Rachel Reinitz

CTO IBM Garage

Fellow, IBM

Rachel Reinitz is an IBM Fellow and CTO of IBM Cloud Garage.  The IBM Cloud Garages are consulting labs housed in startup communities that partner with clients of all sizes to transform how they design, develop, and deploy engaging cloud applications. She leads clients on adoption of new technologies and is currently focused applying agile methods to building cloud applications with clients.  She is a frequent conference presenter and article author. You can learn more about the Garages and the IBM Cloud Garage Method at https://www.ibm.com/cloud/garage/. You can follow her on twitter @rreinitz.

Alex Butler

VP & GM: Corporate, Tech & IP, Bloomberg Law

Mr. Butler is a member of the Bloomberg Law executive team where he is Vice President & General Manager for Bloomberg Law delivering content to the Bloomberg terminal, both all-in-one technology platforms that help professionals grow their businesses, provide world-class counsel, and maintain and increase their profitability. His business unit includes a team of highly-experienced journalists, editors and data scientists who focus upon legal developments that drive the economy, including capital markets, securities, corporate governance and compliance, emerging technologies, transactions, and cybersecurity amongst others.

Mr. Butler’s experience includes executive positions in early and growth-stage companies, plus larger firms such as Information Holdings and Thomson Reuters. He is a passionate strategist and operator, recognized for his ability to synthesize complex legal, financial and technical perspectives into actionable insights and programs. He is recognized as one of the world’s top IP strategists by IAM Magazine and was recognized as the Disruptive Innovator of the Year by the Software & Information Industry Association in 2017.

Mr. Butler received a BA from the American University and a MBA from Villanova University. He is active in multiple organizations and frequently presents to executive, academic and professional audiences on corporate and innovation strategies, technology commercialization, mergers and acquisitions, capital investment decisions, diversity initiatives to drive corporate performance and portfolio-based business management.

Douglas Graham

CEO, Ideation
Former MD, KPMG

Douglas Graham has led an $8.5B bank and various technology projects which now account for billions in revenues and resulted in a Gartner award. An inventor on five patents, one has earned 260+ citations; author of two books for Wiley, IDEATION: The Birth & Death of Ideas, well reviewed by Carl Icahn and Lee Iacocca; speaks on Innovation Management around the world: US Chambers of Commerce, US Congress, Brookings Institution, The State of the World Forum, and Salzburg Global Seminar.

Mr. Graham’s achievements are many; the most recent facilitates global collaboration in intellectual property and is the culmination of a brilliant career.  He has solved the problem of why intellectual assets are stolen, underfunded, poorly managed, and hardly traded, and he has enabled them to be THE economic opportunity of the next decades. Ideation is complex software with multiple modules to capture, source, protect, value, market, with absolute cyber security in a trusted global community. Laudably, it truly is helping people to protect and further their intellectual know-how and has the added benefit of a huge impact on global economic conditions. Through his latest project, Ideation, he makes best practices garnered over 60 years from around the world easily and inexpensively available to everyone in corporate, academic and governments. Truly a lifetime achievement. 

Peter Jensen

CEO, ChainVote DLT

Mr. Jensen is a entrepreneur, CEO, business manager, and inventor with extensive expertise in DLT/blockchain, life sciences, software development, mobile, multimedia, entertainment, and fintech. Mr. Jensen earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at UCLA Motion Picture Film and Television Producer’s Program (1988) and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Biological Sciences at UC Santa Barbara (1980). Mr. Jensen is the founder of Chain Vote DLT Limited which provides a cybersecure, permissioned, distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain service for HappyVote™ for mobile polling and ChainVote® for mobile voting, with Mobile Connect user authentication by GSMA, in cooperation with Mobile Network Operators, via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on a high security IBM Cloud service, for smart city and smart corporate customers, for public and private use. Chain Vote DLT is a social enterprise for positive social impact, based in London, UK, with scaling operations in development in Spain, EU, Latin America, and USA. Every mobile user is expected to be a mobile voter. 

Lokesh Kamra

Business Communications Manager, TT Affiliates

In that role, his core responsibilities include client relationship and management, managing and developing business in which two key aspects are of client interactions and strategizing our marketing efforts in terms of Intellectual Property.  Previously, Mr. Kamra was the Operations Head, for an Indian Startup Company- Jugnoo. Mr. Kamra was also a part of US Based Company Agilent Technologies during the start of his career. He received his Masters of Business Administration degree in Marketing & IT. He also holds a degree in Engineering.

Dick Kawooya

Faculty, University of South Carolina
Previously with World Intellectual Property Organization

D. Kawooya has 13 years of research, teaching and advocacy work in different areas of intellectual property focusing on copyright and access to knowledge, intellectual property and innovation, and intellectual property and the informal economy in Africa. Between 2006 and 2010, he served as Lead Researcher for the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project. Between 2010 and 2014, he was part of the African Innovation Research and Training Project and network, Open AIR, under which he studied the role of Intellectual Property (IP) in the transfer of innovation between informal and formal sectors in Africa’s emerging informal economies, with a specific focus on the nascent electric vehicle industry. Most recently, Dr. Kawooya consulted with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the study of innovation in the Agro-Based Industries in developing countries, case study of Uganda. Dr. Kawooya's presentation will focus on innovation and intellectual property in Africa’s informal economies. Dr. Kawooya holds a PhD in Communications and Information from the University of Tennessee, where his doctoral research explored Ugandan traditional musicians’ and their IP ownership.

F. Scott Kieff

Principal, McKool Smith
Former Commissioner, U.S. International Trade Commission

F. Scott Kieff was a Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission from October 2013 through June 2017, when he returned to the private sector as a Principal in McKool Smith’s DC office and to the academic sector as a professor at GW Law School and as a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  In addition to extensive work as lawyer, consultant, mediator, arbitrator, and compliance monitor, he served as an advisor to various high-level government offices during the Bush, Obama, and Trump Presidential Administrations.  His expertise includes trade, intellectual property; antitrust; finance; securities regulation; bankruptcy; biotechnology and medicine; cyber; privacy; and security.  A former law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, he studied law at Penn and molecular biology and microeconomics at MIT. He was inducted as a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in March 2012. 

Jimmie Lenz

Principal, The Financial Risk Group
Former Head of Predictive Analytics, Wells Fargo

Dr. Jimmie Lenz is an experienced executive, lecturer and scholar in the field of banking and capital markets.

Starting his career as an equity trader over 25 years ago, Dr. Lenz found he reveled in fast moving atmospheres that required both strategic thought and the ability to take immediate action. His successes propelled him into a number of senior management roles within the finance community including leading an NYSE broker dealer with foreign and domestic operations, where he was able to test both the appetite for and capacity of electronic trading platforms.

Global financial services firms and exchanges have engaged Dr. Lenz to address issues related to strategic and tactical planning, risk mitigation, and business efficiencies. This in-depth understanding of the capital markets industry has allowed him to provide crucial perspectives in foreign and domestic regulatory matters, including extensive work with outside counsels and the presentation of findings to the Security and Exchange Commission.

His passion for developing forward-looking strategies, merge his unique boots-on-the-ground understanding of how our capital markets work with the academic application of new technologies.

Dr. Lenz holds an undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina, a Master of Science in Finance from Washington University in Saint Louis, and Doctor of Business Administration-Finance from Washington University’s Olin Business School. He frequently speaks at academic and industry events primarily on topics related to technology and quantitative analysis, and has several pending patents related to his work.
 

Sergey Razin

CTO, SIOS Technology Corp.

As CTO, Sergey is responsible for driving product strategy and innovation at SIOS Technology Corp. A noted authority in advanced analytics and machine learning, Sergey pioneered the application of these technologies in the areas of IT security, media, and speech recognition. He is currently leading the development of innovative solutions in AIOps market.

Prior to joining SIOS, Sergey was an architect for EMC storage products and EMC CTO office where he drove initiatives in areas of network protocols, cloud and storage management, metrics, and analytics. Sergey has also served as Principal Investigator (PI), leader in research, development and architecture in areas of big data analytics, speech recognition, telephony, and networking.

Sergey holds PhD in computer science from the Moscow State Scientific Center of Informatics. He also holds a BS in computer science from the University of South Carolina.

John Scully

Managing Director, Global Head of Mobile, API, and User Experience, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Mr. Scully is responsible for the Bank’s corporate and commercial mobile and API solutions, He is also responsible for the overall information architecture and visual design of the CashPro family of products.  Mr. Scully is a pioneer in the internet banking space and helped launch CashPro® at LaSalle Bank in the late 1990’s.  CashPro Online is now Bank of America’s flagship commercial offering and one of the top transaction banking applications in the world.

Mr. Scully currently holds three patents for his work in global information reporting systems and the bank’s CashPro Assistant platform; and has eleven patents pending for a variety of digital banking services.

Mr. Scully works extensively in the LEAN Agile space and is responsible for transitioning the bank’s software development to a Lean-Agile model that streamline product design and development.

Neil Sengupta

Founding CEO, U.S. Computing, Inc.

Neil Sengupta was the founding CEO of U.S. Computing, a Software Development Company that developed and marketed a set of Transportation Logistics Planning and Management software products. The business was acquired by a multi-company Transportation Safety conglomerate owned by a private equity group.  Mr. Sengupta subsequently joined the Transportation Safety Group.  In addition to his work in the Transportation arena, Mr. Sengupta remains very active in a range of projects both as a scientist and entrepreneurial advisor. His current areas of interest are in IOT (Internet of Things), Computer Vision, Image Processing and Logistics Optimizations and developing real-world product solutions, using the integration of concepts and tools across these areas. Mr. Sengupta holds a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science and a second Master of Science Degree in Applied Math/Scientific Computing.

Marcia Tuten

Corporate Intellectual Property Attorney, Sonoco

In that role, she is responsible for global IP strategy development and implementation, as well as global management of intellectual property.  Previously, Ms. Tuten was the Senior Group IP Counsel, Materials Group for Avery Dennison and responsible for global IP management and strategy.  Ms. Tuten was also a partner in the IP group of the Greenville, SC office of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough.  She received her B.S. degree in Chemistry from Erskine College, her Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from University of Southern California, and her J.D. from Cleveland Marshall College of Law.

John Wolpert

Product and Venture Lab Lead, ConsenSys
Former Director of Blockchain Products, IBM

John Wolpert leads ConsenSys’ product and venture lab in Washington DC, building a team of top developers, designers and product people to bootstrap projects on Ethereum and blockchain generally. The lab’s special focus is on innovative approaches to government, compliance and social impact.

ConsenSys is one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space, building developer tools, decentralized applications, and solutions that harness the power of Ethereum. Headquartered in New York, ConsenSys invests in and employs top entrepreneurs, computer scientists, software developers, and experts in enterprise delivery worldwide.

Mr. Wolpert is a seasoned enterprise executive and serial entrepreneur with 30 years in business — a founder of IBM’s global blockchain organization, the open source Hyperledger Fabric project, the original taxi ride hailing service, Flywheel, and the international life science research consortium, IXC. He has created new lines of business for numerous Fortune 100 companies and government organizations. His writing on open source and open innovation have appeared in Harvard Business Review and publications by Harvard Business School Press.

Prior to joining ConsenSys, Mr. Wolpert was the global product executive for IBM Blockchain, with previous leadership roles serving Watson, IBM Cloud, Extreme Blue and alphaWorks.

Robert Viglione

Co-founder, ZenCash
President, Zen Blockchain Foundation

Mr. Viglione is Co-founder of ZenCash, a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency hyperfocused on usability, and President of the Zen Blockchain Foundation where he is helping "Uberize" finance, create a freer, fairer, and nicer world by bringing fintech to the disenfranchised, and pioneer decentralized blockchain-based systems of governance. As a PhD Candidate in Finance, his research interests span cryptofinance, venture capital, and asset pricing. He also teaches "Bitcoin & Blockchain Applications in Finance" at the University of South Carolina, volunteers to help create startup societies with the Seasteading Institute, and is an advisor to the decentralized lending platform ETHLend, and advisor to Hero Engine World, a blockchain-based platform, artificial intelligence, and real-time massive scale 3D modeling and scenario simulations to help SmartCities with Disaster Recovery and Emergency Management.

Bea Strickland Wray

Co-Founder, Millennial Women Network
Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network

An innovation expert, Bea helps thought leaders share their stories, passions and knowledge as they invent, launch, and promote new products. As the former Chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group at Advantage Media Group, ForbesBooks, Bea further leveraged the wisdom and experience of these innovators through branding, visibility, and marketing efforts substantiated by the ForbesBooks brand name.

Bea is an innovator herself.  She successfully built and exited SourceHarbor Inc., expanding the company to serve thousands of clients internationally along the way, and has consulted with hundreds of startups. Prior to joining the Advantage|ForbesBooks Team, Bea served as the Executive Director of The Creative Coast, a regional non-profit building the innovation economy in Savannah, Georgia where she hosted TEDxCreative Coast and the innovation conference known as Geekend. Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to ForbesBooks Authors.

Bea's upcoming book, titled What Harvard Taught Me, But My Kids Made Me Learn, is expected to arrive in 2018. She is looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate, and adapt in the business world.

Bea holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, is a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University, and is one of South Carolina’s prestigious Liberty Fellows of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a frequent keynote speaker on innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth, and an inspiring contributor to various publications, including Entrepreneur.com, The Grindstone, and The Savannah Morning News.

Christopher Starr

Associate Chair, Department of Supply Chain and Information Management at College of Charleston

Christopher Starr, PhD is an Associate Professor of Information Management and Associate Chair of the Department of Supply Chain and Information Management in the School of Business at the College of Charleston. He served as department chair of computer science for 13 years and was on the faculty of computer science for 27 years.

Dr. Starr’s research in IoT started in 2013 with the development of an Arduino-based, predictive waste recycling system for industrial campuses out of the Software Innovations Laboratory at the College of Charleston. Today he founded and directs ProtoX, the IoT prototyping and distributed manufacturing studio in the School of Business at Charleston.

Dr. Starr holds a BS in Mathematics from the College of Charleston and an MS and PhD in Systems Science from the Medical University of South Carolina. His dissertation research combined nuclear medicine with dual-isotope radiation dosimetry where he developed a new procedure for attenuation correction in single photon emission computed tomograms for cardiac imaging in vivo. Prior to that he developed and published one of the world’s first medical expert systems in gynecology on a microcomputer platform for clinical deployment.

John Simpkins

Executive Director, Transformative Health Institute at Greenville Health System

Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network

Former General Counsel at USAID

John Simpkins is Executive Director of the Transformative Health Institute at Greenville Health System in Greenville, South Carolina. He also was a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University School of Law for the 2016-2017 academic year. John previously served as the General Counsel of the United States Agency for International Development. Prior to joining USAID in July 2015, he served for two years as the Deputy General Counsel in the White House Office of Management and Budget. John has held a variety of positions in private practice and academia, including serving of counsel at Wyche, P.A., in Greenville, SC, as a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Victoria, and as an assistant professor and Director of Diversity Initiatives at the Charleston School of Law.

As a member of the African Network of the International Association of Constitutional Law, he has consulted and conducted research in comparative constitutional law and constitutional design in Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, among other countries. John received his A.B. in government from Harvard College and a J.D. and LL.M. in international and comparative law from Duke University School of Law. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute.

Gordon Jones

Co-Founder, President, and COO Universal Health Coin

Co-Founder, The Clubhou.se

Dr. Gordon Jones is Universal Health Coin’s Co-founder, President and COO. He earned his Masters and Doctorate in Health Administration from the Medical University of SC. After graduating from The Citadel and serving two tours in the military, Dr. Jones acquired 25 years of digital health innovation, entrepreneurship, and business development experience through several healthtech startups and three billion-dollar market cap companies. He is the facilitator of the PalmettoChain.ioproject. He is a co-founder of Augusta’s premier incubator, theClubhou.se, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence for StartupLife, a 12-month total life experience for 10 startups funded by the Kaufman Foundation.

Jason Anderson

Founding Partner, Pursuit Advisory

Jason is a founding partner of Pursuit Advisory, a specialized advisory firm offering tactical strategic capabilities coupled with core investment banking expertise. Truly inspired by the ongoing evolution in media and technology, Jason brings his experience in venture capital, leveraged finance, and mergers and acquisitions together with a deep passion for media to provide complex, bespoke solutions to clients. 

Before starting Pursuit, Jason spent almost ten years working on Wall Street. His most formative years were spent in UBS’ famous LA office working in UBS’s Global Media Investment Banking Group. After UBS, Jason helped build RBC Capital Markets’ Media Investment Banking Group during its rise to prominence. Prior to banking, Jason had the great opportunity to work for the venture capital affiliate of Gartner. Jason spent the summer of his MBA studies with Business Objects working in corporate development.  Jason attended the University of Virginia. 

Carolyne LaSala

Founder and Managing Partner Good Growth Capital

Former Executive, Apple

Carolyne La Sala is a Founder and Managing Partner of Good Growth Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund. Good Growth Capital is aiming to be the premier venture capital fund for early stage investors and investments in South Carolina and the Southeast, giving its investors access to world-class deals taking place both inside and outside the region.  Carolyne  has over 15 years of experience in software and mobile technology, launching businesses, building and leading teams, and creating new products that touch millions.  She spent a significant portion of her career at Apple, where she launched and led multiple businesses including iTunes, iTunes Europe, and the App Store.  

Carolyne's experience also includes serving as Co-founder & CEO of Argand, developing disease-specific mobile applications for patients; VP of Product and Business Development for a Va. based startup still in stealth; and serving as an advisor on product and business strategy for multiple startups and Fortune 500 companies.  Carolyne is an accomplished sailor and holds an MBA from Duke University, where she was a Fuqua Merit Scholar, and a BA from Connecticut College.

Dale Hogue

Intellectual Property Consultant, Grey Gold Advisors

I Assist companies monetize intellectual property by combining legal and business experience to create an actionable path to value. My legal experience is in litigation, intellectual property, legislation, regulatory matters, international commercial transactions, government contracts, claims against the government, corporate governance, commercial disputes and ADR.

The last 25 years my law practice has been litigating intellectual property (patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright and unfair competition) cases, international patent procurement, IP portfolio management, licensing and IP transactions. Representative former clients are GTE (Verizon), J&J, Citibank, SUN, Stanford Univ., MIT, Dr. Pepper, UVA Patent Foundation, Neoconix, Inc. and SMARTGENE, Inc.

Prior to beginning my IP law practice I was in the investment banking business structuring and marketing private and public asset backed investments. During this period I was corporate secretary and member of the investment committee for ADI a private holding company.

I began my professional career in Washington, D.C., representing clients in legislative and regulatory matters before DOT, EPA, FTC and DOJ. I also represented clients doing business in Saudi Arabia, government contractors with claims against the federal government including board appeals and litigated commercial, constitutional and regulatory matters in federal and state court.

I have a JD from Georgetown University Law School and a BS Engineering Science from Washington University, St. Louis. I am a registered U.S. patent attorney. I served in the USAF from 64-68 in Wing Tactical Intelligence and Operations Research with service in Vietnam with the final rank of Captain. I served a two term appointment on the National Motor Vehicle Safety Advisory Council (DOT). I have lectured on international IP law, licensing and commercialization in the US, China, Japan and NZ and at the University of South Carolina Moore School MBA Program where I was an adjunct professor for Int’l IP Strategy & Management.

Wiley Becker

Partner, Alerion Ventures

Wiley Becker is a Partner at Alerion Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-revenue business-to-business software and tech-enabled services companies in the Southeast. Founded in 2014, Alerion has made fourteen investments to date, including three companies headquartered in Charleston, and has worked with two companies that have been successfully acquired. Previously, Wiley was a Principal for Square 1 Ventures, the private equity arm of Square 1 Bank, which went public in March of 2014 and was subsequently acquired by PacWest Bancorp. Wiley has a BS in Mathematics from Davidson College, an MBA from Wake Forest University, and lives in Charleston.

Phillip Riddle

President and CEO, SeeDaten

SeeDaten is the North American business partner with IOXP, Mannheim - Germany. We are supplying the software, technologies, and experience to implement the IOXP system for learning/training task execution, documenting processes, safety, maintenance procedures, and capturing/updating tribal knowledge. The IOXP techniques utilize “Reality and  Augmented Reality” to provide the enterprise platform. Philip is well versed in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality on an international basis. 

Philip has experience in developing, organizing, and executing long term relations and agreements in sixteen countries. Keen ability to forecast trends and execute strategic direction with a wide range of technologies. Successful track record for new market development and product introductions in a diverse range of industries.

Bruce Roberts

Founder and CEO, Carolina Financial Group LLC

Bruce has been an investment banker and entrepreneur for over 30 years. His professional activity centers around private finance and the broader support of entrepreneurs and private business owners.  

Bruce is the Founder and CEO of Carolina Financial Group, LLC (CFG), an investment bank that  includes Carolina Financial Securities, LLC, a FINRA registered broker/dealer that has structured and privately placed over $1,000,000,000 of equity and debt financing for young and middle market companies since 1996.  CFG has corporate finance professional located in major cities across the U.S. and places securities with high net worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors.    

Before founding CFG, Bruce spent eight years with CS First Boston (CSFB), in New York, where he was a Director in the Investment Banking Department and primarily responsible for U.S. capital market financings for Pacific rim-based companies and governments.   Prior to CSFB, he started his investment banking career as a corporate finance specialist at Bank of America in San Francisco, working with major U.S. and foreign corporations.  Before entering investment banking, Bruce served as a Special Warfare Officer (UDT / SEAL) in the United States Navy.

Bruce graduated in 1979 from Duke University with a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering,  completing a second major in Public Policy Studies.  He now serves on the Advisory Board of Accelerate Appalachia, a business accelerator and is on the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Aquarium.  He and his wife have four children and live in Brevard, North Carolina.

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