Jimmy McCloud is the Founder & CEO of DISTINCT Technologies, a live data intelligence platform that helps global brands capture and act on consumer data at live events - concerts, sports activations, fan zones, and brand experiences. With a career spanning MLB Advanced Media (where the team built what became Disney+), Entercom/Audacy (as EVP of National Business Development), and Division I baseball at Holy Cross, McCloud brings a rare combination of sports media pedigree and enterprise sales acumen to solving one of marketing's oldest problems: making live brand moments measurable. DISTINCT raised a $3.5M seed round in June 2024 led by York IE.
Jon Beck is the Founder and CEO of Ursus, Inc., a San Francisco-based staffing firm he built from scratch in 2015 into one of the fastest-growing in the U.S., recognized by Staffing Industry Analysts for four consecutive years. A UC Berkeley psychology graduate and three-time rugby All-American, Beck brings 25+ years of technology executive experience across startups and global enterprises — including a stint at Cisco-acquired Embrane — to a company built around technical and creative talent for the digital transformation era.
Diffbot is an AI company building one of the world's largest knowledge graphs by autonomously crawling, reading, and structuring the public web. Its APIs and LLM turn unstructured pages into machine-readable facts about people, organizations, products, and articles - powering search, sales intelligence, market research, and grounded generative AI.
FounderNest is an AI-native market intelligence platform that helps innovation teams at large corporations, CVCs, R&D, M&A and strategy groups discover, evaluate and track emerging startups, technologies and trends. Its AI Market Intelligence Analyst (AMIA) scans 50M+ companies, 160M+ patents and billions of data points to surface opportunities faster than traditional research.
MeltPlan is a Berkeley-based AI-native planning engine for the construction industry. It moves critical decisions upstream into preconstruction - automating quantity takeoffs, checking building-code compliance, and leveling bids - so that architects, contractors and owners can stress-test plans before a shovel hits the ground. Founded in 2025 by Kanav Hasija (ex-Innovaccer) and Tanmaya Kala (ex-DPR), the company raised $14M led by Bessemer Venture Partners and is already deployed with DPR Construction and Innovo Group.

Ross Kennedy is the Global Vice President of AI Startups & Emerging Growth at Microsoft, based in New York. With two decades of experience scaling technology organizations from startup to hyperscale, he leads Microsoft's efforts to help AI startups innovate, grow, and become market makers. Before Microsoft, he was a key force behind Google Cloud's expansion from $5.8B to over $30B in revenue, leading the global Strategic Deal Pursuit division for four years. Earlier, he scaled Liferay's international operations from 200 to 900 employees across 30+ countries. His guiding philosophy: culture beats strategy.

Naren Kini is the CEO and co-founder of Global Touchpoints Inc., a California-based IT services and consulting firm he built organically over 20+ years to 150+ employees and $15M+ in annual revenue — entirely without outside capital. Starting from a background in industrial engineering and early stints at Hinditron and Syntel, Kini built Touchpoints into a trusted partner for Fortune 500 companies like Meta, Intuit, and Fiserv, as well as California state government agencies, specializing in Salesforce, AWS, data analytics, AI consulting, and managed services.
Sage Wohns is the CEO and Co-Founder of Jericho Security, a New York-based AI cybersecurity company that trains humans and AI systems to defend against AI-powered attacks including hyper-realistic phishing, deepfakes, and voice cloning. A Seattle native and 10-year AI industry veteran, Wohns previously built and led Agolo, a Google- and Microsoft-backed NLP summarization company, before co-founding Jericho Security in 2023. The company made history by winning the Pentagon's first-ever generative AI defense contract through AFWERX in December 2023, and has since raised $18M in total funding, including a $15M Series A in April 2025. With 39 employees and 30+ enterprise clients, Jericho Security is at the frontier of AI-versus-AI cyber defense.
Huawei is a Shenzhen-based technology company and the world's largest maker of telecommunications equipment. Founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, it now spans carrier networks, enterprise ICT, cloud computing, digital power, and a consumer business that builds smartphones, wearables, and the homegrown HarmonyOS operating system. Despite years of U.S. sanctions, the company posted roughly 880.9 billion yuan in 2025 revenue and pours over a fifth of that back into R&D.

Dawn Klinghoffer is Vice President of HR Business Insights at Microsoft, where she leads people analytics for one of the world's largest technology companies. A mathematics major from Bucknell University who started as an actuary in Hartford, Connecticut, she joined Microsoft's fledgling people analytics team in 2003 and spent over 25 years turning HR data into strategic decisions. Her most recognized contribution: replacing the industry's standard 'employee engagement' metric with 'employee thriving' - a framework adopted by Microsoft in 2022 that has influenced HR practices globally and was published in Harvard Business Review.
NetSuite is the world's first cloud ERP and CRM platform, founded in 1998 by Evan Goldberg and now owned by Oracle. Trusted by 43,000+ organizations across 220 countries, NetSuite unifies financials, CRM, e-commerce, HR, and supply chain in a single cloud-native suite — making it the go-to business operating system for companies scaling from startup to enterprise.
HubSpot is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software company that pioneered the inbound marketing movement and built an AI-powered CRM platform spanning marketing, sales, service, and content. Founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah after meeting at MIT, the company went public in 2014 and reached $3.13 billion in annual revenue by 2025, serving over 288,000 paying customers in 135+ countries. Its all-in-one platform - built around the idea that businesses should attract customers rather than interrupt them - has become the operating system for growth-minded companies worldwide.
Adam Justis is VP of Solution Marketing & Evangelism at Adobe, where he leads go-to-market strategy for Adobe Experience Cloud. With 20+ years spanning digital advertising at Microsoft, web analytics at Omniture, and more than a decade at Adobe, he sits at the intersection of AI, personalization, and customer experience. He is a speaker at Adobe Summit, an instructor at UC Irvine's Digital Marketing Certification Program, and a prolific author on Adobe's business blog. Based in Sandy, Utah, he is one of the faces Adobe puts in front of enterprise marketers to explain what modern customer experience looks like.
Chris Ogburn is a seasoned technology marketing executive currently serving as GM/VP of Marketing, Global Partners and Alliances at Adobe, where he oversees partner ecosystem marketing strategy for one of the world's leading digital experience and creative software companies. With over three decades spanning Compaq, HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Amazon Web Services, and Anthropic, Ogburn has built a reputation as a go-to architect of partner marketing programs that scale globally. He is a three-time CRN Top 50 Most Influential Channel Chief honoree and a sought-after speaker at venues including MWC Barcelona and HPE Global Partner Summit.
Daniella Vallurupalli is the Vice President and Head of Global Communications at Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure and security company. She joined Cloudflare in 2014 when it had fewer than 80 employees and built its communications organization from the ground up. Today she oversees all internal and external communications across public relations, corporate and employee comms, analyst relations, social media, and visual storytelling for one of the most recognized brands in cloud networking and cybersecurity.
Douglas Pearce is Corporate Vice President of Product Management for M365 Copilot Growth at Microsoft, where he leads the strategy to bring AI-powered productivity tools to hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Based in the Seattle area, he has spent over two decades at Microsoft, previously heading product management for Office Growth and Fundamentals before pivoting to spearhead the company's flagship AI copilot initiative across Microsoft 365.
Emily Brittain is a Senior Communications Manager at Microsoft, working within the Office of the Americas Markets & Industries President. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, she crafts the stories that shape how Microsoft's largest regional business - spanning Canada, the United States, and Latin America - communicates its vision internally and externally. A Northwestern University-trained journalist with over 11 years at Microsoft, she brought a multimedia storyteller's instincts to one of the world's most consequential technology companies, producing town halls, executive narratives, and brand messaging at scale.
Gisella Oliveira is an Executive Business Administrator to the VP of Sales & Marketing for Latin America at Microsoft, based in Hollywood, Florida. With a career spanning decades in enterprise technology and multinational corporations — including roles at PepsiCo's Latin American Division and American Entrepreneur Corp. — she has built deep expertise in executive operations, project coordination, and cross-functional team support. Educated in Language Sciences at Souza Marques Foundation in Brazil, she bridges cultures and organizations at one of the world's largest technology companies.
Imma Calvo is VP of Sales, US Commerce at Google Customer Solutions, leading commerce innovation for brands across the Americas. Originally from Barcelona, she spent a decade in California before relocating to New York and has worked at Google since 2007 across EMEA and US markets in roles spanning retail, apps, and agency. A passionate mentor to startups and women in tech, she speaks at major industry conferences and brings fluency in Spanish, Catalan, and the language of disruption.
James Howell is VP of Windows Marketing at Microsoft, leading the company's push to define the AI PC era. Based in Woodinville, Washington, he has been at the forefront of marketing Copilot+ PCs and positioning Windows 11 as the platform for on-device AI. He has been a key Microsoft spokesperson on the AI PC transition, championing Copilot+ as a new hardware category and appearing in press and video series including 'Innovators Powered by Best Buy' to evangelize what AI can do for everyday PC users.
Jeffrey Whipps is Vice President of Marketing at Google, where he leads the company's global brand studio and holds global responsibility for strategic brand and reputation topics spanning sustainability, digital wellbeing, crisis response, and diversity and inclusion. Before Google, he spent seven years at Apple as Director of Worldwide Advertising, contributing to iconic campaigns including the iPod Silhouettes and Mac vs. PC series. His career spans over two decades at the intersection of technology and storytelling, with earlier roles at Netscape, Shutterfly, Sun Microsystems, and McCann Worldgroup.
Jesse Dougherty is Vice President of Global Networking and Network Edge Services at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He leads AWS's global network backbone including CloudFront, Elemental, and Perimeter Protection services, while also serving as the Vancouver site lead overseeing an office of 1,000+ software engineers. With 20+ years in software engineering and leadership, he previously spent nine years at Microsoft as a Group Program Manager for Exchange Server and Office 365, and held technical leadership roles at Sophos, ActiveState Software, and Mindquake Software. A champion of the Vancouver tech ecosystem, he has been instrumental in Amazon's expansion in Western Canada and serves as a mentor in the BC Tech Association's Dragons 1-on-1 Mentorship program.
Jonathan Vlock is Vice President of Marketing, Demand Generation and Enablement at Amazon Web Services (AWS), bringing over two decades of B2B marketing leadership across cloud, cybersecurity, ESG, and enterprise technology. Before AWS, he held senior marketing roles at PwC, S&P Global, NetApp, and Wipro, and earlier co-founded Cooking Planit, a patented personal cooking assistant app. A Cornell MBA, Jeet Kune Do practitioner, and self-styled 'mad scientist' of integrated marketing, Vlock blends data-driven pipeline strategy with a restless entrepreneurial streak.
Justin Merickel is a Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing for the Analytics Portfolio at Adobe, where he oversees Customer Journey Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Mix Modeler. With over two decades of experience in digital marketing and data analytics, he has shaped how enterprise brands measure, understand, and act on customer behavior - from his early days at McCann Erickson through senior leadership at Yahoo!, Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe), and ultimately Adobe itself, where he has driven major product and partnership initiatives across the Experience Cloud.
Liza Magee is the Chief of Staff for the Consumer Chief Marketing Officer & Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where she sits at the intersection of billion-dollar marketing strategy and cross-functional execution. With a career built at the nexus of tech and consumer behavior, she has led marketing across Microsoft's education division, Bing, MSN, and now the company's global consumer marketing apparatus. Before Microsoft, she honed product instincts at Amazon as a Senior Product Manager in Merchandising. Based in Seattle, Magee is a strategic operator whose career tracks the evolution of digital marketing from keyword portfolios to AI-powered consumer experiences.
Lynne Kjolso is VP of Global Partner and Retail Media at Microsoft Advertising, where she leads the company's retail media strategy and global partner ecosystem. A philosophy PhD turned digital advertising executive, she has spent over 15 years at Microsoft shaping search, retail, and commerce media. Named to Ad Age's Tech Power List 2024 and The List 2025, she is a leading voice on retail media standardization, gaming as an advertising frontier, and the intersection of AI and commerce.