Deena Shakir

Partner, Lux Capital

Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital (a multi-stage venture capital firm with $4B under management), where she invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods. She is particularly interested in contrarian and underdog founders building ambitious companies in digital health and sits on the boards of companies including H1, Adyn, AllStripes, Alife Health, SteadyMD, and Shiru. The daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Deena had a very non-linear journey into venture capital, always orienting around tech and entrepreneurship for impact. Prior to joining Lux, she was a Partner at Google Ventures, led partnerships for moonshot products at Google and directed social impact investments at Google.org. She was also a Presidential Management Fellow in the Obama administration, where she worked in Secretary Clinton's office and at USAID on programs supporting global entrepreneurship. The first-generation daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Deena self-funded her way through college at Harvard (where she delivered the commencement address!) and Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. A passionate advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equity, Deena is also on the boards of several nonprofits, a Forbes contributor, Kauffman Fellow, and Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. She lives with her husband and two young children in the SF Bay Area.

Dan Tapiero

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, 10T

Dan Tapiero is the CEO and Managing Partner of 10T. Dan brings 30 years of experience in macro and commodity investing and trading, research and economics, as well as entrepreneurship. Dan has an extensive set of relationships in the institutional investment management space and is a thought leader that regularly speaks and contributes on macroeconomic topics.

Before founding 10T, Dan was the managing partner of DTAP Capital Advisors, a global macro investment fund, that he founded in 2003. He is the co-founder of Gold Bullion International (GBI), a physical precious metals platform for the wealth management industry that also expanded into the cryptocurrency universe in 2014. He is a co-founder of the Agricultural Company of America (AGCoA), one of the largest farmland REITs in the U.S. at the time of its sale in 2013.

Previously, from 1992-2012, Dan was a macro-focused portfolio manager and analyst at Tiger Management, Duquesne Capital Management, Steinhardt Management Co., and SAC Capital Advisors. Dan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where he also earned his B.A.'90 and M.A.'91 in European History. Dan has been on the Board of Trustees of the Lawrenceville School for the past ten years and currently leads the Investment Committee for its endowment.

Blake Bailey

Author, Philip Roth: The Biography

Blake Bailey is the author of biographies of John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the National Book Critics Circle and the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, and a finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Prizes. His previous book, The Splendid Things We Planned, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.

Ed Hajim

Author, On The Road Less Traveled

Ed Hajim, the son of a Syrian immigrant, is a seasoned Wall Street executive with more than 50 years of investment experience. He has held senior management positions with the Capital Group, E.F. Hutton, and Lehman Brothers before becoming chairman and CEO of Furman Selz. Hajim has been the co-chairman of ING Barings, Americas Region; chairman and CEO of ING Aeltus Group and ING Furman Selz Asset Management; and chairman and CEO of MLH Capital. He is now chairman of High Vista, a Boston-based money management company.

Dean J. Trantalis, Esq.

42nd Mayor of Fort Lauderdale

Dean Trantalis was first elected mayor of Fort Lauderdale in 2018 and was re-elected in November 2020. His 2018 election represented the largest victory in city history for a candidate running for a first term as mayor. The 2020 election was also by landslide proportions and featured the largest turnout ever in a city race.

Dean previously served on the City Commission representing District 2 from 2003 to 2006 and from 2013 until his ascension to the mayor's office. He twice served as vice mayor: from 2005 to 2006 and from 2016 to 2017.

He represents the city on the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, the county Tourism Development Council, the Broward Workforce Development Board, the Florida League of Cities and the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance.

Born and raised in Norwich, Connecticut, Dean attended high school at Norwich Free Academy. At Boston University, he majored in political science and graduated cum laude and with distinction in 1975. He received a Juris Doctorate in 1979 from Stetson University School of Law, while completing international law courses in Eastern Europe, Russia, and London.

Dean was admitted to the Connecticut and Florida Bar Associations in 1980 and has practiced law in Broward County since 1982. He currently maintains a successful general law practice in Broward County with some emphasis in the areas of real estate, probate, estate planning, bankruptcy, and corporate matters. He is a member of the Federal Bar and the National Association of Bankruptcy Attorneys.

His long track record of public service in our community began with his involvement in the fight for equal rights.

In 1995, Dean served as the co-chair of Americans for Equality and oversaw the successful enactment of the Broward County Human Rights Ordinance. This law provided individuals with protection from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations based on their sexual orientation. Dean also helped manage the successful passage of the Broward County domestic partnership law, extending spousal-like benefits not only to county employees, but to all employees of entities doing business with Broward County.

Through his work fighting for equality, Dean discovered a passion for public service that led him to become involved in multiple community organizations, including the Fort Lauderdale Citizen Police Review Board, Broward House, the Dolphin Democrats, the Riviera Towers Co-Operative Board, the Broward County Planning Council and the John Graves Foundation Board of Trustees.

He also has represented the city on the board of directors of the Broward League of Cities, the Broward County Homeless Continuum of Care Task Force, the Broward Water Resources Task Force and the Broward County-Palm Beach County Joint C-51 Reservoir Work Group. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to serve on a statewide task force to draft plans for reopening business and amenities following a decline in COVID-19 infections.

Recognized for his leadership in our community, Dean has received multiple awards and honors for his work, including the Small Business Award from the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce in 2007. In spring 2015, he was an inaugural honoree of the Diversity Honors awards presented by the Harvey Milk Foundation. He also was honored as a Community Champion by the Broward County Commission and the Broward County Human Rights Board for his work on behalf of equal rights. The Harvey Milk Foundation and the Pride Center at Equality Park honored him again in April 2018 with a lifetime achievement award.

Dean was the first openly gay member of the City Commission and is the first openly gay mayor in the city history.

Nikhil Kamath

Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer, True Beacon & Zerodha

Nikhil started equity trading at the age of 17, having dropped out of school two years earlier to play chess for India. He largely focused on the emerging derivatives and commodity sectors, before co-founding Kamath Associates at the age of 19 to manage High Net Worth Individual portfolios in public markets.

In 2010, at the age of 23, he co-founded Zerodha with his brother, Nithin. The company aimed to revolutionize Indian financial market access by adopting a transparent, ultra-low fee with a proprietary tech-driven strategy. With over three million users, Zerodha is now the country’s largest retail brokerage platform. It facilitates orders worth 10 billion US dollars per day, which accounts for about 15% of the daily equity volume in India.

Headquartered in Asia’s IT hub, Bangalore, funded entirely by Nikhil and Nithin, the company has a valuation of over 2 billion US dollars. Through its incubator and VC fund, Rainmatter, Zerodha aggressively invests in fintech companies to drive innovation aimed at bringing financial inclusion across India.

Nikhil’s passion for analytics and financial markets stems from his unorthodox childhood. Until 2019, his focus was on generating superior returns for the Kamath proprietary fund, which over the past decade has achieved an average of 55% post-tax year on year performance.

Cathie Wood

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, ARK investment Management

Cathie registered ARK Investment Management LLC (“ARK”) as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2014. With over 40 years of experience identifying and investing in innovation, Cathie founded ARK to focus solely on disruptive innovation while adding new dimensions to research. Through an open approach that cuts across sectors, market capitalizations, and geographies, Cathie believes that ARK can identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centered around DNA sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology. As Chief Investment Officer (“CIO”) and Portfolio Manager, Cathie led the development of ARK’s philosophy and investment approach and has ultimate responsibility for investment decisions.

Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as CIO of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded, which in 2000, managed approximately $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates LLC as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist. Cathie received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in Finance and Economics from the University of Southern California in 1981.

Trier Bryant

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Just Work

Trier Bryant is Co-Founder and CEO of Just Work, LLC. She is a strategic executive leader with distinctive Tech, Wall Street, and military experience spanning over 15 years. She’s previously held leadership roles at Astra, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, and proudly served as a combat veteran in the United States Air Force as a Captain leading engineering teams while spearheading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives for the Air Force Academy, Air Force, and DoD. Additionally, Trier advises leading companies like Equinox, Airbnb, SoundCloud, Alto, Rockefeller Foundation, and others on their talent and DEI strategies. Trier has an unwavering commitment to employees within organizations to create a more equitable, inclusive, and thriving workplaces producing prosperous companies. She has been featured as an influential DEI practitioner by several publications and outlets from USA Today to CNN and SXSW. Trier earned a B.S. in Systems Engineering with a minor in Spanish and Leadership from the United States Air Force Academy (Beat Army, Sink Navy) where she played Division I volleyball. Trier enjoys spending time with her close-knit family who taught her to live by the family motto "...good enough isn't."

Kim Scott

Author, Radical Candor

Kim Scott is co-creator of an executive education company and workplace comedy series based on her best-selling book, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing your Humanity. Kim led AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick Online Sales and Operations at Google and then joined Apple to develop and teach a leadership seminar. Kim has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and several other tech companies.

Previously, Kim was the co-founder and CEO of Juice Software, a collaboration start-up, and led business development at Delta Three and Capital Thinking. Earlier in her career, she worked as a senior policy advisor at the FCC, managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo, started a diamond cutting factory in Moscow, and was an analyst on the Soviet Companies Fund. Kim received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Princeton University. She is the author of three novels and Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair is available for pre-order. She and her husband Andy Scott are parents of twins and live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Gabriel Radzyminski

Managing Director, Sandon Capital

Gabriel Radzyminski is the founder and Managing Director of Sandon Capital Pty Limited, a firm specialising in activist investing. Sandon Capital is the investment manager of three portfolios. Sandon Capital was established in 2008 and has conducted more than 40 private and public activist campaigns. Its flagship fund, Sandon Capital Activist Fund was established in 2009 and has delivered a return of 12% per annum since inception.

Brooke Baldwin

Anchor, CNN Newsroom

Brooke Baldwin is a Peabody Award finalist who anchors the 3:00pm edition of CNN Newsroom. She is also the creator and host of CNN’s Digital series “American Woman” which focuses on the stories of trailblazing women who have broken barriers in their respective fields and are now helping other women do the same.

Baldwin’s new book HUDDLE: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power is a blend of journalism and personal narrative examining how women have come together in a wide variety of times and places, to provide each other with support, empowerment, inspiration, and the strength to solve problems or enact meaningful change.

Baldwin crisscrossed the country to research and write this book, revealing how huddling helps women achieve success in the workplace, effect grassroots change, build confidence during girlhood, maintain better physical and mental health, survive racial and gender-based oppression, and weather the COVID-19 pandemic. By speaking with historians and researchers, Baldwin also learned the ways that huddling has often been key to women’s survival over generations.

Josh Rogin

Global Opinions Columnist, Washington Post

Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN. He is also the author of CHAOS UNDER HEAVEN: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century.

Previously, he has covered foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun.

He was a 2011 finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the 2011 recipient of the Interaction Award for Excellence in International Reporting.

Josh holds a BA in international affairs from the George Washington University and studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. He lives in Washington, DC.

Billie Simmons

Co-Founder & Chief of Staff, Daylight

Billie Simmons (she/her) is Co-founder of Daylight and leads operations and the company's many initiatives targeted at financial inclusion for the trans community. Billie previously founded a startup to help trans and non-binary people access safe services. Her background is in marketing and software engineering, at fintech focused companies such as Techstars and Anthemis group.

Rob Curtis

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Daylight

Rob Curtis (he/him) is CEO and Co-founder of Daylight. Rob has a background in financial services where he delivered technology projects across insurance and banking clients. In the latter part of his career, Rob has been leading LGBT+ consumer businesses. He was previously Managing Director of Gaydar, a dating and social networking platform with over 2m LGBT+ members worldwide, where he led on brand and customer acquisition and his last start-up, Helsa, connects LGBT+ clients to expert mental health professionals.

Sean Bill

Chief Investment Officer, VTA

Sean Bill is currently the Treasurer & Chief Investment Officer at the VTA where he is responsible for the management and oversight of a multi-billion-dollar multi-asset class portfolio. He also served as a Trustee for the City of San Jose Pension Plan and as a Sr. Advisor to the San Francisco Employees Retirement System. Sean was named to Chief Investment Officer Magazine’s Power 100 list of the most influential institutional investors globally for 2021; magazine profile. Prior to entering public service, Sean was a Principal at a Global Macro hedge fund based in Newport Beach California; he began his career on the Agriculture Floor at the Chicago Board of Trade. Sean has invested in dozens of seed stage technology companies through his micro-VC fund ReCurve Ventures and has been a frequent guest on Bloomberg television, CNBC, Fox Business News and most recently SALT Talks. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

John Preston

Author, Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell

John Preston is the former arts editor and television critic of the Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of six highly acclaimed books, including A Very English Scandal (now a BBC/Amazon Prime TV series starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw), and The Dig, which has recently been filmed starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James.

Professor Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD

Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also University Professor at Baylor University, Fellow in Disease and Poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, Faculty Fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and Health Policy Scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

Dr. Hotez is an internationally-recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. As head of the Texas Children’s CVD, he leads a team and product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS/SARS-2 coronavirus, diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide, while championing access to vaccines globally and in the United States. In 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people

He obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (phi beta kappa), followed by a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. Dr. Hotez has authored more than 500 original papers and is the author of four single-author books, including Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases (ASM Press); Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth (Johns Hopkins University Press); Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism (Johns Hopkins University Press); and a forthcoming 2020 book on vaccine diplomacy in an age of war, political collapse, climate change and antiscience (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Dr. Hotez served previously as President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (Public Health Section) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Public Policy Section). In 2011, he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health by the Pan American Health Organization of the WHO. In 2014-16, he served in the Obama Administration as US Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US Government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018, he was appointed by the US State Department to serve on the Board of Governors for the US Israel Binational Science Foundation, and is frequently called upon frequently to testify before US Congress. He has served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors. For these efforts in 2017 he was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the 34 most influential people in health care, while in 2018 he received the Sustained Leadership Award from Research!America. In 2019 he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities Award for Medical Excellence

Most recently as both a vaccine scientist and autism parent, he has led national efforts to defend vaccines and to serve as an ardent champion of vaccines going up against a growing national “antivax” threat. In 2019, he received the Award for Leadership in Advocacy for Vaccines from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Hotez appears frequently on television (including BBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), radio, and in newspaper interviews (including the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal).

Ted Seides, CFA

Host, Capital Allocators Podcast

Ted Seides, CFA is the founder of Capital Allocators, a flywheel that includes the Capital Allocators podcast, Capital Allocators University, and Capital Allocators Summits. Ted launched the podcast in 2017, and the show crossed ten million downloads in April 2022. The show has been recognized as the top institutional investing podcast. In March 2021, Ted published his second book, Capital Allocators: How the world's elite money managers lead and invest that distills key lessons from the first 150 episodes of the podcast. 

From 2002 to 2015, Ted was a founder of Protégé Partners LLC and served as President and Co-Chief Investment Officer. In 2016, he authored his first book, So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund: Lessons for Managers and Allocators, to share lessons from his experience. He began his career under the tutelage of David Swensen at the Yale University Investments Office and spent time in between investing directly at three of Yale’s managers.

He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Alliance for Decision Education and an active participant in the Hero’s Journey Foundation. He previously served as Trustee and member of the investment committee at the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Trustee and head of the Programming Committee for the Greenwich Roundtable, and on the Advisory Board of Citizen Schools-New York.

You can follow Ted on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Greg Gibb

Chief Executive Officer, Lufax

Gregory D. Gibb has been the chairman & CEO of Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Asset Exchange Co. Ltd. (Lufax) since December 2011. Before joining Ping An, Mr. Gibb served as the global senior director of McKinsey & Company, and subsequently the operating director of Taiwan Taishin Financial Holding Co., Ltd. He has more than 20 years’ work experience in both multinational and domestic companies of the financial and investment industry. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies at Middlebury University.

Mr. Gibb was introduced to the “National 1000-Foreign-Expert Plan” of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee in 2012, awarded the “Shanghai Top 10 Financial Innovation Figures of 2012”, and honored the “China Top 10 Leaders of Internet Finance of 2013”, etc. for his unique and widely-recognized insight about innovative financial services.

Mr. Gibb is author of the Banking in Asia - The End of Entitlement (Wiley, 1999) and the Banking in Asia - Acquiring a Profit Mindset (Wiley, 2003). Both books introduced bankers’ development opportunities and trump cards in Asia.

Nisa Amoils

Managing Partner, A100x

Nisa Amoils is Managing Partner at A100x Ventures investing in Blockchain/AI companies with impact, and has been an early stage investor for the past decade at different funds. She was named one of Business Insider’s Women VC’s to watch and top 100 Women in Fintech, and top 50 global Blockchain thinkers. She is a securities lawyer and on the boards of several institutions including Wharton Entrepreneurship and Girls Who Invest. She contributes for Forbes and is a frequent guest on TV. Prior to investing, she was an entrepreneur and spent many years in business development and strategy at companies like Time Warner, NBC Universal and Anderson Kill. She holds a business degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.