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.

Nikkia Reveillac is a trailblazing executive insights and innovation leader, business consultant, podcast host, and speaker. She has overcome significant obstacles throughout her career to deliver exceptional results at some of the world’s most influential tech, entertainment, and consumer packaged goods companies. She has drawn upon her creative background as a professional dancer, her unique multicultural perspective as a Caribbean woman, her entrepreneurial instincts, two decades of experience building global industry-leading teams, and her distinctly humane way of framing all manner of questions to bring meaningful transformation everywhere she has been. Reveillac was instrumental in helping Netflix define its first-ever brand promise, created a safer organizational culture at Twitter during the tumultuous pandemic years and 2020 U.S. election cycle, helped develop innovative oral care solutions for consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa at Colgate, grew high-performing and emotionally intelligent teams at all of her companies, and was the first to launch an online marketplace for Trinidad Carnival costumes. Today, she advises businesses of all sizes to leverage research, data, and insights for disruptive innovation and brand building, and she mentors junior and senior talent for career growth.

Colin Bryar is a business advisor and technology leader whose career has focused on optimizing business strategy and operations. He is a former top-level executive at Amazon, where he spent more than 12 years – much of it in the early aughts during the company’s period of unmatched innovation – leading the operations for IMDb.com, as well as working directly with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to help with overall business strategy, technology, and operations. Bryar is the co-author of Working Backwards, along with former Amazon executive Bill Carr, which provides an insider's breakdown of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices. Taking audiences inside the room, Bryar demonstrates how the principles and practices key to “Being Amazonian” can be scaled and applied to any organization.

In 2007, Dr. Michael Sorrell faced a life-altering decision. He was part of an ownership group that was on the verge of purchasing the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and he would serve as the team’s president following the completion of the deal — a dream come true for him. At the same time, he was approached by Paul Quinn College, a failing institution, to serve as the historically Black college’s president in the interim while they sought out a permanent appointment to take over the role — a search that was proving difficult as the school continued to falter. Dr. Sorrell accepted the role, hoping it would be a brief side quest on his journey to becoming an NBA executive. In reality, it marked the beginning of a transformative and innovative era for the school that continues to this day. Dr. Sorrell has spearheaded one of the great turnaround stories of our time — leading Paul Quinn’s evolution from one of the worst in the nation to a higher education powerhouse. As the longest-tenured president in the college’s history, he has instilled a “WE Over Me” mentality in students, faculty, and the community at large and has been revered throughout his historic tenure for his ability to reimagine organizations to better serve the needs of the people that depend on them. He is a testament to the power of purpose and vision. Dr. Sorrell’s talks center on why the simplest approach to leadership is often the most effective one. As he engages the audience with the experiences that led him to Paul Quinn College, and the turnaround that followed, he introduces them to his “Four Ls” for leading with impact.

Alex Stamos is a cybersecurity expert, business leader, and entrepreneur who has dedicated his career to improving the security and safety of the Internet. He serves as the chief trust officer for SentinelOne (NYSE: S), whose mission is to defeat every attack every second of every day with AI-powered threat prevention, detection, response, and hunting. At the same time, he is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, where his teaching and research focuses on international security and cooperation. Formerly Facebook’s chief security officer and Yahoo’s chief information security officer, Stamos is regarded among the most authoritative experts and problem-solvers in his field. The New York Times called Stamos “a celebrated figure in privacy and security circles,” and Tech Crunch said he is “widely regarded as one of the smartest people working in the security space.”

Ramez Naam is a former Microsoft executive, entrepreneur, inventor, and the Energy Co-Chair at Singularity University. Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft, where he led teams working on artificial intelligence, big data, and internet search. His software has touched the lives of more than a billion people. He holds more than 20 patents—including several as co-inventor with Bill Gates. Dynamic and personable, Naam speaks around the world, captivating audiences as he illustrates “what disruption looks like” and shares the eight strategies incumbents should draw on to keep the pace of change.

Sam Rad combines the mindsets of an anthropologist and technologist, bringing her “radical next” perspectives on what’s in store for the future. With the charisma of a rockstar, curiosity of an anthropologist, creativity of an entrepreneur, and calm confidence of an ex-professional skydiver, Sam effortlessly guides organizations and individuals to thrive in times of radical and accelerating change. Through her signature candid and clever delivery, Sam distills complex topics while leading the audience on a compelling, informative, and approachable journey of educational storytelling.

Gavin Patterson is the president and chief revenue officer of Salesforce.com, Inc., leading the CRM company's global sales organization. He previously served as Chief Executive, BT from 2013-19. During his tenure, Patterson completed the UK rollout of the superfast fibre and started the deployment ultrafast fibre. He led the £15billion acquisition of EE, launched BT Sport, expanded BT’s cyber security practice and championed BT’s social purpose agenda. He joined BT in 2004 as MD Consumer and joined the board as CEO BT Retail in 2008. Prior to BT, he spent four years at Virgin Media and nine years at Procter & Gamble. Patterson is a Non-Executive Director at British Airways plc and a Trustee of the British Museum. He graduated from Cambridge University with an MEng in Chemical Engineering.

Tom Wheeler is a businessman, author, and was Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) from 2013 to 2017. For over four decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services. At the FCC he led the efforts that resulted in the adoption of Net Neutrality, privacy protections for consumers, and increased cyber security, among other policies.

Sara M. Watson is an independent industry analyst and technology critic. Her intersectional career covering emerging technology, data, privacy, and tech policy bridges industry, policy, and academia. Sara has covered emerging tech trends for enterprise tech business leaders as a principal analyst at Forrester, Insider Intelligence, and the Gartner Research Board. As a sought-after keynote speaker, Watson helps audiences understand the ways emerging technologies are reshaping business and society, and the opportunities they present for organizations to innovate and operate ahead of the curve. Using accessible, concrete examples, captivating visuals, and a healthy dose of wit and humor in her presentations, Watson’s grounded insights into the possibilities, challenges, and ethical considerations of artificial intelligence, big data, and other emerging tech advancements offer a strategic vision for organizations in any industry.

MakerHealth CEO, Anna Young, works from a fundamental belief that, with the right tools, everyday people can use their ingenuity to create devices that heal. Applying years of global experience with the Maker Movement, Anna brings prototyping tools and makerspaces into hospitals enhance the natural problem-solving abilities of clinicians and patients. Anna is the co-founder of MakerNurse, an RWJF sponsored program to support inventive, frontline nurses. Anna’s roots come from MIT as researcher in the Little Devices Lab and lecturer in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. In 2015, Anna was recognized by LinkedIn as a "Top Health Innovator Under 35" and in 2016 received Fast Company’s "Most Creative People in Business."

Michael Coates has worked in the information security space for the past 20 years, leading security at global organizations, such as Twitter and Mozilla, and protecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Coates is currently the CISO of CoinList and the CEO of the sub-entity CoinList Digital Asset Services, a leading exchange platform that is disrupting the Web 3.0 and cryptocurrency digital asset offerings. He is also a co-founder of Altitude Networks and served as its CEO before a successful exit following the company’s acquisition. Previously, Coates was the Chief Information Security Officer at Twitter. There, his team worked to protect nearly 300 million users, securing both Twitter systems and user data.