Working at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, behavior, technology, and science, Nichol Bradford’s mission is to empower human transformation and wellbeing by creating or curating new visions, opportunities, and tech-enabled tools for all. She catalyzes new ways to use technology to expand beyond our perceived limits and reach our fullest potential through her global non-profit Transformative Tech.org, working with talented researchers, founders, and investors across the globe who build wellbeing tech for human health and happiness. Bradford speaks extensively on human transformation, transformative tech, and the future of health, work, and human excellence. Using real-life examples and use cases from the latest trends in wellness technologies, she demonstrates to groups how these emerging advances can be applied to heal, upskill, and enhance human capability and benefit all of mankind.

Michael (Mike) Steep is the founder and former executive director of Stanford Engineering School's Center for Disruptive Technology and Digital Cities and the former senior vice president of global business operations at innovation mega-hub, PARC Xerox. He draws on first-hand experience and anecdotes from time spent with the biggest names in Silicon Valley to instruct audiences on how to get ahead of disruptive innovation. Viewing new technology as opportunity, Mike highlights the importance of allowing innovation to trump company culture and legacies—and not the other way around.

A school teacher turned actor, musician, two-time national poetry slam champion, entrepreneur, and award-winning poetic voice, any given day may now find Sekou keynoting at a leadership conference, helping a Fortune 500 company with brand messaging, or even performing pieces for Barack Obama in Oprah’s backyard. Sekou is the creator of Poetic Voice, a new, cutting-edge speaking category that seamlessly fuses inspirational speaking with spoken word poetry to make messages more moving and memorable. For over 15 years, Sekou Andrews has been helping the world’s largest organizations deliver relevant information with riveting inspiration through an innovative, unconventional category of speaking called “Poetic Voice.”

Farhad Manjoo is a leading and influential Silicon Valley voice and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. They formerly wrote the Times’ “State of the Art” column. In that role, Manjoo reviewed the latest devices and innovations in addition to a wide variety of tech-related topics including the emergence of new media, Silicon Valley and start-up culture, and the ways in which politics, society, and business are being shaped by the rapid emergence of new technologies.

With a medical, scientific, and philanthropic career that spans more than 30 years, Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann has devoted her life to improving the human condition through innovation. Most recently, she was the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading the organization’s vision for a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life. She was formerly the first female chancellor of University of California at San Francisco and spent 14 years at biotech firm Genentech, leading the development of a number of breakthrough medicines. An innovator and leader in life sciences, Dr. Desmond-Hellmann’s diverse training as an oncologist, scientist, and business executive leads to her endless curiosity about the world and her desire to change it for the better. In speeches, she shares her unique insights not only on revolutionizing global health, but also on effective and innovative leadership. Using lessons-learned as a trailblazing female leader of one of the world’s largest philanthropies, Dr. Desmond-Hellmann inspires audiences with her unparalleled perspective on how to foster an environment of collaboration and relentless innovation to drive disruptive solutions that make an impact.

Named one of the "40 Most Influential Minds in Tech" by TIME magazine, Vivek Wadhwa is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley. Based in Silicon Valley, he researches exponentially advancing technologies that are soon going to change our world. Wadhwa has held appointments at Duke University, Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and Emory University and is a faculty member at Singularity University. He is a globally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and the author of four books on the intersection of technology and society.

Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist working in entertainment, product development, engineering, architecture, and the sciences. He is former president of research and development, and creative technology for Walt Disney. Once known for entertaining millions by creating special effects for Hollywood, theme parks and Broadway, Applied Minds co-founder Bran Ferren now solves impossible tech challenges with previously unimaginable inventions. He has been named one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company.

Chris Barton is an entrepreneur speaker, co-founder and Board Director of Shazam, and expert in mobile applications. At Shazam, he helped guide the music discovery company from idea to profit as co-founder and Board Director. He has also worked eight years at Google focused on mobile and at Dropbox as head of mobile operators development. Now he follows his dream of advising passionate entrepreneurs who want to make the world a better place, by speaking on entrepreneurship and advising a handful of startups. In addition, he is embarking on his next startup venture. Barton co-founded Shazam in 1999 with the original idea to identify songs with a mobile phone. Before smartphones, people would call a number, put their phone up to the radio and receive a text identifying the song. When the company launched in 2002, Shazam had 2 million songs in its database and took 15 seconds to process a user’s request. Today Shazam’s app has been downloaded by over 1 billion people globally. Now the app takes only a few seconds to identify songs from its database of over 30 million songs. Shazam’s journey was one of faith and endurance for Barton and his co-founders. The company survived the dot.com bust but the company struggled for many years. Barton left in 2004 to join Google and later Dropbox but continued to serve on the Board throughout. Only in 2008 did Shazam begin its “hockey stick” growth curve once iPhone and Android app stores were introduced to the world. Today, Shazam is among the most popular apps on both iPhone and Android with over 120 million monthly active users. Shazam’s highly advanced technology and superior customer ratings helped convince Apple to purchase the company for a reported $400 million in December 2017. Barton holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, a Master’s degree in Finance from Cambridge University, and a BA from UC Berkeley.

One of Silicon Valley's first African American female CEOs, Shellye Archambeau is the former CEO of MetricStream, a Silicon Valley-based, Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) apps company that helps organizations around the world improve their business performance. Under Archambeau's leadership, MetricStream has grown into a recognized global market leader with nearly 1,500 employees worldwide. The company has received many awards and recognition for growth, product innovation, and customer success, and has been consistently named a leader in GRC by leading independent analyst firms. Named the “#2 Most Influential African American in Technology” by Business Insider, Archambeau is a sought-after speaker and board member who has presented to Fortune 500 corporations, members of Congress, and associations including Institute of Internal Auditors and NASDAQ. In her talks and her hit book, "Unapologetically Ambitious," she shares her story of overcoming the odds to achieve success, along with strategies to take risks, break barriers, and create success on your own terms.

Jane Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Embrace, a social enterprise that aims to help the 15 million premature and low birth-weight babies born every year, through a low-cost infant warmer. The Embrace infant warmer costs about 1% of a traditional incubator and is estimated to have helped over 250,000 babies to date. Most recently, Embrace Innovations launched a new line of baby products for the US market called Little Lotus Baby, which uses NASA inspired technology to keep babies at the perfect temperature so they can sleep better. They are using buy-one, give-one model: for every product sold, a baby is helped in a developing country by the Embrace infant warmer.

Robert Richman is a culture strategist and was the co-creator of Zappos Insights, an innovative program focused on educating companies on the secrets behind Zappos’ amazing employee culture. Robert built Zappos Insights from a small website to a thriving multi-million dollar business teaching over 25,000 students per year. Through his work, Robert has been helpful for improving the employee culture at hundreds of companies. As one of the world’s authorities on employee culture and customer experience, Robert is a sought-after keynote speaker at conferences around the world and has been hired to teach culture in person at companies like Google, Toyota, and Eli Lilly.

Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership thinker based in Silicon Valley. Drawing on his Indian upbringing, he was the first (with his co-authors) to capture the phenomenon of jugaad—a Hindi word for improvised solutions born out of ingenuity in resource constrained settings. His first book, a global bestseller of the same name, Jugaad Innovation, shows how companies and entrepreneurs can unleash and harness the grassroots ingenuity of employees, customers, and partners to co-create simple but effective solutions that deliver greater value at a lower cost.