors. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is known for translating complex challenges into clear strategy and execution. ## James Thomson Sr. NA Solution Architect - AI Lead, F5 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-thomson/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Systems Engineering/Network Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable James Thomson is F5's North America Lead AI Solution Architect, focused on helping enterprises deliver and secure generative AI applications at scale. He works directly with CxO-level leaders to navigate AI governance and security challenges, translating those conversations into practical architectures for the F5 customer base. James has been a Solution Architect at F5 for over 25 years. For the last 15, he partnered with Tier 1 service providers on 5G rollouts, virtualized network functions, SaaS-based application delivery, and more recently, their AI-focused application delivery — experience that now informs how he thinks about securing the next generation of AI-driven applications. ## Aman Thukral Director and Global Head, Clinical Systems and Digital Operations, AbbVie Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aman-thukral/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Aman Thukral is the head of Digital Operations & Clinical Systems at Abbvie. He has over eighteen years of experience in clinical development, technology planning & business-technology alignment. He is responsible for Clinical Data Repository, eCOA operations, wearables, and sensors and for piloting new technology initiatives. Before this position, he had worked at various levels at Deloitte, Cognizant & GlaxoSmithKline. ## Lee Tiedrich President & CEO, Tiedrich Global Strategies (former NIST, OECD consultant, AmLaw 50 partner, and International Safety Report Senior Advisor) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lee-tiedrich/ Track: AI Policy Summit Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Lee Tiedrich is a widely recognized leader in artificial intelligence, data, and emerging technologies working at the intersection of technology, business, law and policy. With degrees in engineering and law, she served as a Senior AI Advisor to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as an OECD/GPAI consultant and expert, and as a Senior Adviser and contributor to the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI, supported by more than 30 countries and multilateral organizations. She was a partner at the global law firm Covington & Burling LLP and co-led the firm’s global and multidisciplinary AI practice. She is the CEO and founder of Tiedrich Global Strategies, a member of the APCO Worldwide International Advisory Council, and a Strategic Advisor at Analysis Group. She has held faculty positions at Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland. She is widely published and speaks regularly around the globe. ## Jordan Tigani CEO, MotherDuck Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/jordan-tigani/ Track: Data Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Jordan is co-founder and chief duck-herder at MotherDuck, a startup providing a serverless data warehouse based on the open source DuckDB. This is the third cloud data analytics SaaS service he’s helped create, and hopefully this time he’s getting it right. He helped start Google BigQuery, spent a decade working on it as engineer, book author, engineering leader, and product leader. Jordan has also worked at SingleStore, Microsoft Research, the Windows Kernel team, and at a handful of star-crossed startups. ## Gabriel Tinoco CEO and Co-Founder, Openlayer Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gabriel-tinoco/ Track: Oversight: AI Explainability, Governance, & Model Risk Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Vira Tkachenko Chief Technology & Innovation Officer (CTIO), MacPaw Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vira-tkachenko/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Vira co-founded MacPaw and has shaped the company since day one, growing from an engineer to its first CTO. Today, she leads technology and innovation, steering everything from product engineering to infrastructure and security. Named one of Forbes Ukraine’s Top 25 Women in IT, Vira pairs technical rigor with bold new ideas that keep MacPaw ahead of the curve. She believes the strongest engineering cultures thrive on collaboration and are guided by a commitment to user experience, technical excellence, curiosity, adaptability, and human-centered thinking. ## Bryson Tombridge Co-Founder & CEO, Tono Health Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bryson-tombridge/ Track: Healthcare: Life Sciences & Biotech Industry: Healthcare Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes ## Steve Toy Founder, Just a Bite Better (JaBB) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/steve-toy/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Steve Toy is the founder of Just a Bite Better, a mobile-first behavioral health platform that uses coordinated AI agents to solve one of health tracking's most persistent problems: making nutrition data collection effortless and actionable. By orchestrating multiple specialized agents—from food recognition to conversational coaching—he has built systems that actually change behavior. Steve also advises multiple companies on using AI, including Dinemait, an AI-first restaurant recommendation company, where he helps translate complex domain expertise into agent architectures that uniquely serve customers individually at scale. Previously, Steve led Memrise, an AI-first language-learning platform with over 75 million users, where he integrated AI-driven personalization while guiding the company to profitability. As GM of Apalon (IAC), he scaled ARR by 2.5x to 9-figures in less than 2 years across a portfolio of 50+ mobile apps. At EY, his machine-learning initiatives reduced tax classification workflows from weeks to hours while dramatically improving accuracy. He also co-founded Beema Inc., one of the first video-messaging apps with animated avatars, admittedly a couple of decades before the market was ready. Steve has built and led teams across Belarus, India, China, and beyond, delivering AI systems that work in the real world. ## Tommy Tran Software Engineer, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tommy-tran/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Tommy Tran, who holds an MSc in Data Science from École Polytechnique and HEC Paris, is a Software Engineer at Meta where he leads the development of AI-driven infrastructure efficiency tools. He plays a critical role in architecting the computational backbone for Meta’s global AI initiatives, creating optimization frameworks that have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in compute costs and significantly reduced energy consumption for over three billion users. His work is essential to Meta's competitive position, ensuring the scalable and sustainable expansion of generative AI capabilities. An expert in AI/ ML, Tommy has a track record of original contributions across the tech industry, including developing GraphML models at Ubisoft that reduced rendering costs, building ML based sales pipelines at Ramp that generated significant monthly revenue and when he established new industry standards for Generative AI in ad optimization during his time in Facebook monetization. His work on real-time object detection and AI-driven interaction has also been integrated into flagship wearable products, including the Meta Quest, Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, and Orion AR glasses. ## William Tran Engineering Manager, Creative AI, Meta Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/william-tran/ Track: Generative AI [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist William Viet Tran is an Engineering Manager at Meta, where he is building a more expressive & creative Facebook notification experience for half the planet. Prior to joining Meta, he spent nearly a decade at Pager Health, culminating in his role as Head of Engineering for Data & AI. During his tenure at Pager, William built the Analytics and AI engineering organization from the ground up and led the development of multiple GenAI-powered healthcare features, including clinical triage chatbots, wellness companion agent, and ambient EHR documentation. Earlier in his career, William served as the Founding Engineer at Implicit (f.k.a Agolo), where he developed a multimodal content extraction and summarization engine for an enterprise knowledge platform. ## Dave Trier CEO, ModelOp Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dave-trier/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees State: Utah Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Dave Trier is a seasoned executive focused on helping CIOs, CTOs and AI leaders at Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies realize the value of AI faster, with less waste and risk. Through ModelOp's industry-leading Enterprise AI Command Center, enterprises are able to quickly establish an AI system of record for unifying AI assets, powering workflows and generating operational intelligence. As CEO of ModelOp, he leads the company with a focus on customer value, product innovation, and enterprise execution. A builder at heart, he combines deep technical expertise with practical operating experience to help the world's most demanding enterprises unlock AI’s transformational potential by industrializing AI delivery—rapidly, safely, and profitably. With more than 20 years of experience across data science, artificial intelligence, analytics, cloud, and enterprise software, Dave is recognized for his pragmatic and transparent leadership style. A named inventor on multiple patents, he works closely with CIOs, CTOs, and AI leaders to address the strategic, operational, and governance challenges of enterprise AI adoption. Prior to becoming CEO, Dave served as Senior Vice President of Product at ModelOp, where he played a foundational role in shaping the company’s product vision and strategy. Working directly with enterprise customers, he helped develop solutions that address the operational, delivery, and governance requirements of AI initiatives, with a focus on measurable business outcomes. Before joining ModelOp, Dave held senior leadership positions across software, consulting, and technology organizations. As Vice President of Advanced Analytics Services at Think Big Analytics, later acquired by Teradata, he led a 400-person organization across the Americas. Earlier, he served as Chief Technology Officer at Powered by Action and as a manager at Accenture Technology Labs, the R&D division of Accenture, where he helped leading enterprises adopt emerging technologies to drive business transformation, including early business process automation capabilities that laid the foundation for modern AI operations. Dave holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. ## Aman Tripathi Data Science Manager, Experimentation, Hyatt Hotels Corporation Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aman-tripathi/ Track: Beginner? Start Here Industry: Travel & Tourism Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Aman Tripathi is a Data Science Manager, Experimentation at Hyatt, leading experimentation strategy, roadmapping, and impact measurement across the organization. She drives best practices in causal inference and enterprise-scale measurement, enabling teams to evaluate the real business impact of AI and other data-driven initaitves. ## Gregory Triplett, Jr. Dean of the School of Science and Engineering, Saint Louis University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gregory-triplett-jr/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Gregory E. Triplett Jr., Ph.D., is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dean of the School of Science and Engineering at Saint Louis University, where he leads academic programs and research initiatives across engineering, computer science, aviation, geospatial science, and the physical sciences. As a higher education leader, he is focused on preparing students and institutions for a future increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. Dr. Triplett has secured more nearly $20 million in external funding throughout his career and has led initiatives that connect research, industry partnerships, workforce development, and student success. Under his leadership, Saint Louis University has expanded efforts in artificial intelligence, geospatial analytics, advanced manufacturing, and human-centered technology, while exploring the responsible integration of AI into teaching, research, and university operations. A frequent speaker on innovation and technology-enabled transformation, Dr. Triplett advocates for a balanced approach to AI adoption—one that embraces new opportunities while maintaining a commitment to ethics, equity, critical thinking, and human development. His current work focuses on AI governance, workforce readiness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the role of higher education in preparing graduates to thrive in an AI-driven economy. Dr. Triplett currently serves as Chair of the Engineering Deans Council Data Committee of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), helping to shape national conversations on data, analytics, and the future of STEM education. ## Ankur Trivedi Global Practice Lead DevOps, Digital.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ankur-trivedi/ Track: Workshop Industry: Software Job Function: DevOps Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes I have a proven track record of helping large clients drive business value through cross-functional transformation initiatives. Starting as a developer and advancing into field engineering, I have taken on increasing responsibilities, shaping high-impact DevOps solutions. Currently, I drive key targets for the DevOps practice, including business expansion, renewals, and services revenue. Previously, I have led APAC sales engineering at Xebialabs, playing a key role in securing partnerships with system integrators. I collaborate across Sales, Engineering, Support, and Product teams to drive customer success and shape product roadmaps. I also regularly share insights as a conference speaker, blogger, and webinar contributor, helping organisations navigate DevOps transformation. ## Christopher Trudeau Associate Professor of Law, University of Detroit Mercy Law School Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christopher-trudeau/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Christopher R. Trudeau is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law whose work sits at the intersection of law, AI, and human judgment. He studies what happens to professional decisionmaking when AI enters the workflow, where the real risks are not technical failures but misplaced trust and the erosion of responsibility. Drawing on more than two decades of experience in legal education, healthcare regulation, and plain-language research, he teaches and builds AI systems designed to support legal reasoning, not replace it. He explores these ideas publicly through Trudeau.ai, where he writes and experiments on how people think, learn, and decide in an AI-driven world. ## David Truty VP, Corporate Reporting and Analytics, CreditAssociates Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-truty/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes David Truty is Vice President of Corporate Reporting and Analytics at Landmark Management Group / CreditAssociates, where he leads the company’s AI and data analytics initiatives from Sales and Marketing to Finance and Operations. With more than 18 years of experience that spans AI, data science, business intelligence, product management, and software development, David brings a practical perspective to converting emerging technologies into measurable business results. His team’s recent efforts center on deploying AI across customer-facing environments while ensuring scalability, trust, explainability, compliance, and consistency. ## Khalid Turk Chief Healthcare Information Officer, Santa Clara Valley Healthcare Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/khalid-turk/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Government Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Khalid Turk is Chief Healthcare Information Technology Officer at the County of Santa Clara Health System, one of California's largest integrated public health systems, where he co-chairs the Clinical AI Review Committee and leads enterprise technology strategy across four hospitals and more than thirty clinics. He also serves as Head of Standards Operationalization at the Trustworthy Technology and Innovation Consortium (TTIC), where he turns emerging AI and trustworthy-technology standards into operational practice. With more than 25 years translating complex systems, governance, and AI into executable strategy, Khalid focuses on the question every enterprise now faces: how to scale AI agents without losing control of cost, risk, or value. He is the founder of The HIT Academy and the author of the forthcoming book Intelligent Transformation (Taylor & Francis). He is the Fellow of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (FCHIME) and a certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO). ## Rafe Uddin San Francisco Correspondent, Financial Times Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rafe-uddin/ Track: AI Agents: Applications & Use Cases Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Other Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Interview Moderator Member of the Press: Yes Rafe Rosner-Uddin is a reporter based in the FT's San Francisco bureau helping to cover some of the world's biggest technology companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, the gig economy and cloud providers including Oracle. Prior to moving to the West Coast, he covered financial markets, retail investment and spent a stint on the newspaper's UK politics team where he helped cover a general election. His work has been recognised by the UK's Society of Editors' and Press Gazette. ## Agam Upadhyay SVP, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/agam-upadhyay/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Healthcare Job Function: IT Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Agam Upadhyay is Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he sets strategic direction across digital, technology and AI to drive the company's growth. He leads the full technology landscape across all global business domains, including R&D, Commercial, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, and General and Administrative functions. His remit spans AI, data, machine learning, GenAI, core services, and global ERP, along with driving the company's broader digital and technology transformation. Agam joined Vertex from GSK, where he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, leading enterprise-wide digital and technology transformation. He built a modern AI-enabled data platform, advanced cloud adoption, scaled automation (including GenAI), strengthened cybersecurity, and drove operational excellence and cost optimization. He also led major initiatives spanning M&A integration, consumer healthcare separation, and enterprise platform modernization. Previously, Agam was Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Eli Lilly, where he guided global technology strategy, digital transformation, and enterprise data and cloud initiatives. Earlier, at Johnson & Johnson, he held senior technology leadership roles across infrastructure, platforms, and business functions, contributing to cloud strategy, manufacturing platform integration, and enterprise data capabilities. Agam began his career in financial services, holding technology leadership roles at Bank of New York Mellon and Ernst & Young, managing large, complex global programs. Agam serves on the board of directors for a startup and participates in multiple industry leadership councils and advisory boards. ## Sheela Ursal CEO, Fintech Next Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sheela-ursal/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments State: California Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Max Ushchenko Director of AI and Data, NIX Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/max-ushchenko/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist From an analyst and engineer to a successful manager and team leader with extensive professional experience in different domains and techniques. I can see the big picture while paying attention to small details. I keenly understand the development specifics, delivery, and product management. I lead a rock-star team of BI engineers, Data Scientists, and Data Engineers. Support the growth of my team members, sharing my experience and skills through training and mentoring. ## Sheema Usmani Vice President, Wealth Services R&D, State Street Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sheema-usmani/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Sheema Usmani is Vice President of Wealth Services R&D at State Street, where she leads AI-driven innovation for the future of wealth management. She is building next-generation financial applications powered by multi-agent AI systems that help people make sense of complex financial, portfolio, and retirement decisions. Previously, Sheema held AI and data science roles at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management and IBM, delivering NLP, machine learning, and generative AI solutions at scale. A Stanford-trained engineer, published AI researcher, patent inventor, and AAAI award recipient, she brings a human-centered lens to one of finance’s most important questions: how can AI make financial guidance more personalized, explainable, and accessible? ## Joe Vadakkan President, CSA Arizona Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joe-vadakkan/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter Joe Vadakkan, serves as President of the Cloud Security Alliance Arizona Chapter, where he brings together industry leaders to advance cloud security, AI, and cyber resilience. He is also an industry expert in AI and Cyber Security Intelligence where he works with organizations securely adopt AI, modernize cybersecurity, and accelerate digital transformation. With more than 20 years of experience spanning Fortune 100 enterprises, startups, and public sector organizations, Joe has led large-scale initiatives in cybersecurity, cloud transformation, identity, data, AI strategy, Hyper automation and enterprise modernization. His work focuses on helping executive teams navigate the intersection of artificial intelligence, cyber resilience, governance, and operational excellence. Joe is a frequent keynote speaker, panel moderator, and trusted advisor on topics including AI security, agentic AI, data security, identity, cloud security, zero trust, and executive technology strategy. He is passionate about translating emerging technologies into practical business outcomes that improve resilience, reduce complexity, and create competitive advantage. ## Vivek Vaidya Chief Technology Officer, Kana Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/vivek-vaidya/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Vivek Vaidya, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of agentic marketing technology company Kana (www.kana.ai) is a seasoned serial entrepreneur and technology leader with over 25 years of experience creating transformative enterprise software solutions in data management, analytics, and AI. Vivek’s entrepreneurial journey includes serving as CTO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (after Salesforce acquired Krux, which he co-founded with Kana CEO Tom Chavez), and previously as CTO at Rapt, acquired by Microsoft. Vivek also serves as the Founding General Partner at super{set}, a startup studio that produces companies focused on data and artificial intelligence. Through his Substack newsletter "The Problem Is..." Vivek shares candid insights into startups, leadership, tech, and the art of focusing on the right problems, “Because solving the right problems isn’t obvious...” A recurring theme in Vivek’s writing is the simple yet powerful question: “What problem are you trying to solve?” that cuts through complexity and drives impactful decision-making. Originally from Delhi, Vivek resides in San Francisco. He is the co-author of Data Driven: Harnessing Data and AI to Reinvent Customer Engagement (2018). Vivek holds an MS in Mathematics and Computer Applications from IIT Delhi, and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Denver. ## Preeti Vaidya Executive Director, Data & AI, Morgan Health, JPMC Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/preeti-vaidya/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Healthcare Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Massachusetts Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Preeti Vaidya is an Executive Director of Data & AI at Morgan Health, a division of JPMorganChase focused on improving the quality, affordability and equity of health care in the United States. She operates at the intersection of technical rigor and executive leadership to build and deploy real-world AI systems at scale with direct accountability for impact in a highly regulated, high‑stakes domain. She also advises Morgan Health's portfolio companies on AI strategy. ## Marcela Vairo IBM Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marcela-vairo/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Marcela has been working in the IT Industry for more than 25 years, leading diverse and high-performing sales and marketing teams and developing strategic ecosystem partnerships across the Americas. She graduated in Industrial Engineering at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. ## Tarang Vaish Co-Founder & CTO, Granica.ai Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/tarang-vaish/ Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Tarang Vaish is the Co-founder and CTO of Granica, the AI-native data platform that makes enterprise AI economical, safe, and production-ready at scale. Granica runs in production at some of the world's largest SaaS companies, operating over 100 PB of customer data. Tarang leads the company's technology vision and engineering organization, partnering with enterprise data and AI teams to turn AI investments into systems that ship and stay in production. His career has been built at the intersection of data infrastructure and intelligent systems. As a founding member at Armorblox (acquired by Cisco in 2023), he helped build one of the first production AI email security products. Before that, at Cohesity, he helped scale the distributed data platform now used by thousands of enterprises. Earlier, at AMD and Vivante, he worked on building GPUs that today's AI workloads run on — giving him an end-to-end view of the AI stack, from silicon to model to product. A daily power user of Claude Code and Cursor, Tarang is building Granica's next generation of products on a fully agentic engineering stack — a bet that the companies that survive the AI graveyard will be the ones whose own engineering, operations, and product teams are already AI-native. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Guwahati. ## Rohit Valia CEO & Co-founder, Tumeryk Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rohit-valia/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Other Job Function: Other Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Rohit Valia is the CEO and Founder of Tumeryk.com, an enterprise AI security pioneer. His vast domain expertise spans fintech, cloud computing, AI/ML, and analytics. He has held leadership positions at FICO, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. He led development of the first software firewall (SunScreen Firewall), launched the world’s first pay-per-use infrastructure-as-a-service solution (Sun Grid), led Product Management for the first Java 2EE certified application servers. He drove the successful transformation of the leading financial services AI/ML platform at FICO by crafting strategies to offer real-time SLAs for billions of financial transactions in the cloud. ## Maneesha Vanga Graduate Research Assistant, The University Of Tennessee at Chattanooga Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/maneesha-vanga/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter Team or company is hiring: No I am Maneesha Vanga, a Ph.D. student in Computational Science (Computer Science) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). My research focuses on autonomous vehicles, cooperative driving automation, robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on infrastructure-assisted percpetion and safety-critical transportation systems. I develop and experimentally evaluate AI-based autonomous driving frameworks usng 1/10-scale vehicle platforms integrated with ROS 2, LiDAR, cameras, and edge computing. My goal is to advance practical AI solutions that improve the safety and reliability of autonomous transportation systems. ## Raghu Vatte Field CTO, AISquared Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/raghu-vatte/ Track: AI Agents: Deployment at Scale Industry: Other Job Function: IT Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Raghu brings over 20 years of experience in enterprise technology leadership, with deep expertise across the full spectrum of modern business tech. He currently serves as Field CTO and Customer Success at AI Squared, helping organizations bring AI to where work happens. His work supports industries ranging from financial services to the Department of Defense. Earlier in his career, Raghu held leadership roles at Zededa (Field CTO and VP Product Management), Skyport Systems (acquired by Cisco), Juniper Networks, and Cisco, where he contributed to secure infrastructure and mobile edge innovations. ## Andy Vays Technical Principal, Equal Experts Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andy-vays/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Andy Vays is a Technical Principal at Equal Experts specializing in enterprise engineering transformation and AI-enabled software delivery. Throughout his career, he has led engineering teams, enterprise architecture, and platform modernization initiatives for organizations ranging from high-growth startups to large enterprises, including Rent. and Plative. Today, Andy works with enterprise clients to help them scale AI across engineering organizations—moving beyond individual developer productivity to repeatable, governed, and agentic software delivery. His work combines enterprise architecture, engineering leadership, and practical AI adoption to help organizations deliver software faster without sacrificing quality, consistency, or governance. ## Chalamayya Batchu Veera Principal Enterprise Architect - AI & Data, Florida Power & Light Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chalamayya-batchu-veera/ Track: Enterprise Architecture Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Architecture Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Chalamayya Batchu is an accomplished Sr. Enterprise Architect and a visionary leader with a deep specialization in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) & Data Strategy). His passion lies in harnessing the power of AI and ML to drive business value and spur innovation. With extensive experience in designing and implementing enterprise-scale data and artificial intelligence architectures, Chalamayya excels at creating data strategies that enable organizations to extract actionable insights from complex datasets, leveraging cloud infrastructure and advanced AI technologies. In his current role, he serves as a trusted advisor to senior executives at Florida Power & Light/Nextera, collaborating closely with business stakeholders to align advanced analytics strategies with their specific goals. Chalamayya provides expert guidance on establishing robust data governance policies, defining data quality standards, and implementing effective data security protocols for AI and ML. ## Shyam Veerasankar Director, AI Strategy & Execution, Pacers Sports & Entertainment Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shyam-veerasankar/ Track: Infrastructure: Data Platforms & Strategy Industry: Government Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Florida Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Role in Decision-Making Process: An influencer of budget decisions Shyam Veerasankar is the Director of AI Strategy & Execution at Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the parent organization of the Indiana Pacers, the Indiana Fever, Pacers Gaming, and Gainbridge Fieldhouse. There, he leads enterprise AI initiatives across the full portfolio — spanning fan experience, business operations, live events, and data-driven decision-making organization-wide. He joins PS&E after more than a decade at Northrop Grumman, where he rose from systems engineering into AI and data leadership. His work there spanned AI-powered workforce and talent intelligence platforms, generative AI production pipelines, and enterprise data infrastructure — experience that gave him a practitioner's view of what it takes to move AI from experimentation to measurable business impact in large, complex organizations. Outside his day job, Shyam runs Veeralytics, an independent AI consulting and product studio where he builds and ships SaaS tools for small businesses, keeping him hands-on with modern AI development from prototype to production. He holds an MS in Applied Data Science from the University of Michigan and a BS in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University. ## Pras Velagapudi Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Agility Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/pras-velagapudi/ Track: Manufacturing Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Pras joined Agility Robotics in May 2023, bringing decades of experience in robotics planning & control, creating and deploying robots into home, industrial, and outdoor environments around the world. Prior to Agility, he was a VP of Engineering and Chief Architect at Berkshire Grey, applying fleets of AMRs and bin-picking systems to logistics applications. In a landscape that is constantly disrupted by new technology, Pras is focused on pragmatic product-relevant innovations: driving the vision and strategy for Agility’s Digit, operationalizing AI R&D efforts, and continually exploring what’s new. ## Venkat Venkatesan Americas Tax, Platform & products, EY Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/venkat-venkatesan/ Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Gal Vered Co-Founder and CEO, Checksum Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/gal-vered/ Track: Software Engineering Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Gal Vered is CEO and Co-Founder of Checksum. With a background spanning product at Google, a CTO role at Seer, and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, Gal has spent his career at the intersection of engineering velocity and product quality. At Checksum, he's building the continuous quality layer that keeps pace with AI-accelerated development. Checksum's agents autonomously generate, heal, and maintain tests across E2E, API, and CI, so quality is built into the software development lifecycle, not bolted on at the end. ## Arun Verma Head of Quantitative Research Solutions, Bloomberg Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arun-verma/ Track: Financial Services: Asset Management Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Data Science Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Arun heads the Bloomberg Quantitative Research Solutions Team in the CTO office. Arun has worked extensively on various topics in quantitative finance including Derivatives & Exotics Valuation, factor investing, portfolio optimization and time-series analysis. More recently, he has enjoyed working at the intersection of quantitative finance and Generative AI/Machine Learning for more complex datasets in finance such as ESG, News/Social feeds, Supply Chain, Retail transactions and Geolocational data to study their potential impact on financial markets. Arun has also been exploring use of ML methods in traditional asset pricing space, e.g., Fast derivatives pricing, prediction of fair value for illiquid instruments, Now-casting & smart consensus for Economic indicators & high-dimensional Data Imputation. Prior to joining Bloomberg, he earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in the areas of computer science and applied mathematics and a B. Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi, India. Arun is also an editorial board member of The Journal of Financial Data Science. ## Rahul Verma Deployed Engineer, LangChain Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rahul-verma/ Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees State: New York Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Rahul Verma is currently a Deployed Engineer at LangChain ## Michael Vermillion Head of Customer Solutions, FSAAS Division, JD Power Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/michael-vermillion/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Business Intelligence Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Michael Vermillion, VP Customer Solutions for Financial Services and adjacent industries, JD Power Michael Vermillion heads up solution delivery and strategic engagement for the Financial Services, Insurance and adjacent industries at JD Power. He has over 30 of years of experience in product management and innovation and is the host of the JD Power Expert Advantage podcast.  Mr. Vermillion is a graduate of Chicago Booth and the U.S. Naval Academy. ## Fiona Victoria Researcher, Oregon State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/fiona-victoria/ Track: Edge AI & Tiny ML [Technical] Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Fiona Victoria Stanley Jothiraj is a PhD researcher in Artificial Intelligence at Oregon State University, where she works with the ML QuESt Research Lab, advised by Dr. Rebecca Hutchinson. Her current research applies hierarchical occupancy modeling, machine learning, and deep learning algorithms to better understand plant-pollinator interactions and species distribution. Her research spans Ecological Machine Learning, Generative AI, and Federated Learning. She authored Phoenix, the world's first federated diffusion model, which opened a new direction for privacy-aware generative AI and earned broad recognition, including an invitation from the CEO of Flower Labs to present her work. She has also worked as a Research Intern at Micron Technology, applying novel deep learning and generative AI techniques to optimize semiconductor product yield. Her work has been published at multiple AI venues (AAAI, WWW, ASIS&T), and she has been invited to review at several top-tier AI venues, including ICML, ICLR, AAAI, and NeurIPS. Her research combines technical innovation with ethical purpose, advancing AI for social good. ## Alejandro Villacis Vice President Customer Experience, FCP Euro Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/alejandro-villacis/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Automotive Job Function: Management Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Alejandro Villacis, MS, MBA, is the Vice President of Customer Experience at FCP Euro. Backed by an MS in Applied Analytics from Columbia University and a Rutgers MBA specializing in Analytics and Information Management, Alejandro bridges data-driven insights with operational strategies focused on the CX ecosystem and operations. He intentionally minimizes direct customer-facing AI, choosing instead to deploy AI that empowers human agents with real-time insights and streamlines workflows. His strategy centers on utilizing AI for deep Voice of the Customer (VoC) insights and agent-facing efficiency tools, ensuring that all automated recommendations are thoroughly vetted by humans before reaching the consumer. By automating tedious backend tasks like retrieval and summarization, he saves his team valuable time and effort, freeing them to deliver the high-touch technical expertise customers expect. Alejandro also brings this practical framework to academia as an Associate Lecturer at Columbia University, where he mentors next-generation data professionals through the MS in Applied Analytics Capstone Program. At Ai4, he will take the stage on The Augmented Contact Center panel to share how companies can scale backend contact center operations while preserving human empathy and expertise. Outside of work, Alejandro resides in New Jersey with his wife and three daughters, and enjoys traveling, exploring the culinary scene as an avid foodie, and making memories with his family. ## Doug Villhard Academic Director and Entrepreneurship Professor, WashU Olin Business School Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/doug-villhard/ Industry: Education Job Function: Student/Professor Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: Virginia Cadmium Role: Presenter Job Level: Management: Manager, Team Lead, Executing strategy, Ensures daily operations align with high-level goals Company Age: 6+ Years Company Funding: Unsure Funding Stage: Unsure Doug Villhard is the Academic Director and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Washington University in St. Louis Olin Business School. A multi-faceted leader—professor, entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and author—Doug’s career trajectory spans from his formative early years at Disney to his success as the co-founder and CEO of Second Street, which was recently acquired by the publicly traded Upland Software (NASDAQ: ULPD). At Ai4, Doug leverages this diverse background to explore how artificial intelligence is fundamentally accelerating the entrepreneurial lifecycle, empowering the next generation of founders to build scalable, tech-forward enterprises with unprecedented speed and precision. ## Prashanth Vinod Head of Product, Recommendations, JPMorgan Chase & Co Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/prashanth-vinod/ Track: Recommendation & Ranking Systems [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Prashanth is a product leader specializing in building large scale recommendation systems. He currently leads a cross functional team of product managers, engineers and scientists who design and build the recommendation engine/platform for millions of customers who interact with JP Morgan Chase's products and services. Before joining JP Morgan Chase in 2023, Prashanth led the search and recommendation platform at Audible, helping transform the customer experience for millions of listeners across the globe. Prashanth holds a Masters in Management/Engineering from Dartmouth College and B.E in Electronics and Communications from College of Engineering, Chennai. ## David Wacker Systems Architect, KONST Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-wacker/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes David is a globally-oriented AI infrastructure engineer and cloud solutions specialist, with deep expertise spanning enterprise data architecture, cloud optimization, and large-scale AI data center deployment. He currently serves as a Solutions Engineer at Konsttech Ltd., where he leads technical sales and solution design across English-speaking markets. Born and raised in Germany, David pursued a Master's degree in Industrial Management with an AI specialization from Taiwan Tech — a journey that took him across continents and technical disciplines. During three years as a Cloud & Data Architect at Mercedes-Benz, David played a key role in the company's on-premises to cloud transition, leading cloud infrastructure initiatives across sales and supply chain — involving in a broad portfolio of projects at one of the world's most recognized automotive brands. David regularly advises and trains German companies on Azure adoption and the practical implementation of AI use cases, translating complex infrastructure decisions into clear business outcomes. Currently based in Taiwan, where he is also advancing his Mandarin proficiency, David brings a uniquely cross-cultural and technically grounded perspective to the global conversation on power efficiency, performance, and flexibility in enterprise AI infrastructure. ## Arjun Wadwalkar Director, Product Management, Global Payments Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/arjun-wadwalkar/ Track: Software: Fintech & Payments Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Arjun Wadwalkar leads payment strategy and embedded hardware innovation for the Global Payments Genius platform, driving modular, AI-enabled POS ecosystems that power billions in annual transaction volume. His work sits at the intersection of payments, risk, and intelligent edge infrastructure. He has led hardware and software platform strategy across countertop, handheld, and integrated commerce environments, enabling scalable, global payment architectures for regulated and high-volume merchant segments. Arjun was named to the 2026 ETA 40 Under 40 in recognition of his contributions to the payments and transaction industry. He is a joint patent holder of multiple patents in digital ordering and commerce workflow innovation. Beyond his corporate role, Arjun mentors early-stage founders through startup accelerators and regularly speaks at industry conferences on AI-driven commerce, programmable payments, and next-generation POS infrastructure. ## Kathleen Walch Director, AI Engagement & Community, Project Management Institute Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kathleen-walch/ Track: Enterprise Unlocks: Upskilling in the AI Era Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: No Kathleen Walch is Director, AI Engagement and Learning at Project Management Institute (PMI). In this strategic role Kathleen is focused on advancing AI-driven innovation in project management education as an expert practitioner and thought leader. Kathleen joins PMI from the Cognilytica acquisition. At Cognilytica, Kathleen co-developed the Cognitive Project Management for AI (CPMAI) methodology that is in use by Fortune 1000 firms and government agencies worldwide to successfully run and manage their AI and advanced data projects. Adopted by dozens of multinational organizations, dozens of government agencies, and NGOs, CPMAI is quickly becoming the standard methodology for AI project management best practices. Kathleen is CPMAI+E Certified. As an experienced data-focused analyst with a background in marketing, Kathleen’s expertise and experience in project management issues around organizational adoption of data led to the development of the CPMAI methodology. Kathleen is a dynamic presenter, researcher and thought leader on emerging technology best practices. She is a sought after keynoter and presenter speaking to audiences worldwide. Kathleen is also host of the AI Today podcast, regular Forbes contributor, TechTarget SearchAI columnist, and SXSW Innovation Awards Judge. Prior to her work at Cognilytica, Kathleen helped to grow TechBreakfast, a national technology-focused innovation demo series. Kathleen founded tech startup-up HourlyBee, an online scheduling system for home services where she quickly became an expert in grassroots marketing, networking, and employee management. Before that, Kathleen was a key part of the direct marketing operation for Harte Hanks managing large scale direct mail campaigns for clients including Bed Bath and Beyond and BuyBuyBaby. Managing big data analytics, she created efficiencies in the process saving thousands of dollars and days of processing time from each campaign. Kathleen graduated from Loyola University with a degree in Marketing. ## Nathan Wallace Founder & CEO, Turbot Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nathan-wallace/ Track: Cybersecurity Industry: Software Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Nathan Wallace is the Founder & CEO of Turbot. After two decades in enterprise IT and startups, he still loves the same problem: turning complex systems into clear policy and elegant automation. Turbot's products, open source and enterprise, help teams govern everything from cloud infrastructure to the AI agents doing the work. He once made a 15-pound burger, and brings that same level of ambition to his software. ## Aaron Walls CEO, ZioSec, Inc. Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aaron-walls/ Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Aaron Walls is cofounder and CEO of ZioSec, an offensive security company for enterprise AI agents. ZioSec runs trained pentesting agents against live deployments, probing thousands of vulnerability pathways to map what an agent can actually reach, touch, and break, with findings mapped to OWASP Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS. He built the company around a team drawn from WAF, eBPF, and penetration testing backgrounds, betting early that the real risk in agentic systems isn't jailbreaks but behavior-layer failure: an agent doing damage using only the authority it needs to function. He advises and lectures across Cornell's startup ecosystem. ## Hailong (Harry) Wang Director Analytics, Fifth Third Bank Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/hailong-harry-wang/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Risk Management Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Hailong "Harry" Wang is the Director Analytics and Head of the Model Risk Management Innovation Lab at Fifth Third Bank. Harry, often known as "Harry, the builder," is the innovator and designer behind the pioneering bank-deployed enterprise-level Agentic AI platform for model lifecycle management: Quant Engine. This innovative solution is designed to significantly reduce model lifecycle processing time while maintaining full regulatory compliance. With two decades quantifying risk across banking, insurance, and commodities, Harry is a leading voice in Domain Knowledge Agentic AI and a rare expert who bridges visionary strategy with hands-on engineering to drive enterprise AI adoption. He challenges the industry consensus that AI governance must slow innovation, advancing the contrarian view that Model Risk Management should be the accelerator, not the brake, for trustworthy AI at scale. His unique vision, framing Model Risk Management as the “Digital Nervous System of Risk and Resilience” and “Enabler of FLOD's effectiveness,” is shaping how financial institutions rapidly scale Generative and Agentic AI with both speed and trust. Previous speaker: AI4, MoneyLIVE North America, CDO Magazine Global AI Leadership Summit. ## Ryan Wang GP, Solaris Venture Partners & Outpost Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-wang/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Finance Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Ryan Wang is globally acknowledged as a visionary technology futurist and esteemed business executive, specializing in Artificial Intelligence, Spatial Computing, and Frontier Technology sectors. Ryan serves as Managing Partner at Solaris Venture Partners, a San Francisco based private equity firm providing management and advisory services to global capital and corporate clients in the Data Centers and AI Infrastructure, Energy and Robotics sector. Ryan also holds a distinguished position as Co-founder and General Partner of Outpost Capital, a trailblazing cross-border early-stage venture fund established in 2015, with a primary focus on frontier technology investments across the United States and Asia. In 2020, Ryan co-founded Zebra Labs, a music entertainment company creating new IPs and content with cutting edge technology in metaverse and AI. With over a decade of active engagement in the tech sphere, Ryan has forged significant collaborations with industry giants and fortune 500 companies and governments, serving in capacities such as advisor, consultant, or partner. Before venturing into the technological domain, Ryan amassed extensive experience and built a comprehensive and successful career in investment banking, working with Citigroup and Societe Generale in New York City. Ryan holds a Master of Science degree from NYU, and has taught lessons at multiple universities including USC, UW and NTU. ## Xufeng Wang Partner & Chief Data Scientist, Ipsos Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/xufeng-wang/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Analytics Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Xufeng Wang, PhD, is a Partner and Chief Data Scientist at Ipsos U.S. Data Labs, the company’s data science, data integration, and advanced analytics division. He leads the development and application of data science, machine learning, and AI capabilities across the organization, helping translate emerging technologies into scalable business and product impact. He also serves as Global Head of Ipsos DataHub, the company’s centralized, managed data lake for survey data, where he oversees data strategy, enrichment, governance, and integration. ## David Wang Head of Product, Tetrate.io Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-wang/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 51-100 employees State: Colorado Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter David Wang, Head of Product at Tetrate, builds the AI infrastructure enterprises trust to turn agent deployments into measurable ROI. He leads product strategy and go-to-market for Tetrate Agent Router Enterprise, an AI gateway and agent routing platform built on Envoy, focused on helping enterprises deploy AI reliably and securely at scale. Before Tetrate, David worked as a software engineer, product leader, and later as a management consultant, giving him a rare combination of technical depth and business strategy experience that shapes how he approaches product today. ## Andy Wang General Manager of North America, Dify Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/andy-wang/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Sushant Warikoo Chief Business Officer AI, Cognizant Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sushant-warikoo/ Track: Marketing & Growth Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sushant Warikoo is Chief Business Officer AI at Cognizant, where he leads the global AI strategy, go-to-market, and value realization for the company’s AI practice. With over 20 years of experience as a business and technology executive, he has led large-scale business transformations and driven multi-billion-dollar P&L growth. A strategist and technologist at heart, Sushant has built high-performing businesses from the ground up and scaled AI and analytics to accelerate enterprise value. He is guided by a mission to amplify human potential — leveraging AI to reimagine core business models, shape new industries, and create tangible, sustainable economic value at scale. ## Chris Weidemann CAIO & Co-Founder, Advisor Labs Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-weidemann/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Chris Weidemann, CAIO & Cofounder at Advisor Labs Chris Weidemann is a technology strategist with over 20 years of experience delivering progressive solutions to enterprise clients. Mr. Weidemann is recognized as  one of the few who can claim more than 10 years of experience in AI, with his earliest peer-reviewed research in AI being published back in 2013. Chris Weidemann was working in AI long before it was a headline. He got into AI and machine learning in 2012, published his first peer reviewed ML research in 2013, and deployed his first generative AI project into the enterprise in 2018, years before most organizations had heard of it. With over 20 years of experience helping clients build progressive technology, Chris has spent nearly his entire career building custom software that solves real business problems. Anticipating the disruptive potential of AI and Machine Learning, Chris co-founded Advisor Labs, an AI consulting firm, in 2022. In this role, he specializes in guiding clients through the development of custom software solutions that seamlessly integrate AI into their core business systems. Drawing on his extensive background in business systems integration, process and change management, and his deep business acumen, Chris has become an industry leader in intelligent automation. Clients consistently praise his ability to tailor technical solutions that enhance business objectives, rather than forcing organizations to adapt to technology. As a leader, Chris has helped a variety of organizations, including government agencies, banking institutions, large healthcare systems, non-profit organizations, financial services corporations, sports teams, AEC firms, and more. If you're exploring the potential of Digital Transformation and AI to gain a competitive advantage, improve outcomes, or lean out, but don't know where to begin, reach out to Chris Weidemann at Advisor Labs. His team of Technology and AI/ML experts will help you harness your data to enhance business outcomes through custom AI strategies. ## Dan Weisman Director, Innovation Strategy, National Association of REALTORS® Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/dan-weisman/ Track: AI For SMBs Industry: Real Estate & Construction Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Dan Weisman is the Director of Innovation Strategy at the National Association of REALTORS®, where he sits at the crossroads of real estate and emerging technology. He leads NAR's tech and innovation initiatives, from evaluating cutting-edge startups to building relationships with the companies and leaders driving real estate's next evolution. With deep roots in real estate and construction tech and a futurist's eye for what's coming, Dan is one of the industry's most connected voices on AI, blockchain, and the technologies that will fundamentally transform how we buy, sell, and experience property. ## Marty Weiss Enterprise Security Advisor, Proofpoint Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/marty-weiss/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Cybersecurity Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Moderator - Roundtable Team or company is hiring: Yes Marty M. Weiss is an Enterprise Security Advisor at Proofpoint and the author of multiple bestselling cybersecurity certification books. Over a career spanning more than two decades, he has helped organizations navigate some of the most significant technology shifts in modern business, including digital transformation, cloud adoption, human-centric security, and the emergence of today's AI-driven transformation. At Proofpoint, Marty works closely with security executives at many of the world's largest organizations to address evolving challenges in data protection, governance, compliance, insider risk, and AI adoption. His work focuses on helping organizations secure sensitive data while enabling responsible AI innovation, business productivity, and growth. Having advised organizations through multiple eras of technological change, Marty brings a practical perspective on how security leaders can balance innovation with risk management. He regularly works with enterprises as they adapt their data security strategies to address generative AI, agentic AI, and evolving regulatory requirements. A frequent speaker at industry conferences, executive forums, and customer events, Marty is known for making complex security topics accessible to both technical and business audiences. His insights draw from years of helping global organizations navigate the intersection of AI, data security, and risk management. ## Chuck Wemple CEO, Houston-Galveston Area Council Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chuck-wemple/ Track: Government & Public Sector Industry: Government Job Function: Management Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Chuck Wemple is the Executive Director of the Houston-Galveston Area Council an agency located on the upper Texas Coast with an annual operating budget of over $600 million and nearly 500 team members who focus on improving quality of life for the region’s 13 counties, 123 cities, and over 8 million people. Areas of public service include transportation planning, community and economic development, public safety, senior citizen services, workforce development, rural 911, socioeconmoic modeling, and disaster recovery. Chuck is the Immediate Past Chair of the Executive Directors’ Council for the National Association of Regional Councils, and American Leadership Forum Senior Fellow. He is the recipeint of the National Walter Scheiber Leadership Award for significant impacts at the local regional, state and national level and the highest honort that can be bestowed upon an Executive Director of a Council of Governments. Chuck was recently selected as one of the 250 Government Champions by Local Gov 2030 and National Academy of Public Admisitration which recognizes iindividuals working in government who exemplify “democracy at the doorstep” through dedication, innovation, and the highest sense of public service. He is a certified foresight practitioner from the Institute for the Future, and is currently exploring the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and public service and local governments. Chuck is also a competitive fencer and aspiring magician. ## Sue Weng-Cross Strategic AI Partnerships, Wiley Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sue-weng-cross/ Track: Data Analytics & BI Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Sue Weng-Cross is the Director of AI Strategic Partnerships at Wiley, where she leads partnerships and strategy initiatives to expand Wiley’s role, product offerings and distribution channels across the AI ecosystem. She is responsible for building Wiley’s AI partnership program with leading AI developers, technology platforms, and enterprises, while shaping partnership frameworks and the overall business and commercial strategies across life sciences, healthcare, finance, engineering, and agriculture. Previously, Sue was the Enterprise Strategy Lead for Wiley’s Research business. Earlier in her career in Australia, she spent more than a decade in strategy and corporate development at one of Australia’s leading prop tech business, management consulting with Monitor Deloitte, and deal advisory at KPMG. Sue holds a double degree in Applied Finance and Commerce from Macquarie University in Australia. ## Josh Wepman VP & CTO Energy and Infrastructure, Leidos Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/josh-wepman/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Oil & Energy Job Function: Research & Development Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Josh Wepman is an expert in the architecture, design, measurement, security, and management of large-scale energy, digital systems, and analytics. In his role as VP and CTO, he focuses on developing deep understanding of the evolving challenges the energy market faces, a broad understanding of the role emerging technology breakthroughs can play and develops focused strategies and investments to leverage that understanding into impactful solutions and opportunities for change. Josh has led innovation teams focused on areas such as: digital engineering, advanced grid planning, spatial analytics, intelligent storm recovery, reliability engineering, scaled drone autonomy, and fleet electrification infrastructure planning. Most recently, Josh is leading Leidos’ Energy AI innovation strategy focused on radically accelerating power system design value. ## Greg Wester Product Manager, Runpod Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/greg-wester/ Track: Infrastructure: Cloud, Data Centers, & Compute Industry: Software Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 101-250 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Greg has 16 years of experience at web scale enterprise and consumer companies, 11 years of which is in customer facing product management and 5 years in software engineering. He works on highly technical products, such as: integration, APIs, SDKs, programmatic platforms, data pipelines, event/notification systems, machine learning and AI. Greg is comfortable in pre-IPO startups and scrappy divisions in large, public companies. ## Cathy White Founder & CEO, CEW Communications Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/cathy-white/ Track: Telecom & Connectivity Infrastructure Industry: Media & Entertainment Job Function: Marketing Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Team or company is hiring: Yes Cathy White is the Founder & CEO of CEW Communications, a European agency working with high-growth scaleups, venture capital firms, and technology companies to build category-defining brands. For over a decade, Cathy has helped shape the narratives of Europe’s most ambitious tech companies—from early-stage startups to global names—guiding them through key moments of growth, funding, and international expansion. Her experience spans sectors including AI, fintech, healthtech, and deep tech, with current and former clients including Syntelligence AI, Zen Educate, Wise, Monese, and IDVerse. Earlier in her career, Cathy held in-house roles at Seedcamp and Tech Nation, giving her a deep, practical understanding of the founder and investor journey. Founded in 2016, CEW Communications was built for the pace and complexity of the startup ecosystem. The agency partners closely with founders and investors across Europe to develop sharp positioning, launch into new markets, and drive communications strategies that support long-term growth. Known for its hands-on, embedded approach, CEW operates as a true extension of the teams it supports, across PR, social, and content. Beyond the agency, Cathy is a sought-after moderator and MC, hosting conversations with leading founders, investors, and operators across the European tech landscape. She is also the host of A Brief Coffee With:, a podcast featuring candid interviews with journalists and media insiders on how stories get told—and how companies can stand out. ## Spencer Whitman Chief Product Officer, Gray Swan Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/spencer-whitman/ Track: AI Safety & Alignment Industry: Cybersecurity Job Function: Product/Project Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Spencer is the Chief Product Officer of Gray Swan AI, where he's building the tools and systems needed to bring safe and secure AI to the world. Getting AI security right isn't just a technical challenge; it's critical to having a functioning society. Spencer came to Gray Swan via a combination of deep technical training and hands-on product leadership. He co-founded Meta's Llama Security team and led AI Security at Meta, and has held product roles at Google and RealPage. Before that, he led, founded, and built startups across security (AppCertain), real estate and rentals (RentJungle), and e-commerce (SparkIt). His technical foundation comes from a master's in ECE and a bachelor's in CS, both from Carnegie Mellon University. Outside of Gray Swan, Spencer continues to advise and support startups in AI, security, real estate, and e-commerce, with a particular soft spot for founders based in Pittsburgh PA. ## Charlie Wiebe Vice President of Revenue Operations, Nooks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/charlie-wiebe/ Track: Sales & Revenue Operations Industry: Software Job Function: Operations Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist ## Seth Wiesman Field CTO, Materialize Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/seth-wiesman/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Software Job Function: Customer Service Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Seth Wiesman joined Materialize in 2021 and now serves as Field CTO, where he works closely with customers to address their most challenging operational data needs. As a long-time contributor and committer to Apache Flink, Seth brings over a decade of experience in data and streaming technologies, including work on some of the world's largest and most complex data projects. ## Kendra Wilkins Product Director, Miro Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kendra-wilkins/ State: Vermont Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kendra Wilkins is Product Director of AI Prototyping at Miro. Throughout her career, she has built products at the intersection of AI, experimentation, measurement, and product strategy, with experience spanning startups and high-growth technology companies. Before joining Miro, she co-founded an AI startup, where she helped organizations turn emerging technologies into practical solutions. Today, she focuses on helping product teams move from ideas to working experiences faster by using AI to accelerate prototyping, decision-making, and product development—enabling teams to validate concepts, explore possibilities, and build with greater confidence. ## Kiley Williams Senior Engineering Manager, Field Engineering, Deepgram Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kiley-williams/ Track: CX & Customer Service Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 251-500 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Kiley Williams is the Senior Engineering Manager of Deepgram's Field Engineering team, holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, and is a two-time founder with one successful exit. His team has one job: close the gap between what Deepgram builds and how the world uses it. He has been doing that job, in one form or another, for more than twenty years. When a powerful technology arrives before the world is ready to trust it, he has made a habit of showing up early, building the systems and leading the people who put it to work. The pattern took hold at Microsoft, where he was a technical program manager delivering experimental SharePoint features and tools, and the work that excited him most happened on the side, in AI-driven metadata inference. He then struck out on his own to co-found Thyme Technologies, a scheduling startup. When 7mb Technologies acquired Thyme's assets, he stayed on, rising from Software Architect to Chief Technology Officer and building a team of designers, engineers, and product managers. At Polyverse, he brought compiler-based Linux security to the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and enterprise customers, and he demonstrated the technology at events around the world. He crossed over into conversational AI at Helpshift, directing the global solutions engineering teams behind its enterprise implementations. The partnership that he initiated there led to Helpshift's $75 million sale to Keywords. At Deepgram, he is doing it again with voice AI. The oldest thread in his career is teaching. He wrote his first programs at eight years old, and he still spends part of his time helping other people write theirs. He has taught full-stack JavaScript as a course instructor, and he volunteers with Coders Without Borders, a program that helps aspiring developers around the world launch software careers. Mentorship, he believes, is among the highest-leverage contributions that an engineer can make, and his advice for anyone who ever had a great teacher is simple: pay it forward. ## James Williams Head of Agentic Commerce, Mirakl Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/james-williams/ Track: Retail, CPG, & eCommerce Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 501-1,000 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist I lead AI and business intelligence commercialization initiatives that turn data into measurable growth across. My work focuses on building scalable AI-driven solutions, predictive analytics, automation workflows, and executive reporting systems that improve pipeline generation, revenue forecasting, customer segmentation, and account prioritization. I partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Finance, and GTM teams to translate business needs into practical, data-driven capabilities that drive commercial performance. ## David Wilson President, Morgan State University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/david-wilson/ Track: Education Cadmium Role: Co-Presenter ## Thomas Wilson Founder, Coal Face AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/thomas-wilson/ Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: AAIRC Presenter I am the Founder and Director of Coal Face AI, where I help organisations turn artificial intelligence into practical capability rather than theoretical discussion. My work sits at the intersection of operational experience, computer science and applied AI engineering, delivering solutions that solve real problems in industry, defence and critical operations. Before founding Coal Face AI, I served for over 21 years as a Royal Navy Intelligence Officer, leading intelligence, operations and information teams in demanding, high-pressure environments where decisions carried real-world consequences. That background continues to shape everything I build today. I am passionate about AI that supports people at the point where work actually happens, improving decisions, reducing workload and enhancing safety rather than simply automating tasks for the sake of it. I hold an MSc in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence, graduating with Distinction. My research focused on AI-assisted maritime search and rescue, developing a novel thermal imaging algorithm capable of detecting people in the water from unmanned aerial systems. The research demonstrated that the approach could accurately identify casualties using real thermal imagery and laid the theoretical foundations for a fully integrated operational system. I am now seeking investment and research partners to productise that work into a deployable capability for commercial shipping, search and rescue organisations, coast guards and defence. Today my work spans AI strategy, technical architecture, rapid prototyping, agentic AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), computer vision, automation, human-centred AI design and secure AI implementation. I enjoy taking complex operational problems and turning them into systems that people can actually trust and use. Alongside consultancy, I build software products through Coal Face AI. Current projects include intelligent business systems and autonomous AI agents. I work extensively with organisations exploring AI adoption, helping them identify valuable use cases, assess technical feasibility, understand governance and security considerations, and move from ideas to working prototypes. My philosophy is straightforward: AI should create measurable outcomes, integrate with existing ways of working and remain understandable to the people who depend on it. My interests extend beyond technology into the broader challenge of responsible AI adoption. I enjoy speaking about applied AI, mentoring organisations beginning their AI journey and helping bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and operational reality. International collaboration is a major focus for me. I regularly work with organisations in both the UK and the United States and am currently establishing a US venture to support the next stage of Coal Face AI’s growth, strengthening partnerships across defence, advanced manufacturing and emerging technology sectors. At AI4, I’m particularly interested in connecting with organisations working in: • Applied AI and real-world deployment • Defence and national security • Autonomous systems and robotics • Computer vision and edge AI • Manufacturing and industrial AI • Search and rescue technologies • AI strategy and organisational transformation • Investment and commercial partnerships for deep technology I always enjoy meeting people who are building genuinely useful technology, tackling difficult operational problems or looking to move promising AI concepts into deployable products. If that sounds like you, I’d be delighted to connect. ## Adam Winer Founder / CEO, Veilion Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/adam-winer/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: Other Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Adam Winer is the Founder of Veilion Inc., an enterprise AI company building a governed operating system for data, applications, business context, and AI agents. With a background spanning enterprise software, manufacturing, defense, and data engineering, Adam has spent his career building systems that turn complex operational data into usable, scalable applications. Before founding Veilion, he worked with Volkswagen of America as a Field Data Specialist and Palantir Foundry developer, where he helped develop multiple systems supporting quality operations, analytics, and data-driven decision-making across the organization. Adam previously served in the United States Marine Corps, where he worked in aviation supply operations and built database-driven tools to improve reporting, coordination, and operational efficiency. His experience across military, industrial, and enterprise environments shaped his belief that AI must be more than a chatbot, it needs to connect securely to real business data, understand organizational context, and help teams build software that can actually be deployed. At Veilion, Adam is focused on helping organizations move from AI experimentation to governed AI execution. Veilion brings together data integration, application development, workflow automation, and AI agents into one platform designed for enterprise teams that need speed, security, and control at scale. ## Chad Wise Sr Principal Solution Engineer, F5 Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chad-wise/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Platforms & Tools Industry: Telecom Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist As a retired U.S. Air Force veteran and Sr. Principal Solutions Engineer at F5, Chad Wise brings a unique perspective on security, compliance, and mission critical reliability to the forefront of enterprise AI infrastructure. Chad partners with leading organizations to deploy cutting-edge observability stacks, application delivery, and governance frameworks that keep AI systems safe, compliant, and high-performing. Bringing 30+ years of expertise in distributed systems and secure application delivery, Chad is dedicated to helping enterprises innovate quickly without compromising control, ensuring that next-generation AI deployments are built on a foundation of operational transparency and trust. ## Ryan Wolbeck Head of AI and MLOps Platform, Kraft Heinz Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ryan-wolbeck/ Track: Agentic Ops & Platforms [Technical] Industry: Manufacturing Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Ryan Wolbeck is Head of AI at Kraft Heinz, where he leads enterprise AI strategy and the development of scalable solutions across generative AI, machine learning, computer vision, optimization, and advanced analytics. He focuses on building governed AI platforms and operating models that help organizations move from experimentation to measurable business impact. Ryan is also an open-source contributor and maintainer of NGBoost, a probabilistic machine learning framework for uncertainty-aware predictions. His expertise spans AI platforms, MLOps, enterprise architecture, and model governance, with a focus on delivering practical, production-ready AI at scale. ## Bob Wollheim Partner, EVP, CI&T Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bob-wollheim/ Track: Social Impact of AI Cadmium Role: Sponsor Panelist Bob Wollheim is a seasoned business leader with a diverse skill set that spans across leadership, entrepreneurship, and investment expertise. As a Partner at CI&T, a leading digital solutions company, Bob Wollheim has been instrumental in driving the success of the organization by overseeing both the People and Growth areas. With his strategic leadership, Bob Wollheim has focused on unlocking the potential of CI&T's employees, fostering a culture of collaboration, and empowering teams to achieve their best performance. His visionary approach and emphasis on modern management models have helped CI&T thrive in the rapidly changing digital landscape. In addition to his leadership role at CI&T, Bob Wollheim is also an accomplished entrepreneur and investor through his venture, The Next Co. With his entrepreneurial and investment expertise, Bob Wollheim has successfully launched and grown multiple businesses, showcasing his ability to identify opportunities, navigate challenges, and drive growth. His multifaceted experience in leadership, entrepreneurship, and investment has equipped him with a unique perspective and skill set that enables him to excel in his role as a Partner at CI&T, overseeing both the People and Growth areas, and driving organizational success through innovative strategies and people-centric leadership. Bob was born in Brazil, and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, with his partner Bia, and 9-years old son Nico. ## Ray Wu Managing Partner, Alumni Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ray-wu/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Innovation Company Size: 101-250 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Ray is a venture capitalist and leading voice in AI, blockchain, and the future economy. As Managing Partner at Alumni Ventures, he drives investments in AI-native startups, Web3 innovations and disruptive technologies, backing visionary founders transforming entire industries. With a technical foundation in software and architecture, a Berkeley-Columbia EMBA, and experience spanning entrepreneurship and executive roles at major tech companies, Ray brings a rare blend of technical depth, enterprise strategy, and venture investing. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and media commentator, known for insights on building AI-first companies, scaling global systems, and investing in frontier technologies. His thought leadership featured across conferences, podcasts, and media includes Visionary Economy which explores how emerging technologies are reshaping value creation, labor, and enterprise design. Ray has led more than 80 venture deals with multiple exits across IPOs, M&A and token listings. Based in Silicon Valley, Ray blends operator experience with a global macro perspective, helping leaders navigate the exponential tech era with clarity, conviction, and a future-ready mindset. ## Claire Xie Founder & CEO, Women in AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/claire-xie/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Other Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Claire Xie, Founder of Women in AI, 2x founder and former data scientist at Google and DoorDash, building companies and communities shaping the future of AI. She leads one of the largest communities dedicated to advancing women in AI, bringing together more than 50,000 founders, operators, investors, and builders through events, education, mentorship, and career development opportunities. Claire's work focuses on helping more women participate in—and benefit from—the AI revolution, whether as founders, leaders, or builders. She frequently speaks on AI, entrepreneurship, leadership, career growth, and the future of work, bringing a practical perspective shaped by her experience building both companies and communities. ## Kevin Xie CEO, Soren AI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/kevin-xie/ Industry: Software Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Kevin Xie is an MIT dropout and the Founder and CEO of Soren. Previously, he was a researcher at MIT and Harvard, publishing work in leading scientific journals including Nature Biomedical Engineering. Before entrepreneurship, Kevin was ranked among the top 150 junior tennis players in the United States. Based in San Francisco, Kevin is building the AI deployment company for small and midsize businesses. Under his leadership, Soren designs, deploys, and manages custom AI systems that automate critical workflows, enabling businesses to adopt enterprise-grade AI without the complexity of building it themselves. ## Nick Xu Key Account Lead, Unitree Robotics Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/nick-xu/ Industry: Hardware & Infrastructure Job Function: Sales Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Nick Xu, Key Account Lead for NA market from Unitree Robotics Nick Xu serves as the Lead Key Account Lead at Unitree Robotics, primarily responsible for major clients across the North American region. He boasts over seven years of experience in international trade, three of which are dedicated to the robotics industry. Nick holds unique insights into robotics applications in education and scientific research, secondary development, as well as the future large-scale implementation of robotic solutions across a broader range of industries. ## Sahil Yadav Head of Software and AI, Applied Optoelectonics Inc (AOI) Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/sahil-yadav/ Track: Telecom & Connectivity Infrastructure Industry: Telecom Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Sahil Yadav is Head of Software and AI at AOI, where he leads the development of agentic AI-based self-healing and autonomous network solutions. Formerly Chief Product Officer at TelemeTrak, Sahil has launched AI based network automation platforms at Cisco, AI driven predictive analytics products at GE, and industrial AI safety systems at Guardhat, each used by Fortune 500 firms and mission-critical operations. With 14+ years of experience in AI product management, he specializes in scaling edge/cloud AI, driving enterprise adoption and operationalizing AI trust. A Senior IEE member and a frequent speaker at leading AI and data infrastructure conferences (e.g. AI Engineer World Fair and more), his expertise lies in Trust in AI and AI powered Network Technologies with a focus on Enterprise Data Platforms and Industrial IoT Systems. ## Aura Yavary AI ML Engineer/Researcher in Multimodal AI & Autonomous Systems, UC Davis Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/aura-yavary/ Track: Vision, Spatial, & World Models [Technical] Cadmium Role: Panelist ## Chris Yeh Founding Partner, Blitzscaling Ventures Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-yeh/ Track: Sales & Revenue Operations Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Chris Yeh is a founding General Partner of Blitzscaling Ventures. Chris has founded, advised, or invested in over 100 high-tech startups since 1995, including 9-figure companies like Ustream (investor, advisor, CEO) and UserTesting.com (advisor). He is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman, of "Blitzscaling: The Lightning-fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies", and the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, of the New York Times bestseller, "The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age". Chris earned two degrees from Stanford University, with distinction in both, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was named a Baker Scholar. ## Ben Yevin AI Solutions Specialist, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/ben-yevin/ Track: Google Cloud Programming Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Sales Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter ## Joel Yi Founder & CEO, Deploy AI Bots Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/joel-yi/ Track: AI Startups & VCs Industry: Software Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 11-50 employees Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Joel Yi is the founder of DeployAIBots.com and an M&A-driven operator who owns and scales a portfolio of revenue operations agencies. He has helped over 300 companies deploy their first AI agents and has trained top Harvard and MIT students on building agentic AI systems. Joel has also spoken on a Harvard panel and has generated over $200 million in revenue for clients while leading sales teams of 100+ professionals. He has been recognized by Forbes Council and Entrepreneur as a leading voice in elite sales strategy. His journey began as an international student who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2015, later earning American citizenship and becoming one of the first U.S. Army Cyber Officers with a Top Secret clearance at just 21 years old. He went on to build and acquire multiple agencies, forming a growing portfolio of RevOps companies, with DeployAIBots.com as his newest venture focused on agentic AI systems. Today, Joel helps businesses scale without adding headcount by deploying AI systems that eliminate operational bottlenecks and unlock faster, more efficient growth. ## Brian Yoo Chief Business Officer, FriendliAI Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/brian-yoo/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Consulting & IT Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Brian Yoo is the Chief Business Officer at FriendliAI, where he leads the company’s global go-to-market strategy, commercial operations, and strategic partnerships for its frontier AI inference cloud for agents. Prior to FriendliAI, Brian served as Chief Operating Officer at Moloco, where he was an early executive and played a key role in scaling the company from a 10-person startup to a global AI leader with more than 600 employees and over $250 million in annual revenue. During his tenure, he built and led the company’s Finance, Marketing, HR, Business Operations, Legal, IT, and Workplace Operations functions, while helping secure more than $180 million in funding and supporting Moloco’s growth to a multi-billion-dollar valuation. Before Moloco, Brian held product and analytical leadership roles at Kabam, Google, and Capital One. He also serves as a Venture Partner at Mashup Ventures, supporting early-stage founders and the startup ecosystem. Brian holds both a B.S. and an M.Eng. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. ## Songyee Yoon Founder and Managing Partner, Principal Venture Partners Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/songyee-yoon/ Track: Oversight: AI ROI Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 1-10 employees Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Songyee Yoon is the Founder and Managing Partner of Principal Venture Partners (PVP), a Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture firm focused on AI-native companies. She is recognized for backing iconic startups such as Together.ai, Cartesia, and Sesame, and is known for her ability to identify and support companies shaping the next generation of technological infrastructure. After graduating from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Songyee earned her Ph.D. from MIT in Computational Neuroscience. Her deep belief in “play” as a catalyst for innovation led her to serve as president and chief strategy officer of NCSOFT, a global leader in video games, where she also founded its AI and NLP Centers to anticipate the impact of emerging technologies. This work eventually became the inspiration behind “Genius Girl” on the Korean TV show KAIST. A longtime advocate for responsible AI, Songyee has championed the integration of ethics into computer science education through her philanthropy. At Stanford University, she serves on the advisory council for the Institute for Human-Centered AI and is an instructor of game development. She has also been a visiting fellow at RAND’s Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy. She is also a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a board director of HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) and a member of the MIT Corporation, the university’s board of trustees. Previously a member of South Korea’s Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology under two administrations, Songyee brings a global perspective on the intersection of technology, policy, and ethics. She was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of The Wall Street Journal’s “50 Women to Watch in Business.” ## Bin Yu AI Expert-in-Residence, Starbucks Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/bin-yu/ Track: AI Agents: Foundation & Strategy Industry: Retail Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Bin Yu is a seasoned executive in data and AI with a proven track record of driving data-driven decision-making to transform business strategy and operations across healthcare, retail, and hospitality. He currently serves as AI Expert-in-Residence at Starbucks, where he supports the design and deployment of advanced generative AI solutions that enhance experiences for partners, baristas, and customers at scale. Prior to Starbucks, Bin was the VP of Data and AI at Focus Brands, where he led enterprise-wide data and AI strategy, platforms, and solutions across multiple business domains. Before that, he served as Director of Data Science at Macy’s, leading teams to improve omnichannel customer experiences and optimize media effectiveness. Earlier in his career, Bin held leadership roles at Air Liquide, a global industrial gases company, and Quantum Leap Innovation, a healthcare software startup. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and has authored over 30 technical publications in data science and machine learning. ## Shadman Zafar CEO, Vibrant Capital Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/shadman-zafar/ Track: Financial Services: Banks Industry: Venture Capital Job Function: Management Company Size: 51-100 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Shadman Zafar is a globally recognized technology leader and prolific inventor who has spent decades driving transformation at Fortune 100 companies. Having served as an executive at Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and Verizon—in leadership roles such as CIO, Chief Digital Officer, and Chief Product Officer—Shadman has built award-winning technology products used by millions and scaled platforms serving 100MM+ customers. He also holds over 100 patents across finance, telecommunications, entertainment, technology, and design. Now, as CEO of Vibrant Capital, Shadman is leading the charge in scaling AI on Main Street. ## Chris Zaharias VP U.S. Operations, Multiverse Computing Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/chris-zaharias/ Track: Generative AI: Deployment at Scale Industry: AI & Data Services Job Function: Operations Company Size: 251-500 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Chris Zaharias is VP U.S. Operations for Multiverse Computing, whose quantum-inspired AI model compression technology makes inference faster, cheaper, more accurate and on-device. A 30-year startup sales veteran, Chris thoroughly enjoys building and running highly successful sales organizations in emerging markets characterized by rapid growth and technological innovation. After getting his start building Netscape's European sales team, he built and ran sales at Efficient Frontier, who was the first to apply ML to optimizating AdWords for eBay, AWS, Expedia and BankRate before being acquired by Adobe. After Efficient Frontier, Chris was VP Search Sales at Omniture (also acquired by Adobe), and was CRO at Dapper (dynamic display ads, aquired by Yahoo!), Triggit (FB retargeting) and built his own B2B SaaS business, SearchQuant, which was used by over 300 companies including Snowflake, Uber, Northwestern Mutual, AppLovin, Wells Fargo and Lyft. ## Johan Zamora Founder Big Data & AI Systems Architect — The Art of the Possible, The Art of the Possible Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/johan-zamora/ Track: Roundtable Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Other Company Size: 5,001-10,000 employees Cadmium Role: Roundtable Moderator Team or company is hiring: No I’m Johan Zamora, a Denver-based data and AI leader from Costa Rica, Founder of The Art of the Possible, an AI-native product studio focused on neurodivergent-first software. I’m neurodivergent, and I consider that one of my greatest superpowers. It gives me a different relationship with patterns, systems, intensity, creativity, and momentum. Where others may see scattered pieces, I see the architecture underneath: the hidden connections, the workflows waiting to be built, the signals inside the noise. That perspective shapes how I think, how I lead, and what I build. It also shapes who I build for. Hundreds of millions of adults live with neurodivergent minds, yet most technology still asks them to adapt to systems designed for someone else. I want to flip that assumption. I do not treat neurodivergence as an edge case or a constraint. I treat it as a design system. That belief is at the center of The Art of the Possible: build the categories that should already exist. We are creating a portfolio of AI-native products for minds that move differently: emotion-driven content intelligence with dopamine.watch, AI-powered neurodivergent learning with FocusFlow, emotional-safety-first communication with dopamine.chat, neurodivergent investment infrastructure with dopamine.invest, and enterprise-grade analytics transformation through Dr. Data. JOAO is the operating layer behind that work: the place where ideas, research, agents, workflows, and execution come together. It helps turn scattered sparks into structured action, so the portfolio can move with the same speed, depth, and pattern recognition that created it. My mission is to expose the marvels of neurodivergent intelligence and build tools worthy of it. I want to create software that is powerful but humane, technically serious but emotionally aware, and designed for focus, context, momentum, recovery, creativity, and real-world execution. The future I’m building is not about forcing different minds into ordinary boxes. It is about building the systems those minds deserved all along. ## Rahul Zende Sr Principal Data Scientist, Navy Federal Credit Union Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/rahul-zende/ Track: AI Agents [Technical] Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 10,001+ employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panelist Team or company is hiring: Yes Rahul is a Data & AI professional with diverse skills and work experience spanning research and academia all the way to business and corporate analytics. He currently works on applications involving Gen AI and LLMs, while continuing to wear many hats as a senior professional in the analytics line of work. ## Lu Zhang Founder & Managing Partner, Fusion Fund Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lu-zhang/ Track: Infrastructure: AI Agents Industry: Financial Services Job Function: Management Company Size: 11-50 employees Active On App: Active On App Cadmium Role: Panel Moderator Lu Zhang, Founder and Managing Partner of Fusion Fund, is a renowned Silicon Valley-based investor, a serial entrepreneur, and a Stanford Engineering alumna. With a strong technical background, Lu has extensive experience bringing a broad range of technologies to commercialization, and deep domain expertise in AI in healthcare, Enterprise AI/Networks, Edge Computing and Data Privacy. Founded by Lu in 2015, Fusion Fund is dedicated to supporting early-stage entrepreneurs working on innovation in healthcare, enterprise AI and industrial automation. With investments in over 90 companies across the U.S. and Canada, Fusion Fund has generated substantial exits over the years. Prior to starting Fusion Fund, Lu was a serial entrepreneur and materials science researcher. Following the exit of her startup, Lu began investing in and supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. This eventually led her to create Fusion Fund in 2015. Since then, Lu has built a distinguished ecosystem and established her reputation in the VC industry. She was honored as Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum (Davos), Silicon Valley Women of Influence, Top 25 Female early-stage investor by Business Insider, Featured Honoree of VC of Forbes 30 under 30 and Town & Country 50 Modern Swans - Entrepreneurship Influencer. Lu frequently speaks at high profile tech conferences such as World Economic Forum(Davos), Future Investment Initiative (FII), Web Summit, SuperReturn, etc. and she is a guest lecturer at Stanford University and Wharton. Lu serves as a board member of many portfolio companies, the Board Director of CommonSpirit Health Foundation, the Board and Chairwoman of the Youth Council of Future Science Award, and Jury Board of the Cartier Women Initiative and Young Leader Award. She holds an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University. ## Lin Zhou Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and Executive Director of AI and Quantum Computing, Texas Tech University Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/lin-zhou/ Track: Education Industry: Education Job Function: IT Company Size: 10,001+ employees Cadmium Role: Panelist Dr. Lin Zhou is Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Executive Director of AI & Quantum Computing at Texas Tech University, where he leads technology strategy to enhance education, expand career pathways for students, accelerate innovation and strengthen the university’s global reputation. With more than 25 years of leadership experience spanning Fortune 500 companies and higher education, Dr. Zhou played a pivotal role in growing IBM Watson Education from a startup into a global leader in artificial intelligence for education. A visionary executive and educator, he holds a Ph.D. in physics and is recognized as an expert in quantum computing, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. He holds numerous patents and has been honored as a Master Inventor by IBM. During his tenure as Senior Vice President at The New School, Dr. Zhou established the university’s Innovation Center, founded its Quantum Initiative and launched the first Quantum Design Art Exhibition in Manhattan. He also led a transformation in customer experience, tripling the university’s Net Promoter Score and fostering a customer-centric culture. Dr. Zhou’s work has been prominently featured on the Discovery Channel and has earned prestigious national and international recognition, including the CIO 100 Award, FutureEdge 50 Award and the QS Reimagine Education Gold Prize. Passionate about talent development, Dr. Zhou has mentored high school students who became U.S. national winners in the world’s largest K–12 science competition. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and has shared his insights on global stages across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. ## Christina Zhu Developer Advocate, Google Cloud Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/christina-zhu/ Industry: IT / Computer Technology Job Function: Engineering Company Size: 10,001+ employees State: California Cadmium Role: Sponsor Presenter Team or company is hiring: No Developer relations engineer at Google cloud ## Scott Zoldi Chief Analytics Officer, FICO Profile: https://ai4.com/speakers/scott-zoldi/ Track: Emerging Parallel Technologies Industry: Financial Services Job Function: AI/ML Company Size: 1,001-5,000 employees Cadmium Role: Presenter Team or company is hiring: Yes Dr. Scott Zoldi is chief analytics officer at FICO, responsible for artificial intelligence (AI) and analytic innovation across FICO's product and technology solutions. Dr. Zoldi has been listed as an inventor on 120+ AI & software patents, in collaboration with other data and analytic scientists, and he is also named on an additional 40+ patent applications in process. Scott is an industry leader in the responsible use of AI, Generative AI (GenAI), and Agentic AI, as well as an outspoken proponent of AI governance and regulation. His groundbreaking work in focused language models (FLMs) for GenAI and a patented use of blockchain technology for AI model development governance has helped propel Scott to AI visionary status. His recent awards include Constellation Research Award AI150, Tech Leadership Award from Banking Tech Awards, Tech Influencer Highly Commendable Award from DataIQ Data & AI Awards, San Diego Business Journal - Leaders of Influence in Technology (2025); Tech Leadership - Software & Services Provider from Fintech Futures, MachineCon AI100 Award, Innovator Award from American Banker (2024); Global Finance Innovator Award (FICO) (2023); and Corinium Future Thinking Award (2022). An enthusiastic member of the southern California tech community, Scott serves on the Boards of Directors of Software San Diego and the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence. He received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical and computational physics from Duke University, and his work has been published in The Harvard Business Review and numerous scientific journals.