J. Morton Davis

Owner and Chairman of D.H. Blair Investment Banking Corporation, New York

J. Morton Davis is owner and Chairman of D.H. Blair Investment Banking Corp., a New York City investment bank established in 1904 and leading investor in and advisor to emerging entrepreneurial and growth companies, where he actively heads the day-to-day corporate finance activities. Investment banker, entrepreneur, investment analyst, economist, and venture capitalist, Mr. Davis is Wall Street personified. The over 400 companies for which he has raised more than $3 billion over the years have created a countless number of jobs and have added exciting new products including breakthrough drugs, unique electronic and telecommunications products and have resulted in immeasurable productivity to the American economy. Few people on Wall Street possess his rare brand of financial expertise. Fewer still are as successful.

Mr. Davis has served on the Boards of Research! America, Foundation for Future Generations, and the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge. He also served on the Board of trustees of Yeshiva University and on the Board of Sy Syms School of Business. Mr. Davis is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards and honors, including the Synagogue Council of America’s Covenant of Peace Award, the Republican Party’s Distinguished Service Award, and the Intrepid Museum’s Freedom Award. In 2011, The International Center for Autism Research & Education honored Mr. Davis’ lifetime of achievements in a special tribute luncheon in the U.S. Capitol. In 1971, Mr. Davis and his wife made a gift to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to endow a first year merit medical scholarship every year for a needy first year student. Over the years this endowment has grown and recently three worthy medical students have been recipients of this generous scholarship.

Mr. Davis has written two business books, the most recent of which, From Hard Knocks to Hot Stocks, received flattering reviews from some of America’s most prominent business and economic leaders, including Senator Bob Dole, Alan “Ace” Greenberg, Carl Icahn, Donald Trump and Larry King. Mr. Davis’ earlier book, Making America Work Again, was acclaimed by a number of notable economic scholars, in addition to being praised by President Ronald Reagan in a tribute to Mr. Davis where President Reagan recognized Mr. Davis’ long career of hard work and his support of the creative arts. Mr. Davis has also recently published a book on achieving happiness in life entitled Happiness Guaranteed Or Your Misery Back.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Mr. Davis received his A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Brooklyn College in 1957 and his M.B.A., with distinction, from the Harvard Graduate School of Business in 1959.

He resides in Lawrence, New York with his wife Rozi, and is never very far from his four daughters, and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Deborah Wince-Smith

CEO, US Council on Competitiveness

Deborah L. Wince-Smith is the president & CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, a coalition of CEOs, university presidents, labor leaders and national laboratory directors, committed to driving U.S. competitiveness. She has more than 20 years of experience as a senior U.S. government official, as the first Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce and Assistant Director for International Affairs in the Reagan White House.

The Honorable Deborah L. Wince-Smith is the President & CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, a non-partisan leadership coalition of CEO’s, University Presidents, Labor Union Leaders, and National Laboratory Directors, all committed to developing policy solutions and national initiatives to drive future productivity growth, prosperity for all Americans, and the global success of American business. She has more than 20 years of experience as a senior U.S. government official, as the first Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush, and as the Assistant Director for International Affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Reagan Administration. She served as a Senate confirmed member of the Oversight Board of the Internal Revenue Service in the Administrations of President George W. Bush and President Barack H. Obama.

Ms. Wince-Smith is also the President and Founder of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC), engaging leaders from competitiveness organizations from around the globe. Ms. Wince-Smith is a member of Corporate and Non-Profit Boards of Directors, Advisory Committees, and Philanthropic Organizations. She previously served on the Smithsonian National Board, the Secretary of State’s Committee on International Economic Policy, the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation and, the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory. She served as Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Competitiveness and as a Public Director of NASDAQ-OMX.

Ms. Wince-Smith currently serves as a Commissioner on the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, as a member of Purdue University’s Strategic Research Advisory Council (SRAC), and as a member of the Council of Japan’s Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum. She serves as a member of Marquette University’s External Advisory Board for Corporate Engagement, as a member of the Queen’s University International Advisory Committee for the Management School, as a member of UNICEF’s Advisory Group, as a member of the Advisory Board of the Delphi Economic Forum, and as an Independent Advisor to Delos Living, LLC. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Mycenaean Foundation, and as a Trustee of the American College of Greece (ACG). As an expert in technology commercialization, Ms. Wince-Smith serves on the Board of Directors of Aerolase, Inc., NanoMech, Inc., and Q-Net Security, Inc.

Ms. Wince-Smith graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College and earned a Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology from King’s College, Cambridge University. She received an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Michigan State University, an Honorary Doctorate of Public Administration from the University of Toledo, an Honorary Doctorate of Law honoris causa from the Queens University Belfast, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and, most recently, an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from the University of South Carolina.

Ms. Wince-Smith is married to former Deputy United States Trade Representative Ambassador Michael B. Smith and resides in McLean, Virginia. Her two sons are graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy and are currently serving as officers in the U.S. Navy and Marines Corps.

Harald Ludwig

Co-Founder, Chairman President at Macluan Capital, Canada

Harald pioneered leveraged buyouts (LBOs) in Canada with his own capital since 1986 Mr. Harald Ludwig is a Co-Founder and serves as Chairman President at Macluan Capital, a Canadian private equity investment firm He also serves as Advisor at Tennenbaum Capital Partners. He serves on the Boards of various private and public companies, including West Fraser Timber Company, as Co-Chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, as Chairman of Canadian Overseas Petroleum, and as Chairman of Prima Colombia Hardwood. Additionally, he is also a Founding Partner and private equity investor in a number of North American and international private equity firms, hedge funds, mezzanine lenders, growth capital providers, distressed investment firms and real estate investment vehicles.

Harald holds a BA in Commerce from Simon Fraser University, and an LLB in Law from Osgoode Hall Law School.

Jeremy Hillman

Director of Corporate Communications, World Bank Group

Jeremy Hillman is Director of Corporate Communications at the World Bank Group, the largest funder of development work in the world, with a dual mission to alleviating poverty and increase shared prosperity.

In this role, Jeremy is responsible for external communications and internal employee engagement. That includes digital channels and platforms in six corporate languages, governance, media relationships and partnerships, and supporting the WBG senior management, including the President.

Jeremy joined the World Bank Group in 2014 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was the Director of External Communications. At the Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeremy worked in the fields of global health and development and US education and led a talented, international, multi-disciplinary team responsible for the foundation’s digital platforms and its media profile and reputation. He also regularly worked with the foundation’s co-chairs Bill and Melinda Gates and helped set the overall communications strategy and success metrics for the organization.

Before joining the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011, Jeremy performed several senior management roles in television and radio at the British Broadcasting Corporation. At BBC, he led the business, economics, and technology journalism channels and was responsible for running the newsroom for the BBC’s global commercial news channel BBC World News. As a journalist, he covered many of the defining news stories of the last two decades.

In addition to his current work at the World Bank, Jeremy Chairs the Inspired Leadership Award, a nonprofit organization that recognizes emerging leaders driving positive change on a global scale. He also serves as a Board member of the Little Free Library organization.The Little Free Library is a nonprofit group that looks to inspire reading in communities and foster creativity in the neighborhood where members install them, to share free books.

Jeremy Hillman holds a diploma in Broadcast Journalism, a law degree from Bristol University and an MBA from Henley Business School.

Erik Rasmussen

Founder and Executive Chairman of Sustainia, Denmark

Starting from humble beginnings as- a journalist at the local newspaper, Erik’s career has been a rich and varied journey with some extraordinary stories and achievements. Erik has been named as one of the world’s 100 most influential journalists by the World Economic Forum and has also received Denmark’s most prestigious media award, “Den Store Publicistpris” (The Grand Publishing Award). He founded the Copenhagen Climate Council in 2007 which became think-tank Sustainia in 2009. As Founder and Chairman of Sustainia, Erik continues to challenge conventional thinking and push the boundaries of corporate approaches to sustainability. Having followed 13 Danish prime ministers, 12 American presidents, and 8 UN Secretary Generals and written and initiated thousands of analyses and reports on politics, global trends, welfare, and corporate sustainability, Erik Rasmussen is probably your best navigator in today’s market reality.

Dr Marko Grobelnik

AI Researcher & Digital Champion – AI Lab of Slovenia’s Jozef Stefan Institute

Marko Grobelnik is a researcher in the field of AI. Focused areas of expertise are Machine Learning, Data/Text/Web Mining, Network Analysis, Semantic Technologies, Deep Text Understanding, and Data Visualization. Marko co-leads AI Lab at Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia and is the CEO of Quintelligence.com specialized in solving complex AI problems for the commercial world. He collaborates with major European academic institutions and major industries. Marko is co-author of several books, co-founder of several start-ups and is/was involved into over 50 EU funded research projects on various fields of Artificial Intelligence. In 2016, Marko became Digital Champion of Slovenia at the European Commission.

Mitja Jermol

Head of Center for Knowledge Transfer in Information Technologies at Jozef Stefan Institute

Mitja Jermol is a head of the Centre for knowledge Transfer at JSI, member of the management board at International Research Center on AI
under auspices of UNESCO and UNESCO Chair holder for Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning. He is also a group leader at Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at JSI working in various areas of implementing AI into practice. This will include Smart Cities, Intelligent Transport, Smart Energy Grids, Factories of the Future, Security to Technology Enhanced Learning, Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence. Mitja has a long track record in setting up and managing large projects like videolectures.NET, Science Atlas, Analytics framework for fighting against corruption and more. He has been involved in more than 20 FP6, FP7 and H2020 where he is/was scientific coordinator (NRG4Cast, E4), projects where he is/was exploitation manager (x5gon, Translectures, Tool-East) and projects as WP leader (CyberSane, Cog-lo, Factlog, ECOLEAD-IP, SEKT-IP, COIN-IP, ACTIVE-IP and EURIDICE-IP). Mitja is a member of the European Complex System Society, Open Education Consortium, Opencast and European current research information systems (CRIS) community.

Stephen Ibaraki

Chairman and Managing General Partner REDDS Capital

1. Multiple Awarded Global Visionary
2. UN-related and Fortune CEOs Think Tanks Founder
3. Founding Chairman YPO European Impact Summit Advisory Board
4. Founder “AI for Good” Global Movement and World’s Largest AI UN SDG Summit
5. Founder world’s No.1 CEO “futures summit”, and think tank CEOs managing trillions in assets

Stephen Ibaraki Chairman and Managing General Partner REDDS Capital In addition, Stephen is globally unique with Chairman, Founder, Board roles in: Business and startups, successful Entrepreneurship/investments/venture capital, No.1 global computing Science organizations, No.1 UN-related innovation programs, No.1 CEO / Industry organizations / think tanks, No.1 Summits (acronym BE-SUN-CIS). 300+ annual global engagements impacting USD $100+ Trillion in ESG (environmental, social, governance), sustainable investments for 2020. He is keynote speaker, moderator, producer at more than 100 global CEO and leader events annually. Stephen’s has more than 300 “lifetime and career” achievements and awards for disruptive innovation, futuristic investments, successful entrepreneurship, and global technology leadership.

Steve G. Stevanovich

Executive Chairman, Lonford Global
Chairman & CEO, Epsilon, Westford & SGS Funds
Board of Governors, Argonne National Laboratory

Mr. Steve Stevanovich has over 30 years of experience in international investing and is the founder of a group of funds that currently hold control investments in a number of technology companies in various industries. The funds have invested over $6 billion since inception in 1997. One of the funds’ primary areas of investment focus has been to utilize the manager’s extensive experience in distressed situations and company restructurings to identify underperforming businesses and to deploy capital to bring them back to health. In the case of early stage technology companies, this also includes developing and directing extensive commercialization efforts.

In addition to sitting on numerous company boards, Mr. Stevanovich also sits on the Board of Governors of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. He is a member of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees where he sits on a number of committees, including the University’s Audit Committee.  He serves on the Board of Advisors to the University’s Master of Science Program in Financial Mathematics and on the Council of the Booth School of Business. Mr. Stevanovich is also a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.

In addition to his work in the technology commercialization space via his funds, Mr. Stevanovich is also very involved in the University of Chicago’s technology accelerator, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where he is a Council Member.

He is also an Inaugural Member of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, an organization formed to increase students’ access to higher education, particularly for those students from historically under-represented groups.

In 2007 he endowed the Stevanovich Center for Financial Mathematics, and in 2015 he endowed the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge.   Mr. Stevanovich holds an AB in Economics from the University of Chicago as well as an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Steven Kuyan

Managing Director, Future Labs, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

Steven Kuyan is the director of entrepreneurship at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and managing director of the NYU Tandon Future Labs – a network of business incubators and accelerators that support early stage ventures in New York City. The Future Labs support entrepreneurs in technology-specific fields, such as: artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented/virtual reality, video and virtual machines, among others. To date, the unique process has graduated more than 125 companies – 28 as acquisitions totaling more than $500 million – for a combined valuation of graduates exceeding $1.8B billion. Furthermore, the companies graduating from the Future Labs have helped contribute to a $4 billion impact for NYC. Steven co-founded the Future Labs and teaches as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at NYU – his alma matter and the institution where he continues to teach. Prior to launching the Future Labs, Steven founded and co-founded three ventures in mobile, B2B logistics, and retail. He currently oversees entrepreneurship across the campus, including curricula development, catalyzing IP into companies, and overseeing the strategy of the Data Future Lab, Urban Future Lab, Veterans Future Lab and the AI NexusLab – the first program in the U.S. designed specifically for early stage artificial intelligence startups.

In addition to the NYU Tandon Future Labs, Steven founded NYCai, an non-profit that works to bring together members of the artificial intelligence community – including researchers and practitioners – for programming, research support, training, and more, all to prepare NYC and it’s inhabitants for an AI future. He’s also a founder of Irregular Expressions, an angel syndicate of more than 50 CTO’s and Directors of Engineering that co-invest into early stage companies. Additionally, Steven serves on the board of directors for the Business Incubator Association of New York State, Inc., serves as an advisor and investor at a number of companies outside the Future Labs portfolio, and has spoken worldwide on entrepreneurship, incubation, ecosystem development, and artificial intelligence.

Nagy Moustafa

CEO, Co-Founder, Chairman, InfoSec Global

Nagy Moustafa is an experienced venture capital investor and entrepreneur with an extensive record of building business ideas from conception to successful exits. His international experience includes ownership across several portfolio companies based in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.

Nagy has a passion for communications security and is currently the Executive Chairman and major shareholder of several successful technology and telecoms companies including Toronto-based Gryphon Secure, Swiss-based Sysmosoft and Agora.

He is currently the CEO, Chairman, and major shareholder of Toronto-based InfoSec Global. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Nagy held senior positions in technology at Rogers Communications in Toronto. He is an active member of The World Presidents Organization.

Dr. Sanjit Dang

Chairman, U First Capital

Sanjit Dang has been a successful Venture Capitalist, Corporate Executive, Board Member, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. He is currently the Co-Founder and Chairman of U First Capital. They provide Venture Capital as a Service to Corporations by bringing Startups, University IP, etc. in the Corporate’s specific areas of interest (dedicated model). Prior to that, he was at Intel Capital where he had an excellent track record of driving 1 Exit every year: DocuSign (IPO 2018), Body Labs (AI startup, Acquired by Amazon in 2017 within 2 years of leading Series A investment), Voke (Acquired by Intel in 2016 within 7 months of leading Series A investment), Maginatics (Acquired by EMC in 2015 within 1 year of leading investment) and Basis Science (Acquired by Intel in 2014 within 1 year of investment). He has been an Investor and on the Board of several companies, including True Fit (AI for eCommerce, Raised $100M), Reflektion (AI recommendation for eCommerce, Raised $42M), Helpshift (AI-driven Customer Service, Raised $38M) and Enlighted (Smart Lighting, Acquired by Siemens in 2018). He is also an investor in Mirantis (Cloud Computing, raised >$100M), GoodData (SaaS Business Intelligence, raised over $100M) and Arcadia Data (Big Data 2.0, Raised $26M). Sanjit has been on University of California President’s Innovation Council. He is an invited Speaker at several top conferences, eg. SURGE/WebSummit, TiECon, ShopTalk, McKinsey Leadership Summit, Silicon Valley Open Doors, Global AI conference. He’s a mentor at Stanford and Berkeleys Entrepreneurship programs.

Anil Kumar

Family Office Entrepreneur

Over 34 years of experience in commodity space In all kind of ferrous and non ferrous metal right from mining, smelting, processing, Trading, Hedging, structure and commodity financing.

  • Have managed mining operation and smelting operations with thousands of workers and turning over Several billions of dollars.
  • Run commodity companies turning over USD 1 billion per year.
  • Responsible for turning around world third largest synthetic Rubber
    plant.
  • Managed large commodity book on future and options with hedging and
    derivatives playing a crucial part.
  • First commercial farmer in the world growing Bio Diesel.
  • Early Entrant on Wi-Max project in India.
  • Have addressed various seminars and conference on commodity space.
  • Founding Member of World Economic Forum Global Growth
    Companies.
  • Involved with YPO, Horasis and other social/Business organisation.

Irakli Beridze

Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, United Nations

More than 20 years of experience in leading multilateral negotiations, developing stakeholder engagement programmes with governments, UN agencies, international organisations, private industry and corporations, think tanks, civil society, foundations, academia, and other partners on an international level.

Mr Beridze is advising governments and international organizations on numerous issues related to international security, scientific and technological developments, emerging technologies, innovation and disruptive potential of new technologies, particularly on the issue on crime prevention, criminal justice and security. He is supporting governments worldwide on the strategies, action plans, roadmaps and policy papers on AI.

He is a member of various of international task forces, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Artificial Intelligence Council, the High-level panel for digital cooperation, the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence of the European Commission. He is frequently lecturing and speaking on the subjects related to technological development, exponential technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics and international security. He has numerous publications in international journals and magazines and frequently quoted in media on the issues related to artificial intelligence.

Since 2014, Initiated and managed the first United Nations Programmes on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Initiating and organizing number of high-level events at the United Nations General Assembly, and other international organizations. Finding synergies with traditional threats and risks as well as identifying solutions that AI can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Irakli Beridze is an International Gender Champion supporting the IGC Panel Parity Pledge. He is also recipient of recognition on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the OPCW in 2013.

Dan Feld

Head of Global Enterprise Business, Devices and Services at Google

Dan is focused on the growth of Google’s global enterprise hardware business. Previously, he served as the Head of Enterprise Solutions for Google Cloud Platform and as the EEMEA Region Lead for Amazon Web Services, responsible for helping customers and partners take advantage of Cloud technologies. With over 25 years of business and IT experience, he has built and led global Sales, Business Development and IT teams for public traded companies such as Google (GOOG), Amazon.com (AMZN), Clicksoftware (CKSW), Creo (Creo) and Scitex (SCIX). Dan has an MBA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Ricky Solomon

Rick graduated from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 1983 with a BBA in finance.

After school, Rick joined Wechsler & Co, a broker dealer focused on convertible securities. He became a partner and a managing director in charge of trading.

After 15 years at Wechsler, Rick joined Paloma as a portfolio manager. He ran a convertible arbitrage book as well as a long short equity book focused on technology stocks.

In 2000, Rick became a founding partner of Amaranth, a multi-strategy market neutral hedge fund. There he ran multi-billion global convertible arbitrage, volatility arbitrage, and long short tech equity portfolios. In addition, he was a member of the executive committee.

Rick joined Verition, another multi- strategy market neutral fund, in 2008, where he oversaw several portfolios.

In 2014, Rick left Verition to focus on his corporate board work, his investments, and founded Wilmot Advisors to position himself as consultant to emerging growth companies as it relates to capital acquisition and allocation. For more info please see www.wilmotadvisors.com

From 2109 through 2020, rich was a managing partner at AI Capital, a venture capital fund focused on early growth stage, enterprise applied AI. His specific focus was to source and evaluate deals, as well as working on deal structure.

Rick served on the board and audit committee of Aspen Group (ticker: ASPU), a for profit on-line higher learning institution, for five years. He also served on the board and audit committee of Ipsisdy Corp (ticker: IDTY) for 5 years. Ricky currently sits on several advisory boards, including Pattern Computer Inc and Link3d.

Through the years, Rick has structured many financings, both public and private, with a concentration in technology, and for the past 5 years, in AI. His deep financial experience allows him to be constructive in all aspects of finance.

Anand Govindaluri

Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GOVIN Capital

Founder & Chief Executive Officer of GOVIN Capital, a Singapore-based company with interests in Investment, Education & Social entrepreneurship. Anand has 17 years of active investment management experience and is a veteran healthcare investor. Prior to GOVIN, Anand served as the Senior Vice President & Head of the Investment, Spin-Off Management Division at ETPL, A*STAR, Government of Singapore for 3 years. At ETPL, he with his team actively managed a portfolio of 40 companies that are in the fields of Infocomm, Engineering, Aerospace, Medtech & Biotech. In additon, he actively organized Technopreneurship & Investor workshops for researcher and scientific community at A*STAR. Prior to joining ETPL, Anand was at Temasek Holdings, Singapore for 8 years. At Temasek, Anand was active across the value-chain of investments in the healthcare arena – from deal sourcing, to conducting on-site due-diligence, negotiating term-sheets, serving on the boards of companies for strategic development and planning exit strategies. Some of the investments that he executed include – Merlion Pharma (Singapore), Biosensors International (Singapore), TauRx (Singapore), Quintiles (USA), Aptuit (USA), IdunPharma (USA; acquired by Pfizer), Agilix (USA; acquired by Perkin), Vical (USA), Intercell (Austria), Arpida (Basel), Elbion (Germany), BioVex (UK), Renovo (Manchester), Dr Reddy Labs (India), Medreich (India), etc. Anand serves as Board member of UAL Biotech (Singapore), and an Advisory Board member of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART). He is also an invitee Judge for Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition organized by Singapore Management University, Start-Up Singapore organized by The National University of Singapore & Start-Up Chile. He is a regular panel speaker in various investor conferences globally. Anand is a Life Member of YMCA, Singapore and also participates in social service for the underprivileged community in Asia through Govin Foundation (www.govinfoundation.org). Anand has earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration from California State University, East Bay, USA; Master of Science degree from National University of Singapore, Singapore and Master of Science degree in Molecular Biology & Biotechnology from G B Pant University, India.