Topic: Blockchain

Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, the Washington DC-based trade association representing more than 80 of the industry’s leading companies. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.S.

She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune's 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk's 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph's  2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain.

Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy. She co-founded HODLpac and currently serves on the organization’s board of directors. Kristin is a Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web board member and an independent director for Skybridge Capital’s G and GII Funds.

Shiza Shahid

Shiza Shahid is an entrepreneur, investor, technologist, activist, and world-renowned impact leader. She co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, and led the organization as founding CEO, focusing on creating access to high quality education for all children around the world.

Shiza is passionate about the future of technology and the powerful impact it can have on people’s lives, and actively invests in startups that have the potential to advance humanity.

A former business analyst with McKinsey & Co, Shiza has her finger on the pulse of economic and technology trends around the globe. In partnership with AngelList, the largest Venture Capital Platform in the world, Shiza launched NOW Ventures through which she invests in mission-driven tech startups that are solving the world’s most pressing challenges through technology, innovation, and high-growth business models. Shiza is also the founder of The Collective, a community of leading entrepreneurs that come together to build collaborative change.

Widely recognized for her humanitarian work and tech innovation, Shiza has receiving many awards as a thought leader. She was named one of TIME's "30 Under 30 People Changing the World," Forbes' "30 Under 30 - Social Entrepreneurs," and a Tribeca Institute Disruptive Innovator. She is a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council and has been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, Fast Company, Elle, Glamour, Town and Country, The Edit, CNN, ABC, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, and others.

A prominent speaker, Shiza has spoken regularly at major international events, including Aspen Ideas Fest, Milken Global Institute, Forbes Women, Fortune Most Powerful Women, Inc Women, Women Moving Millions, the World Economic Forum, and others.

Shiza is also the host of the new USA Today show "ASPIREist," which inspires millennials to take action on the issues that matter most.

Shiza graduated from Stanford University with University Distinction and studied exponential technologies at Singularity University, which is dedicated to applying futuristic innovations to advancing humanity.

Marco Gercke

Prof. Dr. Marco Gercke is an entrepreneur, scientist and consultant. His first focus area is Cybersecurity. With more than 100 speeches in over 100 countries and over 100 scientific publications, Prof. Gercke is one of the world's leading experts in the field of cybersecurity and cybercrime. He is the founder and director of the Cybercrime Research Institute, an independent research institute and think tank based in Cologne. He advises governments, organizations and large enterprises around the world on strategic, political and legal issues in the field of cybersecurity. The main focus of his work is the development of innovative approaches to tackling a problem that has developed into one of the most challenging issues for governments and businesses in recent years – Cybercrime.  Over the past 15 years, he has worked in over 100 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific and Latin America.

As a respected and experienced speaker, Prof. Gercke offers excellent and useful insider knowledge on the subject of cybersecurity due to his many years of activity and internal view. His lectures are clearly structured, very informative and include practical examples. As an eloquent and experienced speaker Marco usually gives free speeches without slides – an approach that allows him to adjust the response from the audience at all time.

In addition to speeches, Prof. Gercke is conducting "Cyber ​​Incident Simulations" with governments and board members of large enterprises. These are not technical simulations, but a “war gaming” / “serious gaming” approach, which allows the participants to check their capabilities in dealing with sophisticated attacks. The basis can be a real or a fictitious company (with different branches of industry available). Depending on the decision of the participants the plot of the simulation develops dynamically. It is also highly interactive and allows an interaction with the audience.

In the last years Prof. Gercke has carried out such simulations worldwide with numerous governments and board members of large enterprises. The simulation was also run for World Bank, the European Central Bank and the United Nations, and has been part of the Munich Security Conference program for the last three years. Global Speakers Bureau clients can book such simulation giving the audience an exclusive insight into how ministers and directors of large companies are preparing for cyber attacks.

The second focus of his lecture and advising activities are the digitization and its effects - especially with regard to "Machine Learning" and Artificial Intelligence. In the 90th he founded a company that utilized "Machine Learning" to develop software solutions for medical diagnostics. He was responsible for the development of the underlying technology. The next company he founded, a media agency, used "machine learning" and artificial intelligence for user interaction. Today, he focuses on advising international organizations and executive boards of major companies on issues related to the opportunities and risks of digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence. As an entrepreneur, scientist and consultant, his speeches are visionary and provide an insight into the significant development in this area.

Marco believes in customization of speeches. He does not give the same speech twice and is always open to discussing with organizers of events how to best tailor the speech to the event and audience.

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J. Sargent is an American economist and Professor of Economics at New York University. He specializes in the fields of macroeconomics, monetary economics and time series econometrics.

He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Economics, shared with Princeton University’s colleague Christopher Sims, “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.” In his Nobel speech in Stockholm he described himself as someone who aspires to use statistics and economic theory to understand how governments and markets can improve peoples’ lives. Sargent is one of the leaders of the "rational expectations revolution," which argues that the people being modeled by economists can predict the future, or the probability of future outcomes, at least as well as the economist can with his model.

In 2011, he was awarded the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing from the National Academy of Sciences and, in September, he became the recipient of the 2011 CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications.

Sargent is known as a devoted teacher. Among his PhD advisees are men and women at the forefront of macroeconomic research. Sargent's reading group at Stanford and NYU is a famous institution among graduate students in economics.

As of 2014, he ranks fourteenth among the most cited economists in the world.

In 2016, Sargent helped found the non-profit QuantEcon project, which is dedicated to the development and documentation of modern open source computational tools for economics, econometrics, and decision making.

He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, winning the medal as the university’s most distinguished scholar in the Class of 1964, and obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968.

He has been Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota, the David Rockefeller Professor at the University of Chicago, and the Donald Lucas Professor of Economics at Stanford University.

He has been a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1987. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. He has been President of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, and the Society for Economic Dynamics.

Paul Armstrong

Paul Armstrong is a leading strategist, author and speaker on the future of technology, disruption, retail innovation, media industry, social technologies, consumer technology, mobile innovation, IoT, Martech/Adtech, start-ups and the start-up ecosystem.

Paul runs the technology advisory HERE/FORTH where he helps clients including PwC, Coca-Cola, O2, P&G, jkrGlobal and MEC understand trends and how to sensibly apply emerging technologies strategically.

Paul is regularly seen on the BBC and News at Ten, when industry comment is called for, and currently writes for a number of publications, including Forbes, Cool Hunting and Short List.

Paul's first book, ‘Disruptive Technologies’, offers organizations a distinct response to emerging technologies including Blockchain (Bitcoin), artificial intelligence, graphene and nanotechnology and other external factors - such as the sharing economy, mobile penetration, millennial workforce, ageing populations - that impact on their business, client service and product model. 'Disruptive Technologies' became a best seller on Amazon with pre-orders alone.

Steve Wozniak

A Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for more than thirty years, Steve Wozniak has helped shape the computing industry with his design of Apple’s first line of products the Apple I and II and influenced the popular Macintosh. In 1976, Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer Inc. with Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. The following year, he introduced his Apple II personal computer, featuring a central processing unit, a keyboard, color graphics, and a floppy disk drive.

The Apple II was integral in launching the personal computer industry.

In 1981, he went back to UC Berkeley and finished his degree in electrical engineering/computer science. For his achievements at Apple Computer, Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, the highest honor bestowed on America’s leading innovators.

In 2000, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment for single-handedly designing the first personal computer and for then redirecting his lifelong passion for mathematics and electronics toward lighting the fires of excitement for education in grade school students and their teachers.

Through the years, Wozniak has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures, focusing primarily on computer capabilities in schools and stressing hands-on learning and encouraging creativity for students.  Making significant investments of both his time and resources in education, he adopted the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology equipment. He founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose.

In 2006, Wozniak published his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. It was co-authored by writer Gina Smith.

In 2007, Wozniak joined Scottevest as an Advisory Board Member.

In 2009, Wozniak joined Fusion-io, a data storage and server company, in Salt Lake City, Utah as their chief scientist.

In 2014 Wozniak became an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Wozniak continues to pursue his entrepreneurial and philanthropic interests to this day. In October 2017, Steve co-founded Woz U — a postsecondary education and training platform focused on software engineering and technology development. He has also recently co-founded Efforce — which leverages disparate applications of blockchain technology.