Sanjay Sarma

Vice President for Open Learning MIT

Sanjay Sarma is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and Vice President for Open Learning at the Institute. He overseas OpenCourseWare, MITx, MicroMasters, the new MIT Integrated Learning Initiative and the World Education Lab at MIT. As a researcher, he founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the EPC suite of RFID standards now used worldwide. He was also the the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) in 2008. He several on the boards of GS1, EPCglobal and several startup companies including Top Flight Technologies. Dr. Sarma received his Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Sarma also worked at Schlumberger Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, UK, and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in Berkeley, California.

Christopher Gavigan

Co Founder & CPO The Honest Company

Christopher Gavigan has devoted his life to helping families nurture the healthiest, happiest babies and children. A father of 4 children, Christopher is the former CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World (a national nonprofit empowering parents to protect their children from toxic risks), author of a best-selling book , and instrumental in catapulting health message into millions of homes with a collaboration with WebMD. "Everything I stand for and all I've done over the last 15 years has come to this moment," he says of The Honest Company. "I'm thrilled to launch a brand that offers some of the most thoughtfully designed, innovative, and safest products available."

https://twitter.com/Christopher_Gav

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophergavigan/

Johannes Bruder

COO Rocket Internet

Dr. Johannes Bruder is the Chief Operating Officer and served as Managing Director of Marketing and Products, since April 2012, at Rocket Internet SE. Dr. Bruder is responsible for digital operations at the firm. He is part of the Central Management team. He was the Founder of Getupp. Dr. Bruder was previously at Google and also founded a mobile first venture. He holds a Ph.D. with distinction in Economics, doing research into the impact of Corporate Diversification on Innovation and Risk Taking. Dr. Bruder studied Economics with a specialization in Applied Game Theory in St. Andrews, London (LSE) and Hamburg, Germany supported by the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstifung des Deutschen Volkes).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannesbruder/

Jonathan Medved

CEO OurCrowd

Jonathan Medved is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and the founder & CEO of OurCrowd, the world’s leading equity crowdfunding platform with its community of 9000 accredited investors from across the globe. OurCrowd "has blown up the exclusivity around tech fundraising" (Bloomberg Businessweek) and has raised and deployed over $130M for 70 early-stage tech companies in just over two years since launching in February 2013. Medved is “one of Israel’s leading high tech venture capitalists” according to the Washington Post, and was recently named one of the “50 Most Influential Jews” by the Jerusalem Post where he was dubbed “the start-up nation’s guru”. In 2014, Medved received the title of CrowdFundBeat's "Person of the Year". In the NY Times “Israel at 60” supplement, Medved was among the top 10 most influential Americans to have impacted Israel.

https://twitter.com/jonmedved

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmedved

Kei Shimada

Global Director of Innovation and Business Development Dentsu

Kei is a Japanese American entrepreneur from New York. After working for global companies big and small to shape his unique yet diverse professional skill sets, he successfully launched and ran one of Japan's first multinational mobile strategy firms, Infinita. Throughout his career, Kei has focused on helping companies around the globe redefine existing product and service strategies, develop and execute market entry strategies, enhance existing revenue streams or create new ones from the ground up. Since 2012, he is Global Director of Innovation and Business Development at Dentsu's innovation arm focusing on both initiating and leading a Dentsu Aegis groupwide innovation initiative while creating new solutions around wearables, neural technology, locational big data and crisis management infrastructures, going beyond the traditional advertising business to cultivate new business models that generate revenue.

https://twitter.com/kei_shimada

https://www.linkedin.com/in/keishimada/

Tal Morgenstern

Partner Lightspeed Venture Partners

Tal joined Lightspeed in 2016 and focuses on the firm’s investment efforts in Israel. Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that is engaged in the consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. Before joining Lightspeed, Tal spent 4 years at Sequoia Capital as a partner in Israel and led investments in consumer marketplaces, SaaS and Fintech companies. Prior to Sequoia, Tal worked as a strategy consultant for the Boston Consulting Group, primarily focused on financial services. He was also the co-founder and chief product officer of Worldclass.io, an e-learning SaaS platform and served as a commander in an elite unit of the Israeli Defence Forces. Tal holds a B.Sc in Bio-Medical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

https://twitter.com/TalMorgenstern

https://www.linkedin.com/in/talmorgenstern/

Antoinia Norman

CEO Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship (Virgin UA)

Harnessing the Virgin and Branson brand in the forefront of entrepreneurial enablement in South Africa, Antoinia has championed the message of changing business for good, and linking commercial to cause with the advocacy that entrepreneurship is a key driver on a global scale as an enabler to mitigate some of society’s issues like unemployment, poverty and economic instability. In addition to being the executive lead of Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Group Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship South Africa, Antoinia is an agent for change entrepreneur and founder of Businesspros, a disruptive management consultancy that advocates a holacracy approach to management, whose vision is to build people for a lifetime whilst using disruptive initiatives to develop entrepreneur ecosystems globally. Antoinia’s background includes taking the lead on strategic work in building people and business whilst holding executive roles in Corporate Companies both in South Africa and Internationally.

https://twitter.com/AntoinNorman

https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinianorman/

Adam Kostyál

Senior Vice President NASDAQ

Adam Kostyál is the Senior Vice President of the Global Corporate Client Group and head of European Listings for NASDAQ OMX. Besides the Nordic Exchanges, NASDAQ has more than 120 companies that are either primarily listed or dual listed on NASDAQ in USA. In addition NASDAQ is in the final stages of launching the NASDAQ Private Market which will be an offering for issuers world-wide. Adam has been with NASDAQ OMX for the past 11 years. He started his career at OMX as a Sales Director, and then became Head of the Strategic Initiative Groups in 2006. Most recently, Adam was VP of Market Technology Sales responsible for sales, account management, and business development for the European, Central and Eastern European regions. Prior to NASDAQ OMX, Adam held various positions with Enron, Cell Network and Bloomberg. He holds a BSc in Economics and Marketing from Vrije Universiteit de Bruxelles and speaks four languages including English, Swedish, Italian and French.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-kostyal-743a4513/