Jason Calacanis has invested in over 300 startups in the past decade, was Sequoia Capital's first Scout, and is the author of the book ANGEL. He hosts two podcasts, This Week in Startups and All-In.
Daniel Bilak is a partner with the Kinstellar international law firm and director of the firm’s Ukraine practice.
Prior to joining Kinstellar, he was the chief investment advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine and headed UkraineInvest, the Ukrainian government’s foreign investment promotion agency.
Daniel currently serves in the Territorial Defence Forces, a branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and has recently been awarded recognition by the Minister of Defence for Support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Nicole Valentine is the FinTech Director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute with over a decade of financial services, international Mergers & Acquisitions, technology and innovation experience. As the FinTech Director, Nicole explores market innovation and developments, analyzes alternative regulatory approaches, and offers policy recommendations to facilitate FinTech’s responsible development. Her work engages and educates policymakers and stakeholders to improve access to capital, financial inclusion, transparency, and compliance. Nicole’s thought leadership on digital assets, Web3, FinTech, the metaverse, and the future of finance is also frequently featured in news publications, including CNBC, Forbes, USA Today, Worth, Fox Business, CQ Roll Call, E-Crypto News, Miami Herald, and Protocol Braintrust (Politico). She weighs in on topics that include Digital Assets legislation and regulation, financial inclusion and fluency, and crypto’s cultural relevance in society.
An attorney by background, Nicole practiced Mergers and Acquisitions and Securities at Wall Street law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton and then served as Assistant General Counsel and Vice President at global financial services firm, Cantor Fitzgerald. Nicole founded Synergy Business Development where she served as business strategist, advisor and consultant to CEOs and Innovation Leads at Fortune 500 companies, innovative startups, non-profits and government agencies. Nicole Valentine earned her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and her BA from American University in Political Science. She is a member of the NY Bar.
Celine Halioua is the CEO and Founder of Loyal, a biotech startup developing drugs to increase healthspan, the period of life spent in good health. Before founding Loyal, she was a DPhil student at Oxford studying the economics of gene therapy. She sought to understand the incentives of different healthcare systems in providing curative therapeutics. This fed a broader interest in health equality that led her to longevity and preventative medicine. Celine left Oxford to join Laura Deming at The Longevity Fund, one of the pioneering early investors in the longevity field, before founding Loyal in 2019 at the age of 25.
Loyal is developing the first FDA-approved drugs explicitly intended to extend lifespan and health span. On the path to FDA approval, Celine and her team are running clinical trials that objectively and robustly demonstrates that Loyal's drug extends dogs’ healthy lifespan, and does so safely. Because no one has developed a dog — or human — longevity drug before, Loyal is building the path to FDA approval largely from scratch.
Loyal recently learned from the FDA that the company has received protocol concurrence for their companion dog longevity study — likely the first time the FDA has given their blessing to a longevity clinical trial.
Julia has spent the past six years with the Rosetta Analytics’ AI team focused on managing investment strategies developed on the firm’s advanced AI investment platform. Rosetta Analytics uses leading-edge proprietary deep reinforcement learning models to manage investment strategies with an objective to provide institutional and other qualified investors with a high quality systematic investment strategy. Rosetta’s investment strategies have won numerous industry awards, including its most recent for “Best Machine Learning Fund – 2021.” Rosetta is currently nominated for Institutional Investor’s Most Innovative Hedge Fund of the Year award.
Prior to co-founding Rosetta Analytics, Julia spent 24 years serving clients and building teams and offices at Wilshire Associates. She served as President of Wilshire Consulting, advisor to $1 trillion in AUA, and was a member of Wilshire’s Board of Directors. She has served as strategic consultant to large state and corporate pension funds, and endowment and foundation clients. She was recognized in May 2021 as one of four women named by The Hedge Fund Journal in its “Tomorrow's Titans 2021 List of 50 Managers” and also listed as a top Knowledge Broker in Chief Investment Officer magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential investment consultants in 2015.
She currently co-Chairs the Standards of Practice Council for the CFA Institute. She is also a member of the Financial Data Professional Institute Advisory Board
Viraj Puri is an entrepreneur and innovator who has helped to advance the global indoor farming industry. In 2009, Viraj co-founded Gotham Greens, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Certified B Corporation™, which under his leadership has grown to be one of the largest and most commercially successful indoor farming companies in the world with over 500 employees and 13 high-tech greenhouse facilities across nine U.S. states. Today, Gotham Greens products are available in more than 6,000 grocery locations and ecommerce in more than 45 U.S. states. The company has raised approximately $450 million in financing. Viraj was recognized as Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year® New York in 2021, one of the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2020” by Goldman Sachs and Crain’s NY Business “40 under 40.” His work has been published in several books and journals, and he serves on various boards and committees, including for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Viraj earned a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University.
Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-κB p65/ RelA and the development of rapid retroviral production systems). He has published over 300 research articles and is the holder of 40 US patents, and has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University.
Dr. Nolan is the first recipient of the Teal Innovator Award (2012) from the Department of Defense (a $3.3 million grant for advanced studies in ovarian cancer), the first recipient of an FDA BAAA, for “Bio-agent protection” grant, $3million, from the FDA for a “Cross-Species Immune System Reference”, and received the award for “Outstanding Research Achievement in 2011” from the Nature Publishing Group for his development of CyTOF applications in the immune system. Dr. Nolan has new efforts in the study of Ebola, having developed instrument platforms to deploy in the field in Africa to study Ebola samples safely with the need to transport them to overseas labs (funded by a new $3.5 million grant from the FDA) and another grant to study the effects of Zika and Ebola viruses on humans (also from the FDA).
Dr. Nolan is an outspoken proponent of translating public investment in basic research to serve the public welfare. Dr. Nolan was the founder of Rigel Inc. (NASDAQ: RIGL), and Nodality, Inc. (a diagnostics development company), BINA (a genomics computational infrastructure company sold to Roche Diagnostics), Founder of Apprise (sold to Roche Sequencing Solutions), co-Founder of Ionpath, co-Founder of Akoya, and serves on the Boards of Directors of several companies as well as consults for other biotechnology companies. DVS Sciences, on which he was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, recently sold to Fluidigm for $207 million dollars (2014) on an investment of $14 million. Dr. Nolan is a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford.
His areas of research include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukemia, autoimmunity and inflammation, and computational approaches for network and systems immunology. Dr. Nolan’s recent efforts are focused on a single cell analysis advance using a mass spectrometry-flow cytometry hybrid device, the so- call “CyTOF” and the “Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager” (MIBI) developed by Dr. Mike Angelo in his lab (Dr. Angelo is now an Assistant Professor in the Dept of Pathology at Stanford). The approaches use an advanced ion plasma source to determine the levels of tagged reagents bound to cells—enabling a vast increase in the number of parameters that can be measured per cell—either as flow cytometry devices (CyTOF) or imaging platforms for cancer (MIBI). Further efforts with another imaging platform termed CODEX (Akoya, Inc.) that inexpensively converts fluorescence scopes to high dimensional imaging platforms.
Dr. Nolan’s efforts are to enable a deeper understanding not only of normal immune function, trauma, pathogen infection, and other inflammatory events but also detailed substructures of leukemias and solid cancers and their interactions with the immune system—which will enable wholly new understandings that will enable better management of disease and clinical outcomes.
Jenny Johnson is President and Chief Executive Officer of Franklin Templeton. In a career at Franklin Templeton spanning over 30 years, she has been a key driver in the company's transformation to what is now one of the most respected global firms focused on investment management, technology, innovation, diversity and corporate and social responsibility.
Ms. Johnson joined the firm in 1988 and held leadership roles in all major divisions of the business before becoming CEO in February 2020. She led the historic acquisition of Legg Mason in 2020, with the combined organization managing approximately $1.5 trillion in assets globally.
Ms. Johnson has received numerous recognitions, including being named to Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance list for three consecutive years, most recently in 2022, and Forbes’ World's 100 Most Powerful Women and 50 Over 50 lists in 2022, highlighting women across industries with impressive achievements. She serves on a variety of boards aligned with her professional and personal interests. She is a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the board of directors of Catalyst, and the U.S.-Brazil CEO Forum.
She holds a B.A. in economics from the University of California at Davis.
Zach Weinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Curie.Bio. Curie.Bio is a new model for venture capital in biotech focused on a singular mission – helping founders launch therapeutics companies that go on to raise an awesome next round of financing. Founded by Alexis Borisy, Christoph Lengauer and Zach Weinberg, Curie.Bio is a unique combination of two businesses: they act as both your drug discovery co-pilot & seed investor. They have some of the world’s best drug hunters, drug makers, experts, and vendors supporting founders to increase their chances of developing successful medicines. Previously, he was the co-founder/COO of Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche in 2018 for $2b) and co-founder/COO of Invite Media (acquired for Google in 2010 for ~$100m).
Christine Tsai co-founded 500 Global in 2010, and led the firm’s growth over the past decade from a startup accelerator to a multi-stage venture capital firm with $2.7B in assets under management, and more than 2,800 investments in 80+ countries. 500 Global regularly ranks as one of the most active venture capital firms in the world, according to PitchBook, with a top number of exits. The firm’s diversified portfolio includes 50+ companies valued at more than $1B, such as Talkdesk, Canva, Grab, and GitLab. Private Equity International has named Christine one of 10 Women of Influence in venture capital.
She currently serves on the venture capital committee of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers, and is an active member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. Christine is also an honoree of Gold House’s 2021 A100 List, recognizing the most impactful Asian and Pacific Islander leaders across business and technology, entertainment, advocacy and politics, lifestyle, and sports.
Prior to founding 500 Global, she held product marketing and operating roles at Google, focusing primarily on monetization and developer products.
Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Kyrsten knows firsthand the challenges everyday Arizonans face. Born in Tucson, Kyrsten went through some tough times growing up. Her family struggled to make ends meet, and for a while they were even homeless. But they got by thanks to family, church, and hard work. Kyrsten’s childhood experience showed her the power of hard work and the importance of helping others.
Education was Kyrsten’s ticket to a better life. With the help of student loans, academic scholarships, and financial aid, she went to BYU and then ASU, where she now teaches as a proud Sun Devil.
After graduating, she worked with students and families in Arizona who faced some of the same challenges she did. Kyrsten’s commitment to service led her to the Arizona Legislature, where she passed a law to help veterans get in–state tuition at all Arizona public universities, cracked down on sex trafficking, and advocated for children’s health care and education.
Now as Arizona's senior Senator, Kyrsten works every day to deliver for Arizona families – helping veterans get the benefits they’ve earned, creating good–paying jobs for Arizonans, and keeping Americans safe at home and abroad.
Kyrsten feels a duty to serve and give back to the communities and country that gave her so much. She got her shot at the American dream, and she’ll keep working to make sure all Arizonans get theirs too.
Rich is Executive Director, Investments and Global Chief Investment Strategist for Mercer. He works with some of Mercer’s largest, most sophisticated clients, and is accountable for Mercer’s “innovation agenda,” including the creation and development of thought leadership and related products and services across the firm.
Over the last 30+ years, Rich has provided investment advice to clients in more than 20 countries, including many of the world’s largest institutional investors. He has also led social security and other long term savings reform projects in five countries and one US state. Rich has led Mercer’s work in several projects with the World Economic Forum, including work related to transformational investment, and to the longevity economy.
Rich was President of Mercer’s Investments & Retirement business and a member of Mercer’s Executive Leadership team from 2017 to 2022. Prior to that, he led Mercer’s investment management business globally and served in various other leadership capacities while based in Tokyo, Singapore and New York, including serving as global Chief Investment Officer for Mercer’s investment management business.
Rich holds an MBA (with high honors) in analytic finance and accounting from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree (with honors) in mathematical sciences and mathematical economic analysis from Rice University in Houston, Texas. Rich also did graduate work in international economics at Tokyo University. He is a CFA® charterholder and a member of the CFA Institute.
Rich has repeatedly been named to CIO magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential investment consultants and received CIO’s 2017 Industry Innovation Award as Consultant of the Year.
Prior to founding NovaWulf, Jason was the Chief Executive Officer of Onex Credit Partners, a $23 billion alternative credit manager which is wholly-owned by Onex Corporation (TK: TSX: Onex). Prior to joining Onex Credit, Jason spent 15 years at Blackstone where he was a Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Distressed and Special Situation Investing for GSO Capital Partners ("GSO"). Jason was an original partner of GSO and a member of the GSO Investment Committee. Jason was the portfolio manager of several GSO funds and separately managed accounts including, among others, the GSO Capital Solutions Funds, the GSO Credit Alpha Funds and the GSO Special Situations Fund. Before joining GSO in 2005 Jason was a senior member of the Distressed Group at Credit Suisse. Jason started his career as an attorney with Sidley Austin. Jason holds a B.A. from Allegheny College and a J.D. from Duke University.
Matias Muchnick is the CEO and founder of NotCo, the international plant-based food tech company founded in Chile that is now the fastest growing food tech brand in Latin America. At just 32 years old, Muchnick has led the company to success on a global scale, having achieved unicorn status at a valuation of $1.5 billion in 2021.
Muchnick’s team of scientists, culinary chefs, and engineers sitting across multiple countries are working together to develop and perfect NotCo’s patented A.I., named Giuseppe. Giuseppe is the key to the advancement of food science and is constantly learning, matching products at the molecular level to deliver plant-based derived options that taste, cook, and function just like their animal-based counterparts. This technology is transforming the industry, working to remove animals from the food equation.
Muchnick is often called upon to provide insight on the future of plant-based, the role technology has on the food we eat, and global innovation. He has been featured on Bloomberg TV, Forbes, CNN, Yahoo Finance, and more and was also a member of the inaugural class of Bloomberg New Economy Catalysts, a group of innovators, visionaries, entrepreneurs and more across the world who are radically transforming the future.
Sona Menon is Partner and Head of Cambridge Associates’ Pension Practice in North America. She serves as an Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) for a variety of institutional clients including endowments, pensions, and healthcare institutions. Sona has been with Cambridge Associates since 2001 and brings 25 years of investment industry experience. She manages over $20BN of institutional assets.
Sona has authored and contributed to several research papers on key investment topics, speaks regularly at industry conferences, and serves on Cambridge Associates’ Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council, Digital Strategy Committee, and Diverse Manager Council.
Prior to joining Cambridge Associates, she was an Associate at JP Morgan in the sovereign risk research department, as well as on the emerging markets sales and foreign exchange trading desks.
Sona received her BA from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2001. Sona serves on Steering Committee for the President’s Council Of Cornell Women.
The Chief Executive Officer of Provenance Blockchain Foundation, Morgan McKenney joined the foundation in March of 2022 to lead the expansion of the Provenance Blockchain ecosystem, and to enable financial institutions globally to realize the benefits of blockchain.
Previously, Ms. McKenney was at Citi in senior operating roles, most recently as Chief Operating Officer for Citi’s largest division, Global Consumer Banking. During her career at Citi, she was primarily focused on institutional and consumer payments innovation and digital transformation in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and North America.
A blockchain practitioner, Ms. McKenney is passionate about enabling the digital economy, harnessing emerging technology for business value and democratizing access to financial services to support economic growth. In previous roles, she successfully implemented two disruptive blockchain innovations with Nasdaq, as well as Alibaba and Ant Financial.
Currently based in San Francisco, California, Ms. McKenney received a BA in Computer Science from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a Member of Council on Foreign Relations, Leadership Now Project, and a Limited Partner Advisor at Nyca Partners. She was previously a Special Advisor to Centre, and a Bain Expert Advisor focused on digital assets.
Abby has spent her career helping businesses and consumer brands grow as an operator, entrepreneur and advisor, most notably in the wellness sector. Prior to Primetime Partners, Abby was an executive at SoulCycle, where she oversaw business development and revenue growth outside the consumer studio business, with an emphasis on building new digital products as the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Growth. Abby has also been a Founder herself, teaming with Arianna Huffington to launch Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company focused on employee productivity and wellness. Abby served as President of Thrive Global and remains on the Thrive Board. Abby began her career at McKinsey & Company then led product development at OXO International. She is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School.
Pat is CEO of Oasis Pro, Inc. and Oasis Pro Markets LLC, the first US-regulated alternative trading system (“ATS”) authorized to allow its Subscribers to trade digital (“blockchain”) securities and make payment for those digital securities in digital cash. Pat also had a global leadership role with the highly regarded decentralized finance platform, MakerDAO Foundation. He brings to Oasis Pro a deep track record of success in both traditional finance and DeFi/Blockchain and has the leadership, knowledge base, and deep industry experiences to bridge the Regulatory Compliance and Blockchain verticals.
Over his 25+ year career as a CEO and investment banker, he has successfully led a number of companies and spearheaded over $20 billion of financing, acquisitions and/or sale of well over 150 companies across a variety of industries including technology, fintech, and blockchain.
Pat is a recognized digital assets thought leader. He is a member of the Forbes Finance Council and a published and contributing author of Forbes. He is a frequent speaker/panelist at conferences and webcasts, and a television contributor on Bloomberg, CNBC Crypto, TD Ameritrade, Fintech TV, etc., and has been quoted in publications such as Bloomberg, WSJ, NY Times, Reuters, and Financial Times. He was highlighted in a fireside chat with Xapo Bank’s Maverick Series on crypto/digital assets.
Tony is a General Partner and head of NEA's technology investing practice, which is typically two thirds of NEA's funds. Tony focuses on investments in the software and internet sectors with emphasis on SaaS and marketplace ecommerce companies. In addition, he is actively involved in NEA’s investing activities in China and Europe. Tony has led investments in Care.com (NYSE: CRCM), Cvent (NYSE: CVT), Appian (NYSE: APPN), Moda Operandi, Quidsi/Diapers.com (acquired by Amazon), Edmodo, EverFi (acquired by TPG), Casper, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), Raise.com, Jet.com (acquired by WalMart), Gilt (acquired by Hudson Bay), Goop, DataRobot, Duolingo, Letgo, and Wallapop. Tony has been featured on the Forbes Midas List of Top Investors for 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Prior to joining NEA, he was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and was Head of Technology Banking in New York, and was a member of the North American Management Committee for investment banking. Tony spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley focused on the software and Internet sectors, and also worked with a number of NEA's companies in both IPOs and M&A transactions. Tony received an MBA and an A.B. in Economics from Dartmouth College.
Seth Bannon is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years. Seth has seeded a range of startups shaping the world for the better — companies like Upside Foods (culturing meat to eat), Solugen (engineering enzymes to produce industrial chemicals sustainably), and Astranis (small satellites to cover the Earth in Internet).
Seth is also the co-founder of Impact.Tech, a community of entrepreneurs combining purpose with profit, and was previously the founder & CEO of startup Amicus. A graduate of Y Combinator, Seth was named twice to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Entrepreneurship.
An avid chess player, Seth can occasionally be found in parks around the world attempting to hustle chess hustlers.