Topic: Technology

Manisha Tank

Charismatic, dynamic and intellectually curious, Manisha Tank is a highly experienced emcee and moderator, who leverages warmth and empathy to serve the needs of clients and engage audiences, eliciting insight from panellists in an authoritative manner.

With 25 years of broadcast experience as a news anchor and correspondent, at Reuters, the BBC and CNN International, she’s adept at riding minute to minute adjustments, following time cues and navigating fast paced, in-depth, often deeply technical conversations in live situations. Over those years Manisha has interviewed hundreds of CEOs, founders, policy experts, A-List celebrities and political leaders, on a wide range of topics, from geopolitics to business and entertainment.

Increasingly, her work focuses on Net Zero transition, digitalisation and new technologies for enterprise transformation including blockchain, artificial intelligence and cloud and she is a regular face on Singapore’s high-profile conference and event circuit. Concurrently she is the host of various podcast series for a range of blue chip clients including Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture.

In November 2023, Manisha hosted Earthshot +, a part of The Earthshot Prize’s first ever Earthshot week, hosted in Singapore, as well as commanding the 7000 + seat festival stage at the world renowned, Singapore Fintech Festival, for which she has been the host for five years.

Manisha is also an angel investor in companies focused on achieving The United Nation’s SDGs, with a personal passion for gender equality, rural development and sustainable transition technologies.

Toby Lewis

Toby Lewis is a Cyber Security Expert with a career that began within the British Intelligence Services. He was a founding member of the National Cyber Security Centre and now leads an international team of Cyber Security Analysts for British AI & Cyber Security firm, Darktrace. His career has been punctuated by major Cyber Security events, initially working on the threat from Nation State espionage until WannaCry transformed the Cyber Crime landscape into one dominated by Ransomware.

Toby has delivered keynote speeches at flagship conferences on Cyber Security, sharing his experiences working at the sharp end, combating major Cyber Security incidents and providing insights into the cyber threat landscape. He has provided expert commentary for mainstream broadcast news and print media, on topics ranging from the benefits and risks associated with Artificial Intelligence, to joining BBC Radio 5 Live on the morning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to discuss the potential use of Cyber Weapons by the two countries.

Since joining Darktrace at the start of 2021, Toby has been at the forefront of the real-world application of AI and Machine Learning within Cybersecurity, drawing on his Artificial Intelligence expertise and a deep understanding of the value in the right type of AI for the right application and the human factors around building confidence within organisations as they begin their journey with AI. With the AI explosion associated with ChatGPT, this also means engaging in a much more informed debate, balancing out the hype and catastrophisers with a pragmatic view of this new technology.

War stories gathered over nearly 20 years in Cyber Security allow Toby to provide an accessible introduction to the intersections of technology, geopolitics and cybersecurity, as well as deeper expertise on topics such as the application of Artificial Intelligence in cyber security, and what really happens when hackers get access to your network.

Satyajeet Salgar

Satyajeet is a results-driven Product leader who is passionate about building great products at the intersection of technology and media. He brings broad experience and insight in Product,  Engineering and Management, with measurable success in both launching new products to market and scaling products to billions of consumers for companies such as Google and Youtube.

With his strong academic background and an extensive tenure in software engineering at startups, Satyajeet first broke into Product at Youtube, where he was responsible for driving the Partner strategy and Operations. For over a decade, he has lead a number of critical efforts at Google, including Google Search, the Google Assistant, Payments, Shopping and YouTube. Satyajeet also provides tactical and strategic guidance for the world’s most talented entrepreneurs through teaching and advising a number of startup founders, helping self-motivated individuals grow & create successful companies at scale. Throughout his professional experience, he gained true expertise in creating the product strategy and vision to launch new products, where a high level of ambiguity and ownership is required, as well iterating on products used and loved daily by billions of people.

Satyajeet holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Pune Institute of Computer Technology, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and earned an MBA from Booth School of Business. An outstanding speaker, he is a frequent presenter and lecturer at various grad schools where he educates others on building products, technology, and user experience.

Ishan Gupta

Ishan Gupta is the Managing Director, Udacity, India. Udacity is democratizing education to make it affordable and accessible for people around the world. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in China, Germany, India, and the UK, Udacity provides online education to millions of students in collaboration with top employers including Google, Facebook, AT&T, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, Mercedes, Didi Chuxing, FlipKart and more. Ishan’s role in Udacity as the Managing Director for India is to build a strong team, launch more India-focused courses and take the Indian business to new heights.

Ishan was until end of 2016, the Vice President (Business) at Paytm (India's largest mobile commerce company, valued at $6Bn). Before that, he was running EduKart in India, which he had founded in 2011. The company went on to become the largest education marketplace of India.

Ishan has earlier worked at Facebook as a growth manager for India and established a corporate development division for a telco services company.

With a philosophy, ‘good is the enemy of great’; Ishan’s passion about democratisation of education has allowed him to lead and contribute to various initiatives which have resulted in education being an equaliser.

He did his engineering from University of Delhi and MBA from Stanford University, California, USA. Besides that, Ishan has published a book on entrepreneurship titled “Make the Move- Demystifying Entrepreneurship” and has been invited to speak on topics of leadership, entrepreneurship and ed-tech at various prestigious venues in India and outside including TEDx, Stanford Graduate Business School, IITs (Delhi, Mumbai), IIM - Bangalore, ISB, India Conference at Harvard and many more.

Ishan frequently writes on topics pertaining to education, technology, entrepreneurship and business management for leading Indian publications like The Times of India, India Today, YourStory, Indian Express and more. Ishan has also been featured on prestigious global and Indian platforms like TechCrunch and The Economic Times among others.

For his contribution to education technology, Ishan has been featured twice on CNBC Young Turks in 2006 and 2018. Young Turks is one of CNBC - TV 18’s longest running shows for young entrepreneurs in India. He has also served as the chairperson of Education Technology Committee of Internet & Mobile Association of India.  

 

Bob Baxley

Bob Baxley is a design executive who lives and works in Silicon Valley. He most recently served as the Head of Product Design at Pinterest where he built, led, and managed a multifaceted design team responsible for both the consumer and business facing elements of Pinterest.

Prior to that, Bob spent over eight years at Apple, where he served in senior leadership roles for Apple’s retail and e-commerce teams. As a Director of Design, Bob hired and led the creative team responsible for a broad variety of applications including the Apple Online Store, the Apple Store app, and the transactional areas of iPhoto and GarageBand

As Director of Design for Yahoo! Search, Bob built and led the design team that created Yahoo! Answers and designed other search-centric properties. Bob’s career as a designer began at Claris Corporation where he was Lead UI Designer for the initial releases of ClarisWorks and MacProject Pro.

The author of “Making the Web Work”, Bob is also a sought after public speaker sharing his experiences and observations about a range of topics related to design, technology, innovation, and the culture of Silicon Valley.

Bob holds a B.A. in History and a B.S in Radio/Television/Film from the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford University.

Vitor Prado

Vitor Mendonça Prado is a lawyer and founding partner of Mendonça Prado Advogados, founder and managing partner of CAVI Participações e Empreendimentos Ltda, businessman, speaker, mentor, advisor and investor.

Mr. Prado is a multifunctional leader with experience in market strategy and legal and commercial effectiveness. Mr. Prado develops an executive-level vision of key objectives and results, taking advantage of a structured approach to solve complex, multidimensional problems, prioritizing solutions based on impact, feasibility and time.

Mr. Prado has deep international experience in venture capital & private equity, growth strategy, sales, law, investment, due diligence, consulting, venture capital and private capital, marketing, direct to consumer business models, business strategy and research primary market, corporate structuring, multi-million dollar tax and international M&A transactions in the automotive, aerospace, information technology, general services, health, education, food and agriculture, clean technology, banking and finance and public services sectors.

At the age of 18, Vitor founded his first company, CAVI (Unregulated Fund) in São Paulo, where he successfully evaluated and closed private equity real estate transactions in the interior of São Paulo, around strategic airports. After completing two bachelors (Business Administration and Law), at the age of 23, Vitor became a lawyer in Brazil.

At the age of 24, he founded the Prado Capital Group, a US $ 300m venture capital fund, in New York City and London and completed his master's degree in international tax law at King's College London. A year later, at the age of 25, he dropped out of his Masters in Finance at Harvard University and moved to New York City to focus on his career at the company itself, Prado Capital Group - venture capital fund / venture capital fund . He was also an M&A corporate finance professional at PricewaterhouseCoopers, structuring multi-million dollar international M&A transactions.

Mr. Prado worked as a sales consultant at an Israeli digital marketing company early in his career. He was also an intern at the São Paulo Court of Justice and at a boutique law firm, both in São Paulo, Brazil. He is proud to work for a non-profit organization, TECHO in Brazil. TECHO (Spanish word for “roof”) aims to combat poverty by supervising the construction of emergency transitional housing and implementing social empowerment programs for families in need. Mr. Prado worked for the Pajama program in New York City, offering the magical gifts of pajamas and books, bringing a careful bedtime ritual to the lives of children. He continues to support TECHO and works to increase its visibility in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America.

He is a partner at Êxito - Latin American Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Mr. Prado is a representative, investor and mentor at FasterCapital (Startup accelerator based in Dubai). He is also a member of ANPPD® - National Association of Data Privacy Professionals, a member of Open Mind Brazil, mentor at BBX Brasil, appraiser and consultant at 100 Open Startups, member and angel investor at Anjos do Brasil, and business consultant at Methode Consultoria.

He was a speaker at the Silicon Valley Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum and at Angel Global in Silicon Valley in 2015. In the same year he was a guest speaker at Protohack in New York City. He ran two 42 km / 21 mile marathons, one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2013 and the other in Madrid, Spain in 2014.

He lived, studied and worked in London, New York, Boston, Palo Alto - Silicon Valley, San Francisco and San Diego; Speaks English and Portuguese fluently. Has intermediate Spanish and basic Italian. He is currently writing two books, one in the area of “Law for Startups - Brazil, Europe, United Kingdom and USA” and another in the area of investments. In addition, he teaches law courses for companies and startups, for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.

Mr. Prado is a vegetarian and his hobbies are traveling, philanthropy, art, wine, sailing, physical exercise, reading, golf, triathlon, cooking and spending time with his family.

Peter Keen

Peter Keen works globally as a professor, advisor to senior management in business and government organizations, author, executive educator and public speaker.

Keen has held faculty positions at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Fordham, Wharton and The London Business School.

He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Marist College and Abo Akademi University (Finland) for his career-long "pioneering contributions and key theory work in the interface between information technology, management theory and the managerial use of information systems."

Peter Keen was named as one of the top 100 business "gurus" in the world - thought leaders with impact - in a 2003 survey. This ranking is based on objective measures of citations of his work in the scholarly literature (influence as a thought leader), Google search engine "hits" on his name (public impact and interest), and media references on Lexis/Nexus (newsworthiness). He is also regularly ranked in the top ten consultants in the world in the IT field, but the business guru rating indicates the extent to which his work is more general than just IT.

Keen is first of all a thinker, teacher and adviser in the area of business innovation, with IT as a core enabler, but only that. His strengths in IT add to his other strengths in organization (especially competing via business processes), international business, and corporate finance. Peter's consulting focuses on helping private and public sector organizations make the management difference in exploiting technology and process capabilities to build a sustainable innovation advantage. His executive education programs are centered on leadership in practice rather than theory and good intentions, through an "imperatives" and "beachhead" approach to accelerating change and reducing its risks.

Peter Keen is a prolific writer and the author of close to 30 books, including Shaping the Future: Business Design through Information Technology, The Process Edge, The eProcess Edge, Every Manager's Guide to IT, Trust by Design, The Freedom Economy, Competing in Time, and Decision Support Systems: an Organizational Perspective. Mr. Keen's view on business effectiveness and innovation is that they rest on a fusion of people, process, technology and economics; the role of leadership is to ensure that fusion.

A major area of his current research and consulting centers on the opportunities and challenges of mobile technology: building the business models for a new generation of mobile value services, knowledge mobilization as organizational advantage, mobile supply chain management, and the use of mobile for social and economic development.

Peter Keen regards himself as a "voyager" between many worlds, a translator and an integrator. He is a European who lives in the United States, holds a senior professorship position in Europe and works across the world bringing insights and experiences from and to each of the regions and nations he works in. Peter is a consultant with a distinguished academic track record, and is actively involved in both the public and private sectors.