Congressman Brendan F. Boyle

D-Pennsylvania, 2nd District

Congressman Brendan F. Boyle was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia. The son of an immigrant, Congressman Boyle’s father was a janitor for SEPTA and his mother was a school crossing guard.

The first in his family to attend college, he attended the University of Notre Dame and later graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a master's degree in Public Policy.

He was elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature in 2008, becoming the first Democrat to ever represent his legislative district. Two years later his brother, Kevin, was also elected to the state legislature, making them the first brothers to serve together in the state House. In 2014, Congressman Boyle pulled off an upset win over three better funded rivals to be elected to Congress.

Now in his fourth term, Congressman Boyle represents the 2nd congressional district of Pennsylvania which is fully enclosed within the City of Philadelphia. He currently serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, and on the Select Revenue Subcommittee and Trade Subcommittee thereof. He also serves on the House Committee on the Budget. He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government. Congressman Boyle also serves as a member of the United States Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Congressman Boyle is the founder and co-chair of the “Blue Collar Caucus” which advocates for working families by addressing wage stagnation, job insecurity, and the future of work.

Elizabeth Stark

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Lightning Labs

Elizabeth is a huge fan of open source, decentralized protocols. She taught at Stanford and Yale where her students studied peer-to-peer technology, privacy, open source software, and memes. She has been an active contributor to the bitcoin community, an advisor to startups in areas ranging from cryptocurrency to decentralized technology to AI, and is a fellow at Coin Center. She has a law degree from Harvard and is an avid listener of electronic music.

Walter Isaacson

Professor of History, Tulane University

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.

Scott M. Sperling

Co-Chief Executive Officer, Thomas H. Lee Partners

Scott Sperling is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Thomas H. Lee Partners and a member of the firm’s Management and Investment committees. Mr. Sperling's current and prior directorships include Thermo Fisher Scientific Corp., the Madison Square Garden Company, Experian, Warner Music Group, Houghton Mifflin Co., Fisher Scientific, Agiliti, Univision Communications, Inc., iHeartMedia, Inc., Front Line Management Companies., The Learning Company, PriCellular Corp., ProcureNet, ProSiebenSat.1, Wyndham Hotels, Federal Street Acquisition Corp., and several other private companies.

Prior to joining Thomas H. Lee Partners, Mr. Sperling was, for more than a decade, managing partner of the affiliate of Harvard Management Company that managed all alternative asset classes for Harvard University’s endowment fund. Before that he was a Senior Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.

Mr. Sperling is involved with a number of charitable and non-profit organizations. He is Chairman of Mass General Brigham, the Parent of the Harvard teaching hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital as well as a number of leading specialty and community hospitals and physicians practice groups. He is Chairman Emeritus of the CitiCenter for Performing Arts and Wang Theater. He is also a member of each of the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors, the Harvard University Committee on University Resources and the Harvard Business School's Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. from Purdue University.

Jim Mellon

Chairman, Juvenescence

Jim Mellon is a British entrepreneur and investor with a wide range of interests. Through his private investment company, Burnbrae Group, he has substantial real estate holdings in Germany and the Isle of Man, as well as holdings in private and public companies.

Jim’s investment philosophy is underpinned by his ability to recognise emerging trends that give rise to new industries or major shifts in markets. This includes global financial crisis of 2008-2009, as foreseen in the first book Jim co-authored entitled Wake Up!, and subsequently in the new science and technologies detailed in Cracking the Code and Fast Forward.

More recently Jim has established himself as a leader in the nascent field of ageing research and longevity. His groundwork into the field is summarised in the book Juvenescence which he also co-authored.

For decades, scientists have quietly been working away to understand the fundamental mechanisms of ageing. As a result of this progress, scientists have been reproducibly altering the rates of ageing and maximum lifespan in animal models. These discoveries are being translated into humans and will soon give rise to the largest industry on the planet.

Jim and his partners have now set up Juvenescence, a company developing therapies for ageing and the diseases of ageing, to capitalise on this money fountain.

Jim sits on the Board of Trustees of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). He is also a trustee of Biogerontology Research Foundation and Lifeboat Foundation, is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford and sits on the Advisory Board of the Milken Institute’s Centre for the Future of Aging. Jim has been honoured by the AFAR with the George E. and Marie J. Doty Award for his support of ageing research.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Chairman, VaynerX; Chief Executive Officer, VaynerMedia

Gary Vaynerchuk is a serial entrepreneur, and serves as the Chairman of VaynerX and the CEO of VaynerMedia. Gary is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in culture, relevance and the internet. Known as “GaryVee” he is described as one of the most forward thinkers in business - he acutely recognizes trends and patterns early to help others understand how these shifts impact markets and consumer behavior. Whether its emerging artists, esports, NFT investing or digital communications, Gary understands how to bring brand relevance to the forefront. He is a prolific angel investor with early investments in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase and Uber.

Gary is an entrepreneur at heart -- he builds businesses. Today, he helps Fortune 1000 brands leverage consumer attention through his full service advertising agency, VaynerMedia which has offices in NY, LA, London, and Singapore. VaynerMedia is part of the VaynerX holding company which also includes VaynerProductions, Gallery Media Group, The Sasha Group, Tracer, VaynerSpeakers, VaynerTalent and VaynerCommerce. Gary is also the Co-Founder of VaynerSports, Resy and Empathy Wines. Gary guided both Resy and Empathy to successful exits -- both were sold respectively to American Express and Constellation Brands.

In addition to running multiple businesses, Gary documents his life daily as a CEO through his social media channels which has more than 30 million followers across all platforms. His podcast ‘The GaryVee Audio Experience’ ranks among the top podcasts globally. He is a

five-time New York Times Best-Selling Author and one of the most highly sought after public speakers.

Gary serves on the board of MikMak, Bojangles Restaurants, and Pencils of Promise. He is also a longtime Well Member of Charity:Water.

Willy Woo

Author, The Bitcoin Forecast

Willy Woo is an on-chain analyst, a new field that extracts market intelligence signals from Bitcoin's blockchain. He writes The Bitcoin Forecast, the most popular paid letter in the crypto industry.

Tsedal Neeley

Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Tsedal Neeley (@tsedal) is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She regularly advises top leaders who are embarking on virtual work and large scale-change that involves global expansion, digital transformation, and becoming more agile.

Tsedal heads and teaches in the first-year required Leadership and Organizational Behavior course in the MBA program that focuses on how to lead effectively; the curriculum addresses group behavior and performance, organization design, change and how to align people behind a common vision. With Bill George and Krishna Palepu she co-chairs the executive offering, Leading Global Businesses, which helps top leaders develop emerging and mature market strategies in a global and increasingly digital economy. She also teaches extensively in executive programs such as Harvard Business Analytics Program. Tsedal is a recipient of the prestigious Charles M. Williams Award for Outstanding Teaching in Executive Education and the Greenhill Award for outstanding contributions to Harvard Business School. She serves on the Board of Directors of Brightcove, Brown Capital Management, Harvard Business Publishing and the Partnership Inc.

Her forthcoming book, Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere (2021, Harper Collins Business), provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. Her award-winning book, The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations chronicles the behind-the-scenes globalization process of a company over the course of five years. She has also published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, Journal of International Business, Strategic Management Journal and Harvard Business Review, and her work has been widely covered in media outlets such as BBC, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist. Her HBS case, Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, is one of the most used cases worldwide on the subject of virtual work.

Prior to her academic career, Tsedal spent ten years working for companies like Lucent Technologies and The Forum Corporation in various roles, including strategies for global customer experience, 360-degree performance software management systems, sales force/sales management development, and business flow analysis for telecommunication infrastructures. A sought-after speaker with extensive international experience, she is fluent in four languages. She holds a patent for her software simulation on global collaboration and is a member of Rakuten’s Advisory Board.

Tsedal received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering, specializing in Work, Technology and Organizations. Tsedal was named to Thinkers50 2018 On the Radar list for making lasting contributions to management, honored as a Stanford Distinguished Alumnus Scholar and was a Stanford University School of Engineering Lieberman award recipient for excellence in teaching and research.

Brett Tejpaul

Head of Institutional Sales, Trading, Custody & Prime Services, Coinbase

As an experienced business builder and innovator in Financial Services, Brett has accelerated revenue growth with institutional clients and mobilize FinTech companies. At Coinbase, Brett is making connections between finance 1.0 and the crypto economy. Coinbase is focused on the continued institutionalization of crypto. This includes continuing to expand the institutional client base, building out the Sales team, introducing new features and services that institutional investors expect, and continuing to educate the institutional community about crypto as an asset class and its role within a diversified portfolio. As the Global Head of Sales at Barclays, Brett hired and developed large teams while incubating and launching multiple lines of business. Brett pioneered the Digital role across sales & trading adopting new technologies and transforming existing platforms, including the creation of a digital bank prototype.Brett is currently on the Advisory Board of Eightfold.ai. helping them scale their AI based hiring and retention platform for Financial Services.In earlier experience, Brett held leadership roles in sales, trading, and structuring at JP Morgan, innovating credit derivatives and structuring platforms.

Joe Eletto

Production Manager, SALT

Joe Eletto is the Production Manager of SALT where he oversees a global event portfolio, including flagship events in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi, as well as the new digital series, SALT Talks. SALT is a global thought leadership forum encompassing finance, technology and geopolitics.

He is also Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at SkyBridge, where he supports Founder & Managing Partner Anthony Scaramucci.

Joe previously managed smart home products for Jet.com, an e-commerce company acquired by Walmart, and worked in people operations at Google. He began his career as an opera singer, garnering reviews in The New York Times for his performances at Lincoln Center alongside the New York City Ballet and a Grammy Award for his participation on Houston Symphony’s live recording of Berg’s Wozzeck.

Joe holds a Bachelor of Music with Distinction in Research and Creative Works from Rice University and a Master of Music from The Juilliard School.

Kurt Andersen

Author, Evil Geniuses

Kurt Andersen is the bestselling author of the novels Heyday, Turn of the Century, and True Believers. He contributes to Vanity Fair and The New York Times and was the host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award–winning public radio show and podcast. He also writes for television, film, and the stage. Andersen co-founded Spy magazine, served as editor in chief of New York, and was a cultural columnist and critic for Time and The New Yorker. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. He lives in Brooklyn.

Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, upskillable

Dr. Taghreed M. Al-Saraj is currently working as a Post Doctorate fellow at University of California, Berkeley. She is the first Saudi female Post Doctorate in the history of UC Berkeley. Dr. Al-Saraj earned both a Bachelor and a Masters in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from the University of Miami, Florida. She earned her Ph.D. from UCL Institute of Education, University of London.

Dr. Al-Saraj was an English language lecturer at a private university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Having seen firsthand the debilitating effects of Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) in her classrooms, she became very motivated to raise language teachers' awareness about FLA and works with them to decrease the impact of FLA on their language students. Little did she know that she would experience the foreign language anxiety her research subject talked about first hand when she embarked on the journey to learn her third language, Turkish.

She is considered one of the most important Saudi researchers publishing in top international journals focusing on language education in the Arab culture. She has presented on the topic of FLA in the Arab world and international conferences around the world. Dr. Al-Saraj is also a certified women leadership coach, international public speaker, and an educational consultant.

Szymon Idzikowski

Fund Manager, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB)

Szymon brings well over a decade of experience in financial services, predominantly in fund research and portfolio management. He started his career with Morningstar in London, UK, where he was involved in roll out of Morningstar's qualitative fund research and ratings across Europe and Asia. He was instrumental in building a rating service covering UK closed-end funds, writing Morningstar Research Reports, and co-managed model portfolios.

Szymon joined ADCB in January 2015 to lead the 3rd party fund selection and co-manage discretionary client investment portfolios. He is a lead fund manager of ADCB Target Date Funds and ADCB Multi- Asset Funds.

Szymon holds a master's degree from the University of Economics in Poznan, a bachelor's degree from the University of Abertay Dundee, and is a CFA Charter Holder.

Stuart Stevens

Author, It Was All a Lie

Stuart Stevens is the author of seven previous books, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including Northern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College; and UCLA film school. He is a former fellow of the American Film Institute.

Stuart Leckie, O.B.E.

Founding Chairman, Hong Kong Retirement Schemes Association

Mr. Leckie advises on investments and pensions in the Far East. He is the author of books titled "Investment Funds in China" and "Pension Funds in China". He is the Founding Chairman of the Hong Kong Retirement Schemes Association and was Chairman of the CFA Institute Advisory Council on Standards and Financial Market Integrity.

He has served as the Chairman of Watson Wyatt (now Willis Towers Watson) in Asia-Pacific and as Chairman of Fidelity Investments, Asia­Pacific. He was a Director of Exchange Fund Investment Limited which created the Hong Kong Government's Tracker Fund, the first E.T.F. in Asia. He has undertaken many project on China for the World Bank, OECD, ILO and ADB. Mr Leckie has also served on several committees in Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, and he has advised the Chinese Government on pension reforms.

Mr. Leckie is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (U.K.) and of the Society of Actuaries (U.S.A.). He is also Adjunct Professor at City University of Hong Kong. He was appointed Justice of the Peace by the Hong Kong Government, and has been awarded 0.B.E. by the British Government.

Strauss Zelnick

Chief Executive Officer & Chairman, Take-Two Interactive

Strauss Zelnick founded ZMC in 2001. Mr. Zelnick has a long history of leading media and communications enterprises and is deeply involved in originating investments, advising executives and guiding strategic and operational initiatives across all portfolio company investments.

Mr. Zelnick serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. In addition, he recently served as Interim Chairman of The CBS Corp. Board of Directors.

Prior to forming ZMC, Mr. Zelnick was President and Chief Executive Officer of BMG Entertainment, at that time one of the world’s largest music and entertainment companies with more than 200 record labels and operations in 54 countries. Before joining BMG Entertainment, Mr. Zelnick was President and Chief Executive Officer of Crystal Dynamics, a producer and distributor of interactive entertainment software.

Prior to that, he spent four years as President and Chief Operating Officer of 20th Century Fox, where he managed all aspects of Fox Inc.’s worldwide motion picture production and distribution business. Previously, Mr. Zelnick spent three years at Vestron Inc., two as the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Zelnick also served as Vice President of International Television Sales at Columbia Pictures.

Mr. Zelnick holds a BA from Wesleyan University, as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School and a JD from Harvard Law School. He is the author of “Success: A Concise Guide to Having the Life You Want” and “Becoming Ageless”.

Stephen A. Smith

EPSN’s First Take & SportsCenter

A former Newspaper Beat Writer and Columnist for 18 years, Stephen A. Smith has become, unquestionably, ESPN's most recognizable personality and most visible studio analyst. Since joining ESPN in 2003, he's been a fixture on SPORTSCENTER, primarily as the World-Wide Leader's premier NBA Analyst, which included NBA Shootaround and NBA Fastbreak, and currently hosts SPORTSCENTER with Stephen A. Smith. In 2005, he was given his own National television show, QUITE FRANKLY on ESPN2 with Stephen A. Smith, a one-hour weeknight show featuring sports, news, opinions, issues, headlines, and interviews, which lasted for 327 shows from August 2005 to January 2007. He also hosted a weekday Stephen A. Smith Show on ESPN Radio in New York from April 2005 to April 2008. In 2017 the Stephen A. Smith Show on ESPN Radio, syndicated nationally. That was after he Hosted the New Stephen A. Smith Show on SiriusXM's MadDog Sports Radio in 2014 — becoming the first African-American Radio Host in the channel's history. Stephen A. has been the Co-Host on ESPN2's First Take since May 2012, which moved to ESPN in 2016.

From a clerk/writer at the Winston-Salem Journal (1991-1992) to an editorial assistant's position at the Greensboro News & Record (1992-1993); from a high-school writer's position at the New York Daily News (1993-94) to a career at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1994-2010) — starting as a college beat writer to covering the NBA to becoming 1 of only 21 Blacks in American History elevated to the position of General Sports Columnist (March 2003) at the time — Smith, considering his success in all three mediums, by all accounts, is one of the most successful journalist/commentators of the modern era. Yet, he swears he's just getting started. Well known for his distinctive style and outspoken opinions, he is one of the few journalists in American history to parlay a newspaper career into success in BOTH television and radio.

"My goal has never been limited to being a preeminent figure in the world of sports," he says. "It's to be a preeminent figure, period. I'm about making a difference. You don't become a difference-maker by putting limitations on yourself in any capacity. You shoot for the stars. Or nothing at all."

Stephanie Kelton

Professor of Economics & Public Policy, Stony Brook University

Stephanie Kelton, former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, is professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University. Politico recognized her as one of the fifty people across the country most influencing the political debate, and Bloomberg named her one of the fifty people who defined 2019. Dr. Kelton was a contributing writer for Bloomberg, and her op-eds appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Seke Ballard

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Good Tree Capital

Seke Ballard is the Founder & CEO of Good Tree Capital, a financial technology firm that grants loans to vetted, licensed cannabis companies. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Seke spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer working with small businesses in the Republic of Georgia. During his time in Georgia, Seke became passionate about the role of capital in the creation of wealth and economic development. After leaving the Peace Corps, Seke earned his MBA from Harvard University and subsequently spent years working for Procter & Gamble and Amazon. In 2015, Seke started Good Tree Capital, based upon his proprietary loan algorithm and with a goal of balancing available economic opportunities for qualified borrowers. 

Profiles of Seke and Good Tree Capital have been published by Nasdaq, Forbes, Marijuana Business Magazine, Business Insider and Chicago Sun Times

Dr. Saifedean Ammous

Author, The Bitcoin Standard

Dr. Saifedean Ammous is the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, the best-selling groundbreaking study of the economics of bitcoin. The book was a pioneer in explaining bitcoin's value proposition, and the implications of its unique properties: Bitcoin's supply is completely irresponsive to demand, making it the hardest money ever discovered, and making hard money available to everyone worldwide. Bitcoin also offers the only working alternative to national central banks for international payment clearance. Dr. Ammous has been at the forefront of the study of the economic implications of this new technology, and he teaches and researches the economics of bitcoin on his online learning platform, saifedean.com. Dr. Ammous holds a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, where his doctoral thesis studied the economics of biofuels and alternative energy sources. He also holds an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Engineering from the American University of Beirut.