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PAST SPEAKERS

I like creating new startups and working with creative people. I have a wide range of intellectual and artistic interests. I am the founder and CEO of a venture backed neighborhood social network. I am also the founder and creator of Trademarkia.com. I am an engineer and inventor, and somehow became a lawyer. I am the inventor of 30 issued patents around robotics, software, databases, and geo-spatial technology. I am also the co-founder and former President of Spiral Moon Media, which is the Bay Area’s largest video production agency.

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Topic:  QuSec + Enterprise Minds

Raj Abhyanker

Co-Founder, Nearcast

Mike Boroughs is the Chief Investment Officer for Fortis Digital Ventures where he focuses on managing the firm’s crypto hedge fund. Mike’s role is to work with his investment team to analyze the tokenomics, business structure, scalability, leadership teams and price action of various coins to optimize the allocation of the fund’s capital. His years of running a $250M RIA, including a long/short equity hedge fund, give him unique insights into managing risk and looking across different asset classes to understand how their trends impact each other.

 

After first getting involved in crypto in 2017, Mike has been educating clients on the benefits of Web3 and is excited to continue to push his firm to evolve into the ever-changing landscape of digital assets.

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Topic:  Public Relations

Mike Boroughs

CEO, Fortis Digital Ventures

Jeff Hancock is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University and Founding Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab. A leading expert in social media behavior and the psychology of online interaction, Professor Hancock studies the impact of social media and AI technology on social cognition, well-being, deception and trust, and most recently crypto. His award-winning research has been published in over 100 papers and his TED Talk on deception has been seen over 1 million times. 

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Topic:  Public Relations

Jeff Hancock

Hypemachine founder

Carlos is the founder of CharlieDAO, a decentralized collective of analysts, product managers, software engineers, and crypto folk building web3 things; and True Freeze, the first on-chain certificate of deposit ecosystem to bring risk-minimized DeFi to the 80%+ of crypto that has never touched a smart contract.

 

In his spare time, he designs tokenomic systems and advises startups and hedge funds in web3 space.

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Topic:  DAO

Carlos Mercado

Charlie DAO

The Founder of Hypemachine, a PR startup, Olga previously helped run the New York office of a national tech PR firm. She has counseled and launched over 40 web3 and tech companies in the media and led PR campaigns for billion-dollar brands, Fortune 500 companies, VC firms, and hedge funds. She is a mentor at 500 Startups, ff Venture Capital, XRC Labs, and other funds globally.

 

Previously, she was at FTI Consulting (NYSE: FCN) where she helped lead the PR efforts for Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, HSBC, and Allstate. She holds a MA in Communication and Culture and lives in NYC.

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Topic:  Public Relations

Olga Orda

Hypemachine founder

Mike has been an entrepreneur and digital identity expert for more then 

two decades. FounThe company he founded, Gluu, is one of the leaders in 

modern federated digital identity--the Gluu platform is relied on by 

large enterprise customers and governments around the world. In addition 

to his role as founder of Gluu, he is the author of the 2018 Apress book 

"Securing the Perimeter," and is the host of the podcast Open Source 

Underdogs. He resides in Austin TX with family and pigeons.

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Topic:  Online Identity Panel

Mike Schwartz

Founder & CEO, Gluu

Mike Tomasulo is the co-leader of the firm’s multidisciplinary Videogame, Gaming & Esports Group and has represented leading companies in the videogame, cloud computing, and social media industries. Mike is also very active in the emerging world of blockchain, NFTs, Web3, and DAOs. He is knowledgeable in the intellectual property implications of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and smart contracts transactions, and counsels companies involved with blockchain technology in finding business-focused solutions. He has written numerous articles on these topics and is currently doing consulting and transactional work for companies in this sector including counseling an NFT marketplace in its 2022 launch.

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Topic: Protecting Your Intellectual Property

Mike Tomasulo

Co-leader, Gaming & Esports Group, Winston & Strawn, LLP

Joseph is an entrepreneur. He built a consulting company transforming the technology solutions for several Forbes 100 organizations which lead to the development of an Analytics framework product that was sold in 2020.

 

He's been in crypto since 2015 and is one of the co-founders behind Cityroots DAO, a Web3 brand of transparency, trust and accountability.

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Topic:   The NFT Market

Joseph Yelle

Entrepreneur and City Council Member for CityRoots.io

Visionary Silicon Valley tech exec, who holds the industry's first NFT patent, alongside other Augmented Reality / Metaverse patents.Throughout his career, Val led the development of next-gen platforms (Web1, Web2 & web3) with Microsoft, NetApp, VMware, Yahoo!, Facebook, AWS & Google.

 

After serving as CTO of NetApp/SolidFire and a founding member of the CNCF board, kickstarting the wildly popular Kubernetes Open Source project.

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Topic:  The State of web3

Valentin Bercovici

web3 Czar & Founder, CLICK

Rick Farnell has a successful track record as an entrepreneur, executive and operator of a number of global technology companies. Rick is the Chief Executive Officer of Appdetex.

 

A visionary market leader in Global Brand Protection that provides the Tracer® platform, to find and remediate fraudulent brand issues for customers in and around networks, domains, websites, search, social, cloud marketplaces, gaming, mobile applications, Web3, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, digital payments, and the metaverse.

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Topic:  Protecting Brands in Web3 and across the Modern Digital Universe

Rick Farnell

CEO, AppDetex

Christian Kameir is a managing partner at Sustany Capital, a venture capital firm investing in blockchain and Web3 technologies. Chris has been a tech entrepreneur since the internet dial-up days and led the merger of two of the earliest internet service providers in Europe. Chris studied classical literature, and is a graduate of Muenster's School of Law.

He is a board member at Open Travel, co-chair of the Banking and Financial Services at the Decentralized Identity Foundation, and lectures at Harvard. His current book project - working title 'Streaming Money' - will be published in Q4/2022.

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Topic: The Non-Player Character: YOU!

Christian Kameir

Managing Partner, Sustany Capital

Bharath Mundlapudi is a serial entrepreneur and business executive. Currently, he founded a company in Big Data, ML and Data Science space. He has a good blend of operations, business and technology experience.

 

He has built multiple startups from scratch. He has extensive advisory experience (business, strategy and technical) for the Fortune 100 companies in the big data and data science solutions for various verticals including tech, retail, manufacturing and finance.

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Topic: Web3 and Social Media Decentralization

Bharath Mundlapudi

Founder & CEO, Enterprise Minds

VC (Managing Director, Sterling Capital), innovation thought leader + speaker, serial entrepreneur, author of the NYT bestselling book Secrets of Silicon Valley, and author of The Risk Factor + The People Equation. 

 

Deborah is a LinkedIn Learning author of "Risk-taking for Leaders" and "Executing on Innovation" and the co-author (with Esther Wojcicki) of the forthcoming book, The web3 Workforce.

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Topic:  Web3 Deal-making

Deborah Perry Piscione

Managing Director, Sterling Capital

John Schreiber is a partner in Winston & Strawn’s Securities Litigation Group. He regularly represents public and private companies and their officers and directors in a broad range of complex commercial disputes, including securities class actions, pre- and post-closing M&A litigation, shareholder derivative suits, board-level investigations, and other corporate governance matters.

In his over 20-year career, he has successfully represented clients in a variety of industries, including: technology; financial services; private equity; infrastructure; and sports and entertainment.

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Topic: Crypto Regulatory Update

John Schreiber

Partner, Securities Litigation Group, Winston & Strawn, LLP

As Managing Director, Reginald Tucker is part of the Executive Management Team and works directly with the Chief Investment Officer in a senior role across all public and private asset classes. 

Reginald Tucker has deep experience as a Trader, Investor and Allocator across both public and private markets. He is a Robert Toigo Fellow and holds an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School as well as a Chartered Alternative Investments Analyst (CAIA) certification.

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Topic:  QuSec + Enterprise Minds

Reginald Tucker

Managing Director, Manhattan West

Mike Blankenship is the managing partner of Winston's Houston office. He focuses his practice on special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) offerings, M&A, private equity, securities law, and corporate finance. Mike regularly counsels public companies on strategic transactions, capital markets offerings, and general corporate and securities law matters.

 

He represents SPAC sponsors and underwriters in structuring SPACs and completing their IPOs; SPACs and target companies in SPAC business combination transactions; and investors considering investments in SPACs. Mike also advises on corporate governance and securities market regulation.

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Topic: SPAC Talk

Mike Blankenship

Capital Markets Partner with Winston & Strawn LLP

Laura Franco is a partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property Group. She focuses her practice on intellectual property counseling and litigation, including trademark prosecution, brand enforcement and protection, and IP licensing. Laura has been recognized as a world leading trademark practitioner and represents global companies in brand protection, trademark portfolio management, and trademark, copyright, unfair competition, false advertising, and domain name litigation. She was previously in-house counsel at a global video game company and is a member of the firm's Videogame, Gaming and Esports Group dedicated to providing comprehensive legal solutions to companies in these industries.

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Topic: Intellectual Property Rights

Laura Franco

Partner, IP Practice
Winston & Strawn, LLP

Nick has built his career on utilizing innovative tech and data to drive measurable results, from building some of the first commercial websites to delivering AI solutions that empower individuals and communities.  Nick currently leads the Applied Solutions practice for SSA & Company, a management consulting firm focused on operationalizing business strategy.

 

Throughout his career, Nick has driven growth and reduced cost – often simultaneously – in startups, multinationals, and as a consultant, in almost every industry and link of the value chain, delivering solutions that create sustainable impact and value for the business, for people, and for customers.

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Topic:  Online Identity Panel

Nick Kramer

VP of Applied Solutions,
SSA & Company

Irene is a serial entrepreneur, running her own family office from the U.K. She is also a market design economist as a Professor at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of Alan Turing Institute and Wolfson College Cambridge. Her early businesses included the turnaround of a travel group and building a cruise and casino business into $250m monthly turnover.

 

Since 2008, she has been building data ecosystems, bringing together universities, businesses and investors to transform the Internet through the Persona Data Server, a self sovereign data storage and connector to mobilize the data of every website and application.

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Topic: Data Sovereignty

Irene NG

Dataswift CEO

Cenk Sidar is the founder and CEO of Enquire AI, an insights software company that provides enterprises a comprehensive toolkit to easily discover and leverage expert knowledge in real-time.

 

He also founded a Web3 incubator and professional networking platform NextWaveDAO. His interests include the future of work, remote collaboration, global macro issues, and web3.

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Topic: The Future of Work

Cenk Sidar

 Enquire AI CEO

Stephanie So is Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer of Geeq, a blockchain company with novel protocols to support blockchains that deliver reliable, worry-free results for honest users.

 

An economist by training, Stephanie gravitates toward understanding market failures and the people affected by them. For example, her research focused on outcomes for families who live with chronic health conditions and/or disabilities.

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Topic:  Web 3 Economics and Inclusiveness Expert Discussion

Stephanie So

Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer, Geeq

Keith is a repeat founder and corporate innovator, focused on from-scratch opportunity validation and product definition.   Driving corporate innovation, he helped reinvent LG’s $10 billion smart TV business on Palm’s webOS, and at Silicon Valley Bank he drove a team that defined, validated and launched new startups using a venture studio approach, including Bolster and StartupOS.  

 

Today, he consults with founders and corporates, recently touching kids mental health, medical AI and trade finance blockchain.  Keith has also served as a partner for SV2 (Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund) and on the board of ZiRu Dance.  He moonlights as a professional photographer.

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Topic:  Corporate Innovation

Keith Weng

Director of Innovation,
Silicon Valley Bank

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