Stefan Thomas is the CTO of Ripple, the San Francisco-based blockchain company powering frictionless payments for more than 100 customers worldwide. Prior to joining Ripple in 2013, Stefan worked as a developer in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. As an early Bitcoin contributor, Stefan produced the popular “What is Bitcoin?” video, which introduced millions of users to Bitcoin. He also created the first Bitcoin implementation in JavaScript (BitcoinJS), which is used by hundreds of blockchain companies of all sizes today. Currently, Stefan is developing the Interledger Protocol (ILP), an open source standard for connecting payment networks. Stefan recently worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other partners to develop Mojaloop, an open source, ILP-enabled national payment switch that connects mobile wallets in developing markets. Stefan also sits on the board of the JS Foundation.
In 2012, Phil was asked to rejuvenate the legendary IBM design program, spearheading a broader transformation of how the company’s teams understand and solve complex problems. The program has established a modern standard for the role of the arts in business — adding formally-trained designers into IBM at an unprecedented scale, and reskilling its global workforce in design thinking and agile practices. Through 2017, more than 1,600 professional designers have been hired, and IBM has certified more than 100,000 others in IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking framework. This transformation has been documented in the New York Times, Fortune and in a documentary film produced by InVision as a part of its Design Disruptors series. Phil is also co-chair of IBM’s Global Women’s Executive Committee, and is an acknowledged expert and thought leader on topics of corporate change, enterprise design governance, strategy and culture. He graduated as a Pe-et (top ten) senior from the University of Oklahoma in 1978 and lives in Austin, Texas.
In February 2015 Dr. Hans-Holger Albrecht became the Global Chief Executive Officer and member of the board of Directors at Deezer. Albrecht was most recently at Millicom where he was President and CEO of the telecom and media group, offering digital services to over 50 million customers in Africa and Latin America. Previously, he was President and CEO of Modern Times Group, one of Europe’s larger media groups with TV, Radio, Publishing, Production and New Media assets. He has also been President and CEO of Viasat Broadcasting in Stockholm and worked for the RTL Group in Luxembourg.
Prof. Dr. Michael John Gorman is Founding Director of BIOTOPIA Naturkundemuseum Bayern, a new museum linking life sciences, art and design currently in development at Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich and University Professor (Chair) in Life Sciences in Society at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Previously, Michael John was Founding Director of Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, dedicated to igniting creativity and discovery where science and art collide. In 2012 he founded Science Gallery International with the goal of bringing Science Gallery experiences to a global audience, with Science Gallery spaces now being established in London, Bangalore, Melbourne and Venice. He has curated or co-curated over 25 exhibitions bridging science and art. Prior to that, Michael John was Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University, Stanford University and MIT. He received his PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence. He has written books on topics ranging from a 17th century Flemish painting to the architecture of Buckminster Fuller.
Boyan Slat is an inventor and entrepreneur who creates technologies to solve societal problems. He is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, the foundation that develops advanced systems to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. In February 2013 he dropped out of his aerospace engineering study at TU Delft to work full-time on this ambitious project. He dedicates most of his time to managing the rapid growth of the organization, while also overseeing the team’s technology developments.
When we heard about the concept for what3words here at TOA we were blown away. The idea is simple, assign a unique 3-word code to identify a specific 3m² location. Executing this on a scale of 57 trillion squares across the globe, not so much. We are excited to welcome Clare to TOA to learn even more about what3words, as well as her work with NGOs in the UK and abroad.
Julie Hansen is CEO of Babbel, Inc., leading the US expansion of the #1 best-selling language-learning app in the world. Before joining Babbel, Julie was the COO and President of Business Insider. Under her leadership the news site became the most visited business outlet on the internet. Prior to Business Insider, Hansen held top management roles at sports site NCAA.com, Condé Nast Publications, and Time Inc. Julie has over two decades of experience growing digital media companies, launching interactive web sites, deploying mobile apps, and leading online and offline marketing campaigns. She began her career at Penguin Books, publishing learning software for literature among other products.
Julian is obsessed with finding and defining „smart shortcuts“, also in the finance world: taking decisions where others would go the general way, finding paths out of the box, thinking creatively how to be faster and get leapfrog high performance success with settling for no less than outstanding results. The economy is never standing still, why you need to adapt fast and with a brilliant knowledge base.
Lily is a non-practicing physician and product manager for a team that works on applying deep learning to medical data, especially medical imaging.
Before Google, Lily was a product manager at Doximity, the “LinkedIn” for physicians, and a co-founder of Nano Precision Medical (NPM), a medical device start-up developing a small implantable drug delivery device. She completed her M.D. and Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley. Lily received her B.S. with honors and distinction in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
Bastian is the CEO of Postmates, the on-demand delivery company he co-founded in 2011. The idea for Postmates was originally conceived in 2005 when Bastian was relocating from Munich to London and he struggled with finding a simple solution for moving goods around a city. He later pursued this notion of “ride-sharing for stuff” through AngelPad in San Francisco, where he met his co-founders Sean Plaice and Sam Street. Postmates now operates in 40 US markets.
Prior to Postmates, Bastian co-founded Curated.by, a real-time tweet curation platform based in London. Before that, at 12snap, he managed marketing budgets for Adidas and Lufthansa and helped many European startups in product related roles. A native of Germany, Bastian now lives in San Francisco.
Daniel Miller is the founder of Mute, launched in 1978 with his own 7” single – ‘Warm Leatherette’ under the name The Normal. Since then, Mute has grown into a global group of companies and today, as ever, Miller remains heavily focussed on Mute’s creative output. Daniel Miller’s recent DJing was inspired by an invitation from Karl O’Connor aka Regis who invited him to perform at Berlin’s Berghain. There he caught the bug to play and since has been playing regular techno sets worldwide.
Galia Benartzi is a serial technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the Bancor Protocol, a standard for the creation of Smart Tokens™, cryptocurrencies with built-in convertibility directly through their smart contracts. Smart Tokens™ interconnect to form automated token liquidity networks, allowing user-generated currencies to thrive.
Galia has a BA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College and an MA in International Economics from SAIS Johns Hopkins. In 2005, Galia co-founded Mytopia, the first social gaming company for smartphones (acquired by 888), and in 2010, Particle Code, a cross-platform development technology for mobile applications (acquired by Appcelerator). In 2013, Galia moved from Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv to support and invest in Israeli technology as a Venture Partner at Founders Fund, where she also launched numerous local currency pilots to model, build and test software for community currencies. Galia is a founding member of Powder Mountain, permanent home of the Summit community in Eden, Utah, and creator of the Eden2Zion Reality trips by the Schusterman Foundation. She is passionate about decentralized technologies, women’s empowerment, consciousness, natural wellness and plants.
