Michal Katz

Managing Director & Head of Investment and Corporate Banking, Mizuho Americas

Michal Katz is the Head of Investment and Corporate Banking for Mizuho Americas, a division of the Mizuho Financial Group, one of the largest financial institutions in the world with $2tn of assets. At Mizuho, Ms. Katz is responsible for all banking activity throughout the US, Canada and Latin America, including industry and financial sponsor coverage, equity and debt capital markets, project finance, securitization and M&A.

With a career spanning over 20 years on Wall Street, Ms. Katz is recognized as a seasoned and trusted advisor to corporations and boards in corporate finance, strategy and digital transformation. Prior to Mizuho, she was Co-Head of the Global Technology Investment Banking Group at RBC Capital Markets where she successfully built a global practice, advising and supporting leading and emerging technology companies in achieving their strategic and financing objectives, including highly complex, transformational M&A and capital markets activities. Ms. Katz also sat on the management committee of the US Investment Bank and the Regional Operating Committee, and was a founding member of the firm's Innovation Council tasked with advancing the firm's global businesses with new technologies, strategic partnerships, and investments to drive disruption and "out of the box" thinking.

Prior to RBC, Ms. Katz was a Managing Director at Barclays and Lehman Brothers, where she was head of the global software practice in the Technology Investment Banking Group. She also spent several years with the law firms of Skadden Arps and Winthrop Stimson (now Pillsbury Winthrop), where she practiced corporate law.

Michal was recognized by American Banker as one of the Most Powerful Women in Finance in 2019, and named by Crain's among the Notable Women in Finance in NYC for the past 3 years. She is an independent director to the board of Nuance Communications (NASDAQ:NUAN) and serves on the board of the GRAMMY Museum Foundation, a not-for-profit arm of the Recording Academy, where she chairs the Finance Committee. She is also a member of the Economic Club of NY and the Forbes Finance Council.

Ms. Katz received her BA with honors from Binghamton University and JD from New York University School of Law. She resides in New York with her husband and has twins who recently graduated from college.

Jean Hynes

Chief Executive Officer, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager, Wellington Management

Jean is the Chief Executive Officer, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager of Wellington Management. Throughout her nearly 30 years at the firm, Jean has researched the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, as well as served as health care portfolio manager, and leader of the health care sector research team. She has been the recipient of industry awards, including Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance (2020) and The Hedge Fund Journal’s 50 Leading Women In Hedge Funds (2018). Jean serves as the chair of Wellington’s Executive Committee and is the sponsor for the Wellington Women's Network. On 1 July, 2021, Jean will succeed Brendan Swords as Chief Executive Officer.

Jean joined Wellington Management upon her graduation from Wellesley College, where she earned a BA in economics. Additionally, she holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society Boston. Jean is also a member of the investment committees at Wellesley College and the Winsor School.

Ray Dalio

Founder, Co-Chairman & Co- Chief Investment Officer, Bridgewater Associates

Ray Dalio is the founder, co-Chief Investment Officer and Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, a global leader in institutional portfolio management, and the largest and most successful hedge fund in the world with approximately $150 billion in assets under management.

Ray started Bridgewater out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York in 1975 and over the course of its 43-year history has grown it into the 5th most important company in the U.S. according to Fortune Magazine. For his innovative work, Ray has been called the “Steve Jobs of Investing” by aiCIO Magazine and named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine.

Ray is the author of New York Times #1 Bestseller Principles as well as the author of Principles for Success, a distilled and easy-to-read illustrated novel of the bestseller, and Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. Ray has also published several studies his economic views, including “Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed” and “The Changing World Order.” Both are available on LinkedIn and the latter will be published as a standalone book later this year.

Ray graduated from C.W. Post College and Harvard Business School. He has been married to his wife, Barbara, for 41 years.

Albert Wenger

Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

Albert Wenger is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert graduated from Harvard College in economics and computer science and holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT. Photo Credit: Sebastian Weinmann

Suzanne Streeter

Partner & Co-Chief Investment Officer, Partners Capital Investment Group

Suzanne joined Partners Capital in 2015 and is the Head of Private Equity and Real Estate, leading the global research team responsible for manager selection and relationship management. She is a member of the firm’s investment committee. Suzanne joined Partners Capital from Babson Capital Management, the investment management arm of MassMutual, where she led Private Equity investments in North America, Europe and Latin America. Previously, she spent five years on the Private Equity team at the Yale Investments Office and 10 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and Berkshire Capital, where she covered financial institutions and asset managers. Suzanne holds a BA from Holy Cross and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Steve Cohen

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Point72

Steven A. Cohen is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Point72, a global asset management firm that invests in multiple asset classes and strategies.

Mr. Cohen bought the iconic New York Mets major league baseball team in 2020 and serves as Chairman and CEO of the team.

An avid philanthropist and entrepreneur, Mr. Cohen has founded and holds active leadership roles in a number of nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Cohen and his wife, Alexandra, founded the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation in 2001. The Cohen Foundation is committed to achieving lasting and meaningful change through commitments to Lyme and tickborne disease research, underserved communities, children, the arts and sustainability. Mr. Cohen created Cohen Veterans Network and Cohen Veterans Bioscience in 2015 to improve the mental healthcare, treatment, and quality of life for veterans and their families.

Mr. Cohen also serves on the Emeritus Board of the Robin Hood Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Board of Trustees.

Mr. Cohen received a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his investing career at Gruntal & Co., where he managed proprietary capital for 14 years before starting his own investment business.

Raghu Yarlagadda

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, FalconX

Raghu is the Co-founder and CEO of FalconX, one of the largest and fastest growing digital asset brokerages. He's an engineer by background and passionate about building products that create value – leading him to become a serial entrepreneur, product leader, active investor, and board advisor to several Silicon Valley startups. Prior to FalconX, Raghu held product leadership roles in Google. He was on Sundar Pichai’s Chrome OS team and led efforts to scale Chromebooks to over $3 billion revenue for Google and its partners. He started his career at Motorola as an engineer in a team that pioneered high definition video transmission over IP stack, laying the technical foundation for many popular video streaming services such as Netflix and Youtube.

Raghu holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, M.S. from University of Texas at Dallas specializing in Signal Processing & Machine Learning, and B.Tech. from Vellore Institute of Technology.

Anatoly Yakovenko

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Solana

Anatoly is the creator of Solana. He led development of operating systems at Qualcomm, distributed systems at Mesosphere, and compression at Dropbox. He holds 2 patents for high performance Operating Systems protocols, was a core kernel developer for BREW which powered every CDMA flip phone (100m+ devices), and led development of tech that made Project Tango (VR/AR) possible on Qualcomm phones.

Ilana D. Weinstein

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, The IDW Group

Ilana Weinstein is founder and CEO of THE IDW Group LLC, a New York-based executive search firm focused on placing senior hedge fund and business professionals across the investment landscape. The firm has become a leading boutique for hedge fund managers, asset managers, private equity firms and family offices in search of top investment talent for their public, private and global investment initiatives. Weinstein previously worked at Goldman Sachs and The Boston Consulting Group. She is a frequent guest on Bloomberg and CNBC TV programs, discussing market trends and the hedge fund universe. Weinstein holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Geoffrey von Maltzahn

General Partner, Flagship Pioneering

Geoffrey von Maltzahn is an inventor, entrepreneur, and co-founder of more than ten first-in-category life science companies. A general partner at Flagship Pioneering, Geoff builds companies that integrate biology and data science to transform human health and environmental sustainability.  

Geoff has deep expertise in genome engineering, bioengineering, the microbiome, and nanotechnology. He is listed as an inventor on over 200 patent applications and patents, and has co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed articles. Since joining Flagship in 2009, Geoff has co-founded companies that have, in aggregate, achieved over $10 billion in public and private market capitalization including: Tessera Therapeutics, Generate Biomedicines, Indigo Agriculture, Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MCRB), and Axcella Health (NASDAQ:AXLA).

Geoff co-founded Tessera in 2018 to pioneer Gene Writing, a new category of genome engineering technology that aims to write curative therapeutic messages into the human genome. By breaking the rules that have governed genetic medicine to date, Gene Writing holds the potential to correct genetic defects at the root of thousands of diseases. Geoff served as Tessera’s founding CEO for four years and today serves as board chair and director.

Geoff has received numerous awards and honors, including Bloomberg 50's Ones to Watch; Business Insider’s 30 Biotech Leaders Under 40; and the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, awarded to the most innovative students at MIT. Geoff earned his PhD in biomedical engineering and medical physics from MIT under the mentorship of Sangeeta N. Bhatia, MD, PhD; an MS in bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego; and an SB in chemical engineering from MIT.

Dr. Eric Verdin

President & Chief Executive Officer, Buck Institute for Research on Aging

Dr. Eric Verdin is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. A native of Belgium, Dr. Verdin received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Gladstone Institute at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Verdin is currently adjunct Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California (USC).

Dr. Verdin studies how metabolism, diet, and small molecules impact epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, and thereby the aging process and its associated diseases. He is a highly cited scientist (top 1 percent) and has been recognized for his research with multiple awards including a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and Belgium’s Royal Academy of Medicine.

The Buck Institute, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in the field of research on aging, the number one risk factor for chronic disease. For more information visit www.buckinstitute.org

David Trucano

Managing Director, BlackRock

David Trucano, Managing Director, leads BlackRock's Opportunistic Credit platform comprised of direct hedge funds and private equity-style credit strategies totaling approximately $4 billion in AUM. Mr. Trucano is the Lead Portfolio Manager and Chairman of the Investment Committee of BlackRock's Global Credit Opportunities fund and the Lead Portfolio Manager responsible for BlackRock Credit Alpha. In addition, Mr. Trucano manages special situations and distressed investing positions across BlackRock Alternative Investors and Global Fixed Income platforms. Mr. Trucano previously served as a director of KCA Deutag GmbH and General Maritime Corp.

Prior to joining BlackRock in 2012, Mr. Trucano was a Managing Director at Centerbridge Partners, a private investment firm managing $20 billion in credit and private equity strategies. During his tenure at Centerbridge, Mr. Trucano served as a director of Dana Holdings Corp. (NYSE: DAN). From 2004 to 2007, he was with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in its Special Situations Group in both New York and London. Prior thereto, Mr. Trucano spent nine years working in private equity, financial restructuring advisory, and investment banking.

Mr. Trucano earned a joint BA degree in Economics and History from Emory University and an MBA degree from the University of Chicago.

Mark Spitznagel

Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Universa Investments

Mark Spitznagel is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the hedge fund Universa Investments, based in Miami. He is the author of the 2013 book The Dao of Capital and the forthcoming Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms.

Kristin Smith

Executive Director, Blockchain Association

Kristin is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, the Washington DC-based trade association representing more than 80 of the industry’s leading companies. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.S. 

She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune’s 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk’s 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph’s 2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. 

Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy. She co-founded HODLpac and currently serves on the organization’s board of directors. Kristin is a Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web board member and an independent director for Skybridge Capital’s G and GII Funds. 

Andy Slavitt

Former Senior Advisor to the Biden White House COVID Response Team

Andy Slavitt was President Biden’s White House Senior Advisor for the Covid response. He has led many of the nation’s most important health care initiatives, serving as President Obama’s head of Medicare and Medicaid and overseeing the turnaround, implementation and defense of the Affordable Care Act. Slavitt is the “outsider’s insider”, serving in leading private and non-profit roles in addition to his government services. he is founder and Board Chair Emeritus of United States of Care, a national non-profit health advocacy organization as well as a founding partner of Town Hall Ventures, a healthcare firm that invests in underrepresented communities. He co-chaired a national initiative on the future of health care at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He chronicles what goes on inside the government and across the nation at town halls, in USA Today, on his award-winning podcast In the Bubble, and on Twitter. He is the author of Preventable, a best-selling account of the US’s Coronavirus response released in 2021. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School, he and his wife have two grown sons.

David A. Sinclair, PhD AO

Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

David Sinclair is a tenured Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his research on delaying and reversing aging. He has published over 200 scientific papers, is a co-inventor on over 50 patent and patent applications, and has co- founded a dozen biotechnology companies in the areas of rare diseases, inflammation, vaccines, infectious disease detection, diabetes, fertility, cancer, and biosecurity, the first four of which have gone public. His book Lifespan became a New York Times and International best seller, and is printed in over 20 languages. He cofounded and serves as Co-Chief Editor of the scientific journal Aging, is a board member of private and public companies, and has received more than 35 awards, including Australia's leading scientists under 45, a Medical Research Medal, the Merck Prize, the Genzyme Innovation Award, the NIH Director’s Pioneer award, and TIME magazine’s list of the “100 most influential people in the world” and the “Top 50 people in healthcare.” In 2018, he became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his research, science communication, and national security.

Ari Rubenstein

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, GTS

Ari Rubenstein is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GTS, an industry leading trading and technology firm.

Under his leadership, GTS has grown from a start-up proprietary trading firm into an international company that trades over 30,000 different financial instruments globally and is a leading Designated Market Maker at the New York Stock Exchange.

On any given day, GTS’ proprietary systems trade as much as a billion shares of U.S. equities and through its retail and ETF market making business, GTS touches virtually every trading household in the United States. Since in inception, Mr. Rubenstein and his colleagues have built GTS into what is today a leading quantitative trading firm that leverages the best in artificial intelligence systems and innovative pricing models to bring consistency, efficiency, and transparency to today’s financial markets.

Mr. Rubenstein is a vocal supporter of the efficiency and democratization of modern markets and an outspoken advocate for thoughtful, intelligent, and data-driven regulation. He has appeared before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee and the Securities & Exchange Commission, testifying on key market structure issues, including the importance of publicly listed companies in driving job creation, capital raising and economic growth.

Michael Rockefeller

Co-Chief Investment Orficer, Portfolio Manager & Management Committee Member, Woodline Partners

Michael is Co-Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Manager and on the Management Committee for Woodline Partners. Previously, Michael served as Healthcare Portfolio Manager in San Francisco for Citadel Global Equities since 2011. Prior to Citadel, he worked at Millennium Management as a Senior Therapeutics Analyst from 2008-2011 and prior to Millennium, Pharmaceuticals Research Analyst and Vice President at Morgan Stanley in New York. Michael graduated from Skidmore College, with a degree in Neuroscience.

Jennifer Prosek

Founder & Managing Partner, Prosek Partners

Jennifer Prosek is the founder and Managing Partner of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy with offices in New York, London, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Palm Beach, Fairfield and Cape Town. The firm ranks among the top financial communications consultancies in the U.S. and UK. Prosek Partners was named among Forbes’ America’s Best PR Agencies in 2021, has been listed as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for nine years running, and is ranked among the Top 25 firms in New York Observer’s PR Power List. Jennifer was also listed personally among Insider’s list of top financial communicators in the United States.  Jennifer received her MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in English Literature from Miami University.

James Peyer

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Cambrian Biopharma

James Peyer, Ph.D., is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cambrian BioPharma, a Distributed Drug Development Company focused on developing therapeutics targeting the biological drivers of aging. Cambrian builds, directs, operates, and finances a pipeline of therapeutics. He founded the company to translate laboratory breakthroughs in the extension of healthy lifespan into the clinic with the mission of shifting the modern medicine approach from reactive to preventative.

Before Cambrian, Dr. Peyer started Apollo Ventures, the first company builder in Longevity Therapeutics, where he was the founder, investor, and CEO of multiple companies. He did his Ph.D. with a focus on blood stem cell biology as a National Science Foundation Fellow at UT Southwestern.