Vice President, Artificial Intelligence, Northwestern Mutual
Anju Gupta is vice president of artificial intelligence at Northwestern Mutual. In this role, she is accountable for providing technical leadership, guiding the company’s AI roadmap and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver business-driven AI solutions. Anju joined the company in October 2020 and has been instrumental in helping to shape Northwestern Mutual’s AI initiatives, including building an ethical framework for implementing AI products. She is also a member of the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute executive steering team, which is a partnership that contributes to the formation of a technology ecosystem and advances southeastern Wisconsin as a national hub for technology. Anju also serves on the AI advisory board for LIMRA/LOMA, the Milky Way Tech Hub Coalition and a few AI startups. She has been recognized as the 2023 Women of Influence by Marquis and has also been awarded the 2024 Top 100 AI professionals in the U.S.
VP & Lead Software Engineer, JPMorgan Chase
With over ten years of work experience in software engineering and architecture, I am a passionate and skilled developer who strives to deliver high-quality solutions for complex business problems. I currently work as a Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase, where I leverage my AWS, and Apigee certifications to design, develop, and deploy scalable and secure APIs for various financial applications. Previously, I was an Architecture Lead Analyst at Citi, where I led a team of developers and analysts to implement a API gateway framework. I also have experience as a Senior Software Engineer at Fannie Mae, where I worked on several web development projects using Hugo, a static site generator and service mesh for micro service integration. My core competencies include API management, service mesh, web development, cloud computing, and agile methodologies. I am always eager to learn new technologies and best practices, and to collaborate with diverse and talented teams. My mission is to use my expertise in software engineering and architecture to create innovative and impactful solutions that improve the lives of millions of people.
Head of Data & AI Banking, Bank of America
Awais Sher Bajwa is a leader in Data and AI banking, as well as a tech entrepreneur and angel investor. With a career spanning over 15 years, Awais has led over 60 strategic deals, including IPOs, M&A, and capital raises, with a total value exceeding $60 billion. Awais founded Bank of America’s global AI banking practice in Palo Alto. His unique insights into AI adoption within financial institutions as well as the broader AI landscape position him as a distinguished strategic advisor on AI. Prior to his current role, Awais established the software investment banking practice at Bank of America and the digital infrastructure banking practice at Barclays in London.
Awais holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from the University of Oxford.
Associate Director, Data Science, Merck
Data science leader with years of hands-on and leadership experience in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, & Natural Language Processing (NLP). Proven track of successes with developing and implementing impactful AI solutions in both large tech and start-up settings. Currently leading Merck’s flag-ship Gen-AI product in human health. Ex-Meta research data scientist tech lead in AI Infra. Ex-start-up founder in the space of NLP.
Chief Product Officer, Gannett Media
Renn Turiano is Chief Product Officer for Gannett Media. He is an established product leader with 30+ years delivering successful customer experiences. He has deep operational experience and expertise in organizational leadership and end-to-end product development. Previously, Renn served as VP of Product and Design at NBCUniversal where he helped incubate and launch the Peacock streaming service. Prior to Peacock, Renn was at Amazon where he built and led multiple teams, driving the creation of numerous successful products and features. Additionally, he has held product and design roles at RAPP, HTC, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, among others.
Head of Applied Innovation Lab, Thomson Reuters
Yulia Pavlova, PhD, is the Head of Applied Innovation Lab at Reuters. At Reuters she is leveraging AI technology to revolutionize the news and media landscape, focusing on enhancing accessibility and discoverability of multimedia news content. Yulia Pavlova is a strategic leader with 15+ years of experience in ML and cloud-based AI technology advancement, driving innovation through strategic research, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and product development. Her team brings value through translating complex scientific concepts into commercially viable AI products, enhancing customer experience, and driving market growth. She has PhD is Scientific Computing, and Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics.
Vice President, Product - Responsible AI & Tech, Salesforce
Rob Katz is Vice President of Product Management in Salesforce's Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology. Rob leads the Responsible AI & Tech team, which ensures that Salesforce's products, software, and services are designed, developed, and delivered responsibly. Prior to Salesforce, Rob worked for Amazon Alexa, Acumen Fund, and the World Resources Institute. He holds a BA from Georgetown and MBA from Stanford.
Head of Conversational AI, Verizon
Bala Maddali is a strategist, influencer, innovator, story-teller, insights-driven product leader who is passionate about the convergence of people, products, experience, and technology.We live in an algorithmic digital world that craves for humanness. He strongly believes human-centered Ai is the secret sauce that blends the digital and the human behavior to humanize the experiences. He leads the Conversational Ai Channels, Product & Customer Experience for the Verizon Consumer group. He has a proven track record in leading and driving strategy, transformation and, commercialization of next-generation Digital experiences, Conceptualizing and enabling industry best and first products to delight customers and enable sustainable growth and value. He is a curious speaker at multiple industry leading customer experience & Ai forums.He has 12 patents in the area of mobile and TV second screen convergence experience, social TV and voice & gesture-based app interactions.
Founder, AI Leadership Institute
Noelle Russell is a multi-award-winning technologist with an entrepreneurial spirit who specializes in helping companies with emerging technology, Generative AI, and LLMs. She has led teams at NPR, Microsoft, IBM, AWS and Amazon Alexa, and is a consistent champion for Data and AI literacy.
Senior Practice Manager, AWS
She is a Senior Practice Manager that started and led customer engagement globally on Responsible AI. Diya leads discussions organizations in various industries on taking intentional action to build trust in AI by uncovering potential unintended impacts, and mitigating risks related to its development, deployment and use. She also meets with legislators and policy makers globally to provide perspective to influence imminent regulation and policy on AI. For the first 15 years of her career, she worked in early-stage companies in consulting and in roles focused on scaling their products for acquisition. She is an international speaker; has been awarded and recognized in the industry for her work in Responsible AI; serves on non-profit boards; mentors through multiple organizations; and guest lectures on responsible and inclusive technology.
Content and Conversation Design Manager, Capital One
Jay is a manager of Content and Conversation Design at Capital One. With 15 years experience supporting Contact Centers, Jay is passionate about building connected experiences across user journeys.
Head of Digital Innovation, Cathay Pacific
Sr. Software Product Manager, NVIDIA
Shyamala is a seasoned conversational AI expert. Having led initiatives across connected homes, automotive, and wearables - just to name a few, she's put her work on research into usability, accessibility, speech recognition, and multimodal voice user interfaces, and has even been published internationally across publications like Forbes. Outside of her research, she's spent the last 18 years designing mobile, web, desktop, and smart TV interfaces and has most recently joined NVIDIA to own their roadmap for Speech AI tools.
VP of Customer Solutions, Tailored Brands
Melissa Porter is the VP of Customer Solutions at Tailored Brands, Inc. She is a transformational and dynamic leader rooted in relationship building and leveraging technology to drive unforgettable B2C, B2B, contact center, and social customer experiences. Yoga instructor and lifelong proliferator of good vibes.
SVP, Development and Engineering Platforms, Dell Technologies
Internationally renowned Cloud Adoption, DevOps/DevSecOps Transformation, and Data Modernization Executive. Industry Analyst, Thought Leader, Technology and Strategy Advisor, Startup Advisor, Keynote Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, YouTuber and bestselling Author. Author of ‘The DevOps Adoption Playbook’, and ‘DevOps For Dummies, IBM Edition’. Keynote speaker at global IT conferences.
Senior Gen AI Research Scientist, The Cigna Group
Roya is a research scientist working on advancing artificial intelligence technologies. She has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, is a US patent holder, and has multiple publications in primary journals on electrical engineering, mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Her primary research interests are generative AI, computer vision, and pattern recognition. Roya has developed machine learning solutions for various applications, including healthcare, assistive technologies, and security.
She is enthusiastic about advancing science and passionate about women’s rights. She is a Google Developer Expert and Cloud Champion in AI/ML, a Google Woman’s Techmaker Ambassador, and a Google Developer Group co-organizer (Cloud Boston). She uses these platforms to enhance women’s confidence in the workplace and advocate for women's and non-binary individuals' rights.
Principal Conversation Designer, Zendesk
Marlinda Galapon is a Principal Conversation Designer at Zendesk. Originally, she pursued a career path in nursing, but her curiosity and lifelong love of language, design and the workings of interpersonal relationships led her into the conversation design design field. Drawing on her experience at companies like Yahoo!, Adobe, and Salesforce, Marlinda puts fairness, rigor, and inclusion at the center of her design process, guiding teams toward developing scalable experiences that are efficient, welcoming, and helpful.
Sonic Strategy Director | Studio Resonate, SXM Media
Steve Keller is the Sonic Strategy Director for Studio Resonate, SiriusXM Media’s in-house audio-first creative consultancy, offering support to brands that advertise on the Pandora, SiriusXM, and Soundcloud platforms. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on sonic strategy and identity, blending art and science into award winning creative content and sonic systems for a variety of global agencies and brands. His research explores the ways music, sound, and voice influence perception and behavior and can be found in the Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Psychology and Marketing, Frontiers in Psychology, WARC, Expert Journal of Marketing, Music and Medicine, Journal of Multisensory Research, Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, and Journal of Food Quality and Preference.
Conversation Designer, General Motors
After years working in software development and quality assurance, Gillian decided to pursue a career in UX based on her passion for understanding and helping users. She obtained a degree in Human-Computer Interaction and Design from UC-Irvine and has since worked in the conversational design field, building voice and chat solutions for FinTech companies and now General Motors.
Conversational AI Consultant, Google
Nick Dokich is an enterprise voice/chat bot building expert. For Nick, it is all about getting the right information, to the right person, in the right way, at the right time.
With over 7 years of experience, Nick is focused on building the world's largest and most complex voice/chat experiences. His bots have interacted with over 1/3 of the US population. Currently working for Google, Nick is passionate about helping enterprises build successful voice experiences. He believes that voicebots have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology, and he is committed to helping businesses realize that potential.
He has worked with Fortune 500, start-ups, and government organizations, focused on engaging experiences that produce tangible ROI. His voice/chat experiences contain millions of calls each month while providing immensely engaging experiences.
Conversation Designer, Capital One
Most of the wins in my career have come from connecting people and information they need. In the last 10 years with Capital One, I've been a Conversation Designer and Communications Strategist. My superpowers are storytelling and strategizing.
Sr. Director, Strategic Content, ADP
Rob Myre is the Sr. Director of Strategic Content at ADP. In this role, Rob is responsible for overseeing the strategy, development, and delivery of in-product content for ADP products.
He first started writing content for voice in 2016, and began developing voice skills a year later, creating prototypes to demonstrate how content produced by his team could be rendered effectively in voice. Since the summer of 2023, he has been focused on readying help content for AI consumption.
Rob has been in the content development industry since 1990. He joined ADP in 2002. Prior to that, Rob worked at EDS where, among other roles, he was the Manager of the Documentation and Training department.
Rob has also been an adjunct professor, where he designed and taught graduate-level courses in Information Architecture, Content Strategy, and mLearning Design.
Rob holds a bachelor of Computer & Information Science and master of Professional and Technical Communication from NJIT. He is also a Certified Usability Analyst. You can connect with him on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-myre-55a57610.
Senior Manager | Studio Resonate, SXM Media
Managing Director of Insights, Jobs for the Future Labs
Alex Swartsel is managing director of Jobs for the Future (JFF) Labs's new Insights practice, a growing team that helps decision-makers across the education-to-career landscape understand and prepare for the emerging trends, technologies, and innovations shaping the future of work and learning. JFFLabs’s rapid insights process and transformative trends research agenda focus on core areas impacting the future of work and learning—including AI, the metaverse, climate resilience, lifelong learning, aerospace, robotics, and other emerging fields. Alex is also leading the launch of JFF’s new Center for Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Work.
Alex chairs the board of directors of Capital City Symphony and is also a longtime member and former chorus president of the Choral Arts Society of Washington. She holds a BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.
Head of Conversational AI Developer Relations, Samsung
Roger is an AI and emerging tech expert and leverages his strategic and technological prowess to drive innovation. As the Head of Conversational AI Developer Relations at Samsung, he is at the forefront of the company's generative AI products and is recognized as an industry thought leader.
Roger serves as a startup advisor and has founded both a Web3 artist focused startup and a voice technology startup. Prior to Samsung, Roger drove Omnichannel technology strategy for Gap Inc. and spent many years as an enterprise architect and technology strategy consultant.
Head of Global Commercial, AI, Welo Data by Welocalize
Sarha Mavrakis's career experience has been rooted in leading global customer success teams and driving operational, customer service and technology implementation excellence across multiple industries including global tech, retail, airlines, and B2B services. Prior to joining Welocalize, she held a Global Accounts leadership roles and was instrumental in developing strategic partnerships with leading tech organizations.
Head of Growth Strategy, Welo Data by Welocalize
Canute Haroldson is the Head of Growth Strategy at Welo Data. He is a long-time believer in the value of automation for good and making AI operations more human and ethical while improving quality. Most recently he worked at Scale AI where he served as the Lead Project Operations Manager for the Public Sector and 2D Commercial verticals.
Founder, Outright
Bio to come.
Director of Design & Motion, Outright
Antoine Dickens-Rouse is the Director of Design and Motion at Outright. During his time at Outright, he has led brand and creative direction for clients including YouTube, Google, Marriott International, Adidas x Ivy Park, and more. He uniquely blends technology and creativity in his process, and has a strong focus on leveraging Generative AI and other advanced AI toolsets. He has pioneered groundbreaking storytelling techniques that not only elevate brand narratives but also streamline creative workflows. Early in his career, he created AR ads as a part of integrated marketing campaigns for televised shows and syndicated radio stations for CBS Outdoor, radio.com, and Viacom/MTV Networks. Antoine’s most notable achievements during his design career consist of being a recipient of multiple Clio Awards and ProMaxBDA awards, and a “30 under 30 Award” by Cablefax.
Creative Director, Outright
Kate Gazzillo is Creative Director at Outright. With over 15 years of experience in leading powerhouse teams through emotive, research-backed design, Kate possesses a keen eye for how storytelling with DEI and a11y at its core sparks creative power. She brings her background in theater/film and ballet to the rhythm of making lasting brands. At Outright, she’s led award-winning design for clients like World Resource Institute, Marriott International, Youtube, Opportunity Agenda and NIRH. Kate also has expertise in conversational AI, having designed & shaped the first ever personality-based AI in the higher education space. Her work has been featured in Adweek, Vibe.com, Chicago Sun Times, Washington Post, AgencySpy, been top ranked by BizWomen & boosted by celebrities like Queen Latifah. She often speaks at digital conferences and has certifications in Executive Leadership and UX.
Technical Architect, Signet Jewelers
Jubin Thomas is a Technical Architect at Signet Jewelers with over 14 years of experience in the IT and retail sectors, residing in Philadelphia, USA. He has a proven track record of leading transformative technology initiatives and is also an Independent Researcher focusing on Machine Learning and Supply Chain integrations.
As a senior member of IEEE, Jubin is a frequent technical speaker, having presented at major conferences like LambdaConf 2024 , Conf42 Machine Learning conference and BlackIsTech Conference 2024. He has been honored with the prestigious GRA Award and the Titan Business Award in the field of eCommerce, and is a well regarded distinguished judge in several hackathons including IEEE hackathon.
Principal Consultant, Natural Language AI, AWS
Chris Morgan Brown is a Principal Consultant for Natural Language AI in AWS Professional Services. He has been working in the Conversational AI space since 2015. Chris was a founding member of the Snaps, one of the first Conversational AI platforms for building, deploying, and optimizing chatbot experiences (acquired by Quiq).
In 2018, he moved from New York City to Portland, OR to lead Columbia Sportswear in their efforts to in building out their live chat team and chatbot experience. Shortly after launching those experiences for Columbia, he went to Wells Fargo to be the lead product manager for their retail chatbot for two years. Chris joined AWS in May 2021.
At AWS, Chris works with large enterprise customers to design, build, launch, and optimize Conversational AI applications across voice and chat experiences.
Experience Strategy & Product Design Manager, Capital One
Beth is an Experience Strategy & Product Design Manager with Capital One focused on simplifying the customer servicing experience. With 14 years of experience, Beth is passionate about untangling complex ecosystems to orchestrate human-centered strategies, services, and products.
President, NAVA
Tim Friedlander is an award winning, Los Angeles based voice actor, studio owner, advocate, and educator.
He is best known for his work on Hunter x Hunter, One Punch Man, and as Long Caster in Ace Combat 7.
Most recently you can find Tim as the voice of the PBR (Pro Bull Riders Association) on CBS, Ares in the Netflix show Record of Ragnarok and as the English voice of Navn in the dub of Beforeigners.
Tim is currently the voice of Toymakerz, the, #1 hit show on the Velocity Channel/History as well as the American voice of the Morphee Sleep Aide Device.
In 2016, Tim voiced the new History Channel series Evil Genius, an 8 episode series about the most ingenious crimes of the last 100 years. In 2015 Tim was the winner of the That's VoiceOver/CBS2 Audition Spotlight. Since 2016 Tim has been nominated for 12 SOVAS voice arts awards, including in the Best Political Voice Over, Best Promo, Best Narration, and Demo Production Categories.
Located in the Hollywood area, Tim works out of soundBOX:LA, his custom-built voice over studio equipped with ISDN, ipDTL, SourceConnect and broadcast quality equipment.
As of 2022, Tim is the Founder and President of NAVA, The National Association of Voice Actors as well as co-owner and editor of The Voice Over Resource Guide.
Voice Actor & Vice President, NAVA
Carin Gilfry is an award-winning voice actor, singer, producer, and community leader. She is the vice president of the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), and the co-chair of the VOcation Conference. As a voice actor, she has worked with major brands like Volkswagen, FedEx, Apple, Estee Lauder, Pfizer, Citibank, and more, and she is currently the national brand voice of CVS Health. Carin works in every genre of voiceover from video games to training videos to narrating true crime series. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the USC Thornton School of Music and a Master of Music from The Juilliard School.
Voice Actor & Board Member, NAVA
Cissy Jones is an award-winning voice actor whose career spans the gamut from video games and animation to movie trailers and everything in between.
Director of Operations, NAVA
Matthew “Slim da Reazon” Parham is a Los Angeles based voice actor, photographer, poet, and musician born from Cincinnati, Ohio. His interest in Black literature, spoken word, rock, hip-hop, and jazz blend to become a language and lifestyle Parham calls AfroGrunge™. Duality, double consciousness, and the alternative Black experience are themes Parham explores across genre-blending visuals and performance mediums.
Visually, this edgy style is replicated behind his lens through a photographic portrait approach, which relies heavily on darkness and light, black and white, and most often focuses on Black subjects or like-minded creatives. Parham is also a sought-after voice actor, nominated for a Society of Voice Art and Sciences Award in 2022, the VOA Unicorn Award and two One Voice Awards in 2024, with a client list including Marvel,MTV, MGM, PBS, Nike, and DSW.
Matthew is most notably the Director of Operations for the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), where his advocacy includes lobbying on Capitol Hill and national panel appearances, while also serving as Community Liaison with the South Los Angeles arts gallery Range Gallery. Since 2017, Parham has been the MC in a 15-piece jazz hip-hop ensemble called The Urban Renewal Project, with whom he has toured nationally in 100+ shows. When he’s not serving the voice-over community with NAVA, voicing projects, performing poetry, or making music, Matthew is finalizing a photography certificate at UCLA.
CEO and Co-Founder, Vixen Labs
Bio to come.
CEO, The Resource Key
🔥Meet Jourdan Saunders, a dynamic innovator whose passion for inclusion and accessibility goes beyond the therapy room. With over 10 years of experience as a Speech Language Pathologist, Jourdan has listened intently to the stories of children and adults with different disabilities who feel left out of their communities. This ignited a fire within her to create change and she has been trailblazing at the intersections ever since.
👩🏽💻Driven by her commitment to promoting greater inclusion and accessibility, Jourdan founded The Resource Key, an organization that aims to ensure that individuals with disabilities and older adults are fully included in the digital landscape.
🔨As an innovator, Jourdan has developed inclusive gymnastics programs and reading literacy initiatives, and even authored the book Our Reading Literacy Kitchen: Fresh Approaches to Target Reading Literacy Skills. But she doesn't stop there. Jourdan has lent her expertise as an advisor to companies and organizations spanning the digital speech therapy, gymnastics, and culinary industry technology platform, to name a few.
📈 Jourdan's leadership has not gone unnoticed. She was awarded LinkedIn Top Voices 2020: Equity in the Workplace and is the creator of one of the first resource websites for students in Speech Language Pathology. Her SLP resources group on LinkedIn boasts over 20,000 members and she was even recognized as a top 100 Speech Language Pathologist impacting the field.
❎ With Jourdan at the helm, inclusivity and accessibility are not just buzzwords, but a way of life. Get ready to be inspired by this creative innovator who is changing the world one intersection at a time.
Generative AI Technologist in Residence, U.S. Digital Response
Neil leads Generative AI at USDR as the Technologist-in-Residence. With over 15 years of experience in product management, he has driven innovation at companies like Google, Lyft, Twitter, and various startups. Before joining USDR, he worked on Google Assistant steering the team to leverage Large Language Models at scale.
CEO, Sonaphi
Entrepreneur, Researcher and CEO, Jennifer is leading the company and development of AI screening solutions using vocal biomarkers. This new emerging technology provides healthcare solutions that are accurate affordable and accessible worldwide. The challenges are many but Jennifer sees this as one of the greatest developments in the area of healthcare we have seen yet. She looks forward to joining the Voice AI community to further develop this technology and bring solutions to the world.
Founder and CEO, Quiq
Mike Myer is the Founder and CEO of Quiq, the leader in customer-centric AI for CX. Previously, Mike was Chief Product Officer & VP of Engineering at Dataminr, a startup that analyzes all of the world’s tweets in real-time and detects breaking information ahead of any other source.
Mike has deep expertise in customer service software having previously built the RightNow Customer Experience solution used by many of the world’s largest consumer brands to deliver exceptional interactions. RightNow went public in 2004 and was acquired by Oracle for $1.5B in 2011. Mike led Engineering the entire time RightNow was a standalone company and later managed a team of nearly 500 at Oracle responsible for Service Cloud.
CEO and Co-Founder, Symbl.ai
Surbhi Rathore is the CEO and co-founder of Symbl.ai - purpose built AI platform for unlocking conversation data at scale. She continues to champion the potential of multi-structured communication data like voice, video, emails while democratizing access to best in class conversation understanding and generative AI tech to developers. As a software developer herself, with a background in building products centred around customer interactions in the telecom industry for more than a decade, she is an advocate of making business-ready and secure AI accessible to businesses of all types. She's a strong advocate for immigrant founders and firmly believes in creating value through collaboration without borders.
Founder & Chief Innovation Officer, Meloscene
Recognized for platinum and gold-selling records across diverse musical genres and labels, Chad Gerber's innovative spirit extends to multiple pending patents in AI, mixed reality, and telecommunications, showcasing his commitment to pushing the boundaries of technology. Notably, he shared insights on artificial intelligence at forums in Washington, D.C., underscoring his expertise in this evolving field and made appearances discussing mixed reality technology on the BBC.
Growing up in Montana, Gerber's early years were marked by a deep intrigue with communication technologies. His childhood experimentation with radio equipment subtly hinted at an innate curiosity and knack for innovative exploration.
His artistic ventures include appearances on esteemed platforms like the Vans Warped Tour, along with tours throughout the US and EU, where his presence among a vibrant community of artists and fans left an enduring impact. Gerber's career signifies a seamless blend of artistry with inventive exploration, leaving an indelible mark in both creative and technological realms.
Digital Strategist and AI Engineer, IV Media
Cavaughn launched his career as a project manager at Alcatel-Lucent after graduating from Rutgers University. Eager to explore his interests in marketing and strategy, he pursued an MBA at NYU Stern's School of Business. After serving as a digital strategist for the Associated Press, Cavaughn diversified his skill set by consulting for various small businesses and large corporations, honing his entrepreneurial prowess.
Driven by a passion for prompt engineering and AI, he founded IV Media, a company specializing in consulting services, digital product management, and development. Cavaughn currently is a lead instructor of Product Development for Realist Labs, an accelerator for non-traditional tech founders to build and scale their startups. Additionally, he's the founder of Daap, an AI-powered networking tool that helps people to retain and re-engage human connections.
Cavaughn's enthusiasm for the convergence of education and technology as a means to facilitate learning is evident in his work. He was admitted into TED's first residency program, where he delved into researching disparities in learning across cultures and geographies. As an innovative prompt engineer and AI enthusiast, Cavaughn is committed to using technology to address these challenges and empower future generations.
Founder, President and CEO, Amruta
Bio to come.
CTO, Allwyn Corporation
Swathi Young is an international keynote speaker, blogger, community-builder, and an award-winning Chief Technology Officer of Allwyn Corporation, where she leads technology and AI/ML implementations at federal and commercial organizations. She has led over 100+ digital projects globally - Belgium, India and the United States across several Fortune 100 companies like GE and Oracle. She is also the CTO advisor of SustainChain, a sustainability startup established by United Nations, to accelerate the UN’s sustainability development goals.
Swathi is passionate about using cutting edge technologies including machine learning and generative AIto increase the performance of organizations. Her projects range from leading engineering teams at Amtrak, launching COVID-19 chatbot and more recently using AI in lung cancer research. She believes that the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and humanities is important to focus on as we lay the foundation of AI applications for future generations. She recently co-authored the Ethical AI framework, to help federal agencies evaluate the ethical outcomes of AI products.
Her work has been featured in Forbes, SXSW, TEDx, international conferences and Medium articles. Outside of the office, Swathi is a brand ambassador for Women in AI, an international non-profit organization whose goal is to increase diversity in AI.
Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council
Nii Simmonds is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center, bringing a wealth of experience in emerging and frontier markets. His expertise spans across technology, innovation, manufacturing, and supply chains.
Nii's career includes leadership positions with Fortune 500 companies, where he spearheaded strategic planning and advised executives on growth strategies. Passionate about Africa's economic development, Nii has a proven track record of implementing successful private sector initiatives that foster entrepreneurship and create jobs. He leverages his deep understanding of emerging technologies, innovative business models, and efficient supply chains to build sustainable ecosystems in Africa.
Nii actively supports early-stage ventures and offers thought leadership on the impact of AI and emerging technologies on society. He previously worked for the World Bank Group and African Development Bank (AfDB), where he developed a program to connect African diaspora professionals with early-stage businesses to drive job creation in Africa.
Nii holds a B.S. in Management from Pennsylvania State University and completed graduate studies at The Wharton School.
Senior Advisor, Open Voice Network
Oita Coleman serves as a Senior Advisor to the Open Voice TrustMark Initiative, the open-source community of the Linux Foundation. She is responsible for development of the OVON's privacy, security, and ethical use portfolio, and has led the research and development of seminal papers on these critical topics. Ms. Coleman was previously the Vice President, Research & Development for Software Quality at SAS Institute. She resides in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.
Ambassador, Open Voice TrustMark
Emily is a content and conversation designer, professional violinist, and Ambassador for the Open Voice TrustMark. She co-authored the Linux Foundation's Ethical Principles for Conversational AI edX course and their Ethical Guidelines for Voice Experiences whitepaper. She also co-hosts Convers(AI)tions, a series of panel discussions on conversational AI. Other engagements include speaking at Unparsed, the European Chatbot Summit, and Voice & AI 2023. She previously co-hosted the Voice Spark Live podcast and featured as a Voicefluencer on "The Voice Den."
Principal Conversational Designer, Druid AI
As a Conversation Designer, I spend all day trying to get a human brain and a computer brain to talk to each other without either party blowing a fuse. It’s an exciting challenge, particularly given our hardware differences. However, tackling the same goal with two human brains is often just as puzzling (if not more so)!
Having grown up queer and neurodivergent (though not finding those words until much later), I know what it’s like to live at the outskirts of language. For people with non-normative needs or marginalized identities, communication can spell the difference between a life of dignity versus one of alienation. We all deserve to be understood, and I approach my personal and professional life with this in mind.
Google Developer Expert, Obvious Consulting
By day, Allen is a Senior Project Engineer at http://spiders.com/ where he’s been instrumental in creating websites and mobile apps for companies and organizations, ranging from the American Booksellers Association to the National Science Foundation. By night he creates tools, software, and tutorials to help people share their stories and improve their digital lives. You'll find him contributing to the LangChainJS open source project, as one of the two hosts of the "Two Voice Devs" podcast, and co-author of the O’Reilly book “Designing and Developing for Google Glass”. He is a Google Developer Expert for Machine Learning, Google Workspace, and the Google Assistant and has been known to occasionally wear light blue shirts.
Program Manager, Mother Tongue
Bio to come.
Founder, Reconify
Arte Merritt is the founder of Reconify, a platform for analyzing and optimizing generative AI. Previously, he led Conversational AI partnerships at AWS. He was the co-founder and CEO of Dashbot, a leading analytics platform for chatbots and voice assistants, which he led to 20,000 customers, 90 billion messages processed, and multiple acquisition offers. He is a frequent author and speaker on conversational AI and data insights. Previously, he founded Motally, a mobile analytics platform he sold to Nokia. Arte is an MIT alum.
Founder and CEO, Tiga AI
Andre Yee is the Founder and CEO of Tiga, a company focused on using generative AI to amplify human-centric selling .
Prior to Tiga, he was the Founder and CEO of Triblio - a leading account based marketing platform which he successfully exited to International Data Group (IDG), a Blackstone company in 2020. Andre was also previously the SVP Product Development of Eloqua, leading to an M&A exit to Oracle for ~$1B.
He is an author, conference speaker and noted inventor of three software patents. Outside of work, Andre loves focusing on good causes, eating good food and spending time with good people.
CTO, Daon
Daon believes identity is fundamental to who we are as humans, and helping secure and protect that identity is crucial for personal privacy, security, and trust in our digital world.
Conor White is part of the core team that founded Daon. He joined the company as Chief Technology Officer in 2001 with the goal of designing and delivering trusted experiences that put human beings back at the center of digital transactions. In 2015, Conor accepted the role of President of the Americas, where he led all Daon activities across North, South, and Latin America. Then, in 2023, he accepted the role of President, New Industries, where he leads efforts to find Daon’s “next big thing.”
Generative AI Strategist, Deloitte Consulting
Bio to come.
CEO, PeopleReign
Dan Turchin is the CEO and Founder of PeopleReign, the leading AI platform for IT and HR employee service automation. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and has hosted over 300 episodes of the popular “AI and the Future of Work” podcast which has a community of more than a million listeners.
Prior to PeopleReign, Dan was the CEO of AIOps leader InsightFinder. Previously, he co-founded Astound, an AI-first enterprise platform for HR and IT, and was Vice President of Product at DevOps leader BigPanda, Chief Product Officer at security analytics company AccelOps (now Fortinet), and a Senior Director of Product Strategy at ServiceNow.
He also served as a founding board member at Rhomobile prior to its acquisition by Motorola and currently serves on the board of Auger, the open source automated machine learning framework.
In 2000, Dan co-founded Aeroprise and served as CEO until it was acquired in 2010 by BMC Software. He is an active angel investor and startup advisor with a portfolio of over 30 companies.
Dan's passionate about building great teams that build great products that solve hard problems that change lives. He’s a big fan of Asimov, Dr. Seuss, youth soccer, adventure sports, and Tynker. Dan has BS and BA degrees from Stanford University. Follow him on Twitter.
Senior ML Developer Advocate, Weaviate
Zain Hasan is a Senior Developer Advocate at Weaviate an open-source vector database. He is an engineer and data scientist by training, who pursued his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Toronto building artificially intelligent assistive technologies. He then founded his company developing a digital health platform that leveraged machine learning to remotely monitor chronically ill patients. More recently he practiced as a consultant senior data scientist in Toronto. He is passionate about open-source software, education, community, and machine learning and has delivered workshops and talks at multiple events and conferences.
Sr. Manager, Machine Learning, Workday
Dalmo Cirne is a mathematician and software engineer who has been passionate about technology his whole life. He has worked in the fields of software engineering and machine learning, both at startups and large corporations, for 30 years—10 of those in management.
Cirne has participated in designing the underlying architecture for and leading the implementation of software solutions used in finance, central banks, and other companies. He published several papers and presented at conferences.
Co-Founder, NeuralDreams AI
Cosmin is an experienced tech professional with a strong understanding of compliance, regulatory, and financial services requirements. Cosmin has worked for companies such as Amazon, AWS, AT&T, Nortel Networks.
Hermenean has a deep understanding of applied artificial intelligence technologies, founding member of NeuralDreams AI Platform and key contributor to Applied Artificial Intelligence open source project.
Head of Growth Strategy, Welo Data
Student, Middleton High School
I am a rising junior at Middleton High School in Tampa, Florida, with a profound passion for the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence. As an active member of the PLTW Engineering program, I am deeply interested in electrical and computer engineering and am a primary contributor to my robotics team, which includes teams 4997 Masquerade and 1369 Minotaur. My experience also extends beyond school, having interned at Radical AI and Jetson App, where I applied my programming skills to develop their platforms. I also serve as the director of a robotics non-profit and as the SWE director of the Youth Passion Project non-profit. My involvement in these diverse roles has provided unique perspectives on the evolving landscape of AI and robotics. I would like to explore how generative AI can revolutionize robotic learning by enabling machines to adapt and learn more efficiently. With a blend of practical experience and academic curiosity, I believe that I can offer a fresh perspective on the future of robotic intelligence.
HCI Design Engineer, Augmental
Shikha Shah is an HCI Designer specializing in innovative design and technology integration for accessibility. Formerly a Chip Design Engineer at NXP Semiconductors, she shifted to HCI to address accessibility needs. With a Master’s from UC Berkeley, Shikha focuses on Conversational AI and product design. Her work bridges digital and physical AI, reimagining modern-day user interaction.
COO, Eduworks
Benjamin Bell, Ph.D., is Eduworks' COO and a recognized expert in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in simulation, decision support, and human-machine interaction. He has worked in the field for over 25 years, leading AI-focused applied R&D for a diverse range of national security applications. Dr. Bell has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, M.S. degrees from Drexel and Embry-Riddle, and a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania.
CTO, Iterate.ai
Brian Sathianathan is the Chief Technology Officer at Iterate.ai. Previously, Sathianathan worked at Apple on various emerging technology projects that included the Mac operating system and the first iPhone.
CEO, PeopleReign
Dan Turchin is the CEO and Founder of PeopleReign, the leading AI platform for IT and HR employee service automation, and a member of the Forbes Technology Council. He hosts the popular "AI and the Future of Work" podcast with over a million listeners. Previously, Dan held leadership roles at InsightFinder, Astound, BigPanda, AccelOps (now Fortinet), and ServiceNow. He co-founded Aeroprise, served as a founding board member at Rhomobile, and currently serves on the board of Auger. An active angel investor and startup advisor with a portfolio of over 30 companies, Dan is passionate about building great teams that solve hard problems and change lives. He holds BS and BA degrees from Stanford University and enjoys Asimov, Dr. Seuss, youth soccer, adventure sports, and Tynker.
Principal, Conversational Technologies
Deborah Dahl works on innovative, practical and scalable conversational systems that push the boundary between theory and applications. She is the Principal of Conversational Technologies, which assists its clients in creating state of the art solutions using speech and natural language, technologies. Her clients include startups, large enterprises and government organizations. She has written many technical papers and three books, including Multimodal Interaction with W3C Standards: Toward Natural Interfaces to Everything, published in 2016.
