Aakriti Srikanth

Aku was most recently a Principal at Workday where she worked closely with the Co-CEO, Chief Strategy Officer and others on key developer initiatives. Prior to that, she worked as a Director of Technical Product at DataRobot and also let the partnership with Snowflake. – AI unicorn when it was a valuation of $6.3B. She worked with the General Catalyst Managing Director/ex – CTO of Dropbox via sourcing deals. She has driven value through customer and strategic partnerships. She started career at the Wall Street firm D.E.Shaw & Co. and Deloitte.

She raised over $20M in venture capital funding as an entrepreneur.

She was a founding AI product lead for the IBM Watson division which contributed to $13.7B and the Chief AI Evangelist of Red Hat’s subscription products which totaled a revenue of $2.6B in 2018, up 21% YoY. She led the NVIDIA AI partnership for NetApp as their founding AI lead. She launched an AI Venture studio (www.genaivc.space) where she incubated startups from pre-seed to later stage.

She has advised founders of startups such as Vendia, Credo.ai, Vectice, H2O.ai (a startup funded by Goldman Sachs) & others.

Shaloo Garg

Shaloo Garg is Managing Director, Late Stage Startups & Unicorns and based out of Silicon Valley. She brings a combination of strong startup, enterprise, strategic partnership and corporate development experience.

Previously, Shaloo was Partner , Global Oracle Innovation at Oracle where she lead the Global Corporate Innovation practice of commercializing revenue opportunities for startups into the enterprise client base and partner ecosystem. She has also lead go-to-market for Oracle’s cloud business and was part of the M&A team that acquired Peoplesoft, Siebel, Retek etc. Prior to joining Oracle, she was in a couple of early stage startups. Shaloo is passionate about Tech for Good and is President , BOD at UN Women, Silicon Valley , a “Champion of Innovation” at UN Women where she is spinning up virtual Innovation Labs with Universities leveraging emerging technologies to encourage digital literacy in developing countries for young girls who do not have access to education.

Tong Yu

Born in China and immigrating to San Francisco at the young age of 15, Tong is a testament to adaptability and perseverance. With humble beginnings as a talented oil painting artist, Tong seamlessly transitioned into the world of technology as an engineer at a leading enterprise software company in Silicon Valley.

This innate drive for success was evident from an early age, Tong made their first pot of gold in sixth grade by recruiting her playmates to sell used newspapers to neighbors back in China. Since their sophomore year in high school, Tong has founded multiple companies, demonstrating their unparalleled ambition and tenacity. With a keen interest in artificial intelligence and venture capital, Tong is now poised to contribute their unique blend of creative and technical expertise to the forefront of these exciting fields, nurturing innovation and empowering the next generation of groundbreaking ideas.

Damon Horowitz

Damon Horowitz is a notable figure known for his diverse background as a philosophy professor and serial entrepreneur. He has given TED talks on topics like teaching philosophy in prisons and ethics in the technology industry, advocating for the importance of humanities in tech. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MS in Artificial Intelligence from MIT, and a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford. His career includes co-founding companies such as Aardvark, Perspecta, and Novation Biosciences, and working as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engineering at Google.

Horowitz also teaches courses in philosophy, AI, and cognitive science at various universities, including NYU, Stanford, Columbia, U Penn, and even San Quentin State Prison. He has been involved in non-profit work, serving on the boards of arts and humanities organizations, including Cal Humanities. In 2014, he founded “The Oracular Theatre,” a non-profit Shakespeare theater company, and directed their production of Julius Caesar.

Sol is Chief Data Officer of Estée Lauder

Sol Rashidi, the Chief Analytics Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies, is a prominent figure in the field of AI. She has numerous accolades and a successful career that started unexpectedly in data analysis. She has experience at IBM, Ernst and Young, and Royal Caribbean, where she advocated for building in-house talent. Sol’s success is driven by her forward-thinking mindset and her teams’ ability to innovate while mastering the basics.

She explains that titles like Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Data Officer, and Chief Digital Officer are interconnected, and the focus is on bridging the gap between technology and business.

Richard Ling

Richard Ling founded three technology start-up companies in data-driven ad targeting (ImpulseBuy Networks), mobile/cloud transcoding (AlterEgo) and e-mail search (MetaLincs) that were all acquired by large public companies (Inktomi (INKT), Macromedia (MACR) and Seagate (STX), respectively).

These companies raised over $50M in venture capital funding from top-tier venture funds, corporate and angel investors including Mayfield Fund, Softbank, Canaan Partners, Granite Ventures, Arrowpath (ETrade), Newbury, Yahoo! Inc, Interwoven, SRI (Stanford Research Institute), Frank Quatrrone, John Chambers among many others. These companies collectively returned almost $350M in enterprise value to the investors.
Mr Ling is also a Founding General Partner of Rembrandt Venture Partners (RVP),  established in 2004 to provide private equity capital to early stage technology companies.

Anil Cheriyan

Anil Cheriyan is Cognizant’s Executive Vice President, Strategy and Technology. Overseeing all aspects of Corporate Strategy, Global IT and Global Security, Anil is responsible for Cognizant’s strategy, alliances and business development, and for strengthening the company’s global IT and security capabilities.

Prior to joining Cognizant in August 2020, Anil served as the U.S. Presidential Appointee in charge of Technology Transformation Services, with a mission to improve people’s lives through technology. Working closely with the White House, agency leadership and the Federal CIO, he drove the technology transformation agenda across the U.S. federal government, accelerating the transformation of several agencies with industry-leading talent in AI, cloud, digital platforms, data and analytics, identity and citizen experience.

Erica Lee

Erica is the VP for Machine Learning at Upwork.com, the #1 global remote talent marketplace. She leads an international applied ML organization that develops: Search & Recommendations, Knowledge Graph, Trust & Safety/Fraud Automation, Marketing Analytics, Experimentation Platform & ML Infrastructure.

Formerly, Erica was the Director of ML at Zillow.com, the #1 digital real estate marketplace, where she led ML-powered “Neural Zestimate,” underwriting automation, and more.

Previously, Erica worked at Apple AI, Morgan Stanley, and Harvard Research. She is the Founder of WomenOfAI.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing free & sponsored AI education & resources to AI women from AWS, Google, Samsung, Two Sigma Ventures & more.

Bill Wright

Currently working as a Chief Architect and AI/ML strategic lead in the COI – CTO Office organization at Red Hat, using Customer-led Open Innovation projects to drive new advances in open source AI technology. Previously responsible for AI/ML strategy and business development for the Intelligent Edge group in Red Hat’s TME and Industries organization. Started Red Hat’s AI Networks initiative in 2017, to advance the use of AI and machine learning in mobile network and Edge infrastructure.
• Founder and chair of the Enterprise Neurosystem AI/ML open source community. The focus is the creation of large scale AI infrastructure frameworks and integration fabrics. The underlying development objective is a single large scale AI infrastructure that can be used to analyze and manage global climate change and other areas of social good. Members include Red Hat, IBM Research, Intel, Stanford SLAC, Harvard Analytics, Meta, Equinix, Reliance Jio, Verizon, Kove, Fiducia AI, Yahoo! and others.

Shanmugam Palaniappan

Passionate Technical Leader with 22+ Years’ experience with proven track record of success in architecting & building complex large-scale mission critical SaaS Systems & high-impact software systems for companies ranging from startups to large companies.

Responsible for leading architecture of multiple consumer scale global SaaS platforms

Built and retained Software Engineering teams for both start-ups and well-established enterprises.

Architected & Developed an Extensible Platform with Customization Model with Extreme Scale & High Performance for leading ecommerce brands and retailers such as: Adidas, HBC, UnderArmour, Scholastic, ECCO, Columbia, Decker’s, Crocs, Aeropost, JTV, Michaels, Carters, L’Oréal, Motorola, and Lands’ End.

Dhaval Bhatt

Dhaval Bhatt is a seasoned Product Leader with over 20 years of experience across various sectors, including aerospace, finance, and gaming. Currently at Microsoft Gaming, Dhaval focuses on developing data platforms that enhance the gaming experience for both creators and end-users. His approach to product management is data-driven, aiming to make a tangible impact on the lives of 100 million players.

Prior to Microsoft, Dhaval led AI product development at Wells Fargo. He was responsible for the Transaction Factory, a platform that processes 200 million transactions each day. This platform has been a key component in helping users manage their financial health, and it has generated a realized value of $7 million.