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Event date 19 - 20 July -
Event location New York
2022 Art+Tech speakers
Mike Novogratz
Mike Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. A pioneer in digital asset investing, Mike began buying bitcoin in 2013 and quickly established himself as one of the earliest and most active investors in the industry. In 2017, Mike founded Galaxy Digital: a leading diversified financial services, and investment management company in the digital asset, crypto, and blockchain technology sectors. Galaxy operates in the following businesses: Trading, Asset Management, Principal Investments, Investment Banking, and Mining. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Prior to Fortress, he spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was elected Partner in 1998. Mr. Novogratz served on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets from 2012 – 2015. Mr. Novogratz is the Chairman of The Bail Project and has made criminal justice reform a focus of his family’s foundation. He also serves as the Chairman of Hudson River Park Friends and sits on the boards of NYU Langone Medical Center. Mr. Novogratz received an AB in Economics from Princeton University and served as a helicopter pilot in the US Army.
Keith Grossman
Keith A. Grossman is the President of TIME, where he oversees all business, technology and operational responsibility for the brand. Previously, Keith served as the Global Chief Revenue Officer for Bloomberg Media where he was responsible for the growth of their various media platforms. He was also part of the core team to launch QuickTake by Bloomberg, a 24/7 social, mobile news platform. Prior to Bloomberg, Keith was the Associate Publisher of WIRED as well as Ars Technica.
Keith is currently the Chairman of Adweek's Advisory Board and has been named to the Adweek 50, which recognizes the 50 most indispensable individuals in media, marketing and tech, from 2013 through 2018 and in 2020.
Under Keith's leadership at Bloomberg, the team won a Gold Dolphin at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards in 2019 for their partnership with Hyundai on a series titled, Art + Technology, and his teams at WIRED and Ars Technica were each recognized with Project Isaac Awards, celebrating true invention across the media and marketing industry.
He is a Board Member of New York Cares, New York's largest volunteer network connecting individuals within their philanthropic passions and, previously, was an Adjunct Professor at NYU.
Keith is a graduate of Cornell University and currently resides in New York City with his wife, Catherine, and daughter, Ellie.
Pialy Aditya
Pialy Aditya is a Senior Advisor and Board Director of Republic and prior to that was its Chief Strategy Officer. Republic, the world’s first global private investment platform, enables its community of investors worldwide to invest in a curated portfolio of private companies through a retail investment platform, a private capital division and a vertically-integrated digital merchant bank.
As a champion for women founders, Pialy co-founded WOCstar Capital, an early-stage tech investment fund. She is a pioneer in the fashion tech space, launching Mintbox, an online platform with private micro-targeted credit card linked sale experiences. She led ShopYourWay Digital, the social commerce loyalty program with tens of millions of members. Pialy worked with LVMH to expand its Donna Karan brand globally and launch a new brand concept called Urban Zen. Pialy has a BS from NYU Stern School of Business and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Leore Avidar
Leore Avidar is the Founder and CEO of ALT, a platform that’s transforming investing by unlocking the value of alternative assets. By turning some of the most culturally beloved collectibles into financial assets that can be traded and borrowed against, ALT is building an investment platform for the future. Providing liquidity, utility and transparency to an industry that traditionally has been fragmented and hard to understand.
With a professional background in Wall Street and Amazon Web Services, and a personal history of collecting and investing in alternative assets, Leore is building an infrastructure — much like Coinbase has done for crypto — for the world of alternative investments. A seasoned entrepreneur with a boots-on-the-ground approach to building businesses, Leore is a calculated risk-taker who bets on good ideas and is passionate about solving complex problems that he and many others experience. Leore channels the ‘Mamba Mentality’ of his favorite athlete, Kobe Bryant: he plans to win, prepares to win and expects to win.
Julie Baumgardner
Julie Baumgardner is an arts and culture writer and journalist who's spent nearly 15 years covering all aspects of the art world and market. Julie's work has been published in Bloomberg, Cultured, Fodors, New York Magazine, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She is now also editor-in-chief of The Baer Faxt.
Vanessa Barboni Hallik
Vanessa Barboni Hallik is the Founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow, an end-to-end sustainable luxury design company and platform for discovery and action committed to transparency and a circular economy. She is also an investor in early-stage companies with strong ESG commitments to catalysing system change. Vanessa serves on the Board of the Accountability Counsel and the Advisory Boards for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Trust for Public Land. Prior to founding Another Tomorrow, Vanessa was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, where she held several leadership roles in the emerging markets institutional securities business. While at Morgan Stanley, she served as a Trustee on the Board of the Morgan Stanley Foundation and represented the firm at the Council on Foreign Relations. She likewise chaired the Fixed Income Philanthropy Committee, during which she initiated and subsequently led the firm’s mentoring program with East Side Community High School, in partnership with PENCIL.org. Vanessa holds a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and is an M.S. Candidate at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She resides in New York City with her family and two dogs.
Evan Beard
Evan Beard is Executive Vice President at Masterworks. Headquartered in New York City, he oversees private sales at the alternative investment platform focused on democratising ownership of blue-chip art. Prior to joining Masterworks, Evan was Head of Art Services at Bank of America Private Bank, where he oversaw the end-to-end provision of services to clients in the art world, including art-secured lending, auction consignment, estate planning and philanthropic services. Prior to this, he was a strategy manager at Deloitte Consulting, where he worked with hedge funds, private banks, art-secured lending firms and private clients. Previously, Evan served as a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East. He earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy, a Master’s degree in the Classics from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Shajay Bhooshan
Shajay Bhooshan is an aspiring polymath. He is an Associate Director at Zaha Hadid Architects, where he co-founded and heads up the Computation and Design research group, ZHACODE. He is an alumnus and a studio-master at the post-graduate course of Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association, London. There, he explores the intersection of computer graphics, video game and metaverse technology, urban development and modern methods of construction. Shajay pursues his scientific interests in digital design and robotic fabrication as a PhD candidate at the Block Research Group at the ETH, Zurich (and previously as a M.Phil. graduate from University of Bath, UK).
Grégory Boutté
Gregory Boutté began his career in the consumer goods sector in the marketing department of Procter & Gamble in Paris. In 2000, he joined the new technologies industry, working at the French online auction start-up iBazar, acquired by eBay in 2001. He was then appointed Managing Director of eBay France before joining eBay Europe in 2007. In 2010, he moved to the eBay Motors and Electronics divisions in San Jose, California. In 2013, Grégory joined Sidecar, the first short-distance peer-to-peer ride-sharing platform, acquired by General Motors in 2016. In 2015, he joined Udemy, a start-up that provides 15 million students with the opportunity to take online courses.
In 2017, he was appointed Chief Client & Digital Officer of Kering, where he heads the Group's digital transformation and the development of e-commerce, CRM, data management and innovation.
A French national, Gregory is a graduate of ESCP Europe.
Erick Calderon
Erick Calderon is a Houston, TX-based blockchain entrepreneur fully immersed in the NFT space. Erick has dedicated himself to exploring functional use cases for NFT technology, specifically in the art sector. These explorations culminated in the development and subsequent launch of the generative art NFT platform Art Blocks in November 2020 and the release of his own NFT project, the Chromie Squiggle.
Sam Campbell
Sam Campbell is the Head of Venture Operations and an Investor at Samsung Next, where he is focused on crypto and web3 investments. Sam is passionate about the intersection of emerging blockchain technology and the practical applications of crypto. His recent investments include Atomic Form and Saga. Previously, he was at Stanford Management Company, where he supported portfolios with over 1,000+ VC-backed companies across sectors and stages. Sam has been active in the blockchain sector since 2015.
Esteban Castaño
Esteban Castaño is the Co-Founder and CEO of TRM Labs. Prior to TRM, Castaño worked on global youth unemployment at Generation, and before that at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant focused on the FinTech sector. He holds a BA in Government from Dartmouth and withdrew from Stanford Graduate School of Business to co-found TRM.
Jehan Chu
Jehan Chu is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kenetic, a blockchain venture capital and cryptocurrency trading firm based in Hong Kong. A former front-end developer, he started investing in cryptocurrency in 2013 and has invested in and supported over 230 projects. Jehan founded the Ethereum HK community (2014), co-founded the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong (2014) and founded the Hyperledger HK community (2016). Jehan is a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program, Director’s Circle of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and is Co-Founder and Board Member of Social Alpha Foundation, a blockchain/social impact non-profit. Jehan holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from Hong Kong University / Central St. Martin’s.
Michael Dayton Hermann
Michael Dayton Hermann is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist, award-winning arts professional with over 20 years of experience, and author of Warhol on Basquiat and Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire. In his role as Director of Licensing, Marketing and Sales at The Andy Warhol Foundation, Hermann conceived Andy Warhol: Machine Made, a ground-breaking online auction of five unique NFTs presented by Christie’s. In addition, Michael has developed numerous notable high-profile Warhol projects including The Andy Warhol Diaries docuseries on Netflix and collaborations with Comme des Garçons, Dior, Supreme, Absolut and many others, generating $75 million in revenue to support the philanthropic work of the Warhol Foundation. His own artwork draws upon the inescapable bombardment of digital imagery to confront the familiar from an unexpected perspective.
Noah Davis
Priyanka Desai
Priyanka Desai currently leads operations for Tribute Labs, the project behind The LAO, Flamingo, Red DAO, Neon and more. Previously, she spent time at blockchain FinTech consortium R3. In addition, she worked for the New York State Department of Financial Services assisting the Capital Markets division on cryptocurrency enforcement and ‘Bit Licensing’. Prior to this, Priyanka worked for the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. Priyanka is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Edward Dowling
Edward Dowling is the product lead for creator blockchain products at Instagram, where he is responsible for the recently launched Instagram Digital Collectibles feature and building future products that empower creators to turn their passion into a living. Edward is a strong believer in the power of web3 technologies to enable an entirely new category of emerging creators to build meaningful and monetizable relationships with their fans that are recognized anywhere.
Edward has a unique and international background spanning arts and technology, having worked for Australia’s leading arts companies and founding a successful startup in the Bay Area. Edward is also an early-stage investor in several startups. Now based in London, Edward led product teams at Wise before joining Meta to support trust and safety for Messenger and Instagram Direct, where he was responsible for high-profile product initiatives to improve child safety and reduce harassment for over one billion users.
Maya Draisin
Maya Draisin is the Chief Brand Officer for TIME and one of the founding members of TIME’s web3 community initiative, TIMEPieces. Her throughline is great brands and how technology will change our world. Before TIME, Maya was at Condé Nast, where she ran marketing for WIRED, GQ, Golf Digest, Pitchfork, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. Always chasing techno-utopia, at the start of web1, she co-founded The Webby Awards as a means of increasing mass adoption of the internet.
Sam Englebardt
Sam Englebardt is a Co-Founder and Partner at Galaxy Digital and the Founding General Partner of Galaxy Interactive. He is a media and technology investor and content producer who has created, acquired and/or financed a broad range of traditional and digital businesses and dozens of films and television shows over the past decade. His involvement with Galaxy reflects his deep interest in the intersection of content, consciousness and exponential technologies. In addition to the Galaxy Interactive portfolio, he was an early investor in Eyefluence, an eye-tracking technology company that was sold to Google. He has been an advisor to several start-ups in the mixed-reality space, including VR company, The Void.
Prior to Galaxy Digital, Sam was a Partner and Managing Director at Lambert Media Group (LMG) from 2007–2016, where he sourced and managed a portfolio of media-sector private equity investments. Before LMG, Sam was a Vice President and Financial Advisor at Alliance Bernstein. He has been a prolific content producer throughout his career and spent three years running LMG portfolio company, Demarest Films. His recent live-action projects include the acclaimed John Le Carre projects, The Night Manager and A Most Wanted Man. A licensed attorney in California, Sam earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and studied philosophy, political science and economics at Oxford University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, from which he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Marcus Fox
Marcus Fox, a 22-year veteran of the auction world, is the Global Managing Director of the 20th/21st Century Art department at Christie’s. He is responsible for the management and business strategy for seven departments including Post-War and Contemporary Art, Impressionist and Modern Art, Design, Photographs and Prints. He works closely with the Chairman’s Office, Client Strategy, Marketing and Specialists to maximize opportunities for this category across all sales channels. Marcus joined Christie’s in 2018 from Sotheby’s, where he held a series of senior leadership positions, latterly as Senior Vice President, Head of Contemporary Business, Americas.
Sayuri Ganepola
Sayuri Ganepola is the Global Managing Director of Christie’s Art Finance and the Co-Chairman of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the Americas. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and earning her MBA at the Darden School at University of Virginia, Sayuri was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers before completing a master’s degree at Christie’s Education. During her Christie’s career she has held numerous leadership positions, building on her finance acumen and strong knowledge of the art and capital markets. Prior to her current role, she was the Head of Client Strategy for the Americas.
Cathy Hackl
Cathy Hackl is a globally recognised metaverse expert, tech futurist and top business executive with deep experience working in metaverse-related fields with companies like HTC VIVE, Magic Leap and Amazon Web Services. She’s the Chief Metaverse Officer and Co-Founder of Journey, where she leads Journey's Metaverse Studio, working with the world's top brands on metaverse/Web3 strategies, NFTs, gaming, virtual fashion and how to extend their brands into virtual worlds. Cathy’s consultancy, the Futures Intelligence Group, was acquired in just 10 months, and is now part of Journey. Dubbed ‘the Godmother of the Metaverse’, she has written two books and is writing an anticipated book on the business opportunities of the metaverse, The Metaverse Economy.
Jim Himes
Jim Himes represents Connecticut’s 4th District in the United States House of Representatives, where he is serving his seventh term. He serves as the Chair of the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth and the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. Born in Lima, Peru, Jim grew up fluent in both Spanish and English. At the age of ten, he moved to the United States. Jim graduated from Hopewell Valley Central High School and then attended Harvard University. As a Rhodes Scholar, Jim attended Oxford University. He served as a Commissioner of the Greenwich Housing Authority, ultimately chairing the board, was elected to the town's finance board and served as Chair of the Democratic Town Committee. Jim was Vice President at Goldman Sachs and headed the bank’s telecommunications technology group.
Ariel Hudes
Ariel Hudes is Principal in Pace Ventures, Pace Gallery’s business development hub. Ariel spearheaded the development and launch of Pace Verso, the gallery’s Web3 arm, and she continues to lead its business, overseeing strategy and new projects. Ariel has worked closely with Pace artists, including Jeff Koons and Glenn Kaino, to realize their boundary-pushing NFT projects with Pace Verso. She has also collaborated with Pace leadership on other business development opportunities, including Superblue, an enterprise dedicated to experiential art. Ariel’s interest in digital art began nearly 15 years ago at Brown University, where she studied under and collaborated with Mark Tribe, who founded Rhizome, a digital art platform with close ties to the genesis of NFT technology.
Mad Dog Jones
Michah Dowbak aka Mad Dog Jones is a multidisciplinary artist from Thunder Bay, Ontario. His works deftly interweave cyberpunk, dystopian imagery exploring themes of beauty, nature and technology. As a lover of the wilderness, which was ever present where he grew up, he brings a fresh thematic to the metropolitan aesthetic, done up in citrus and neon tones of technology somehow rendered as a space naturally human.
Over the last two years, Dowbak has created artworks for Run The Jewels, Deadmau5, Jabbawockeez, Conor McGregor for Reebok, Snowpiercer TV series and Maroon 5. His first and only IRL exhibit was AFTERL-IFE WORLD in Tokyo Sept-Nov 2019. Since then, Dowbak has risen to fame in the world of crypto art, with the recent success of his Crash + Burn series of NFT artworks. He is now a headliner in the first major NFT art exhibition at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. In Spring 2021, Dowbak and Phillips Auction collaborated on a ground-breaking crypto concept, REPLICATOR. This is the first NFT to be auctioned at Phillips, pioneering the space for future digital artists.
Blake Kathryn
Blake Kathryn is a Los Angeles-based digital artist with a surreal futurist aesthetic. Her work fuses vibrant palettes with ethereal undertones, creating dreamlike experiences across various forms of media. She has collaborated with Adidas, Complex, Fendi, Jimmy Choo, Lil Nas X and more.
Isabelle Kitze
Isabelle Kitze is the Co-Founder of Atomic Form, which is an NFT infrastructure company that runs a full-stack product suite for indexing, search and exhibition. She founded the first daily cryptocurrency and blockchain newsletter, CryptoMania, in 2017, and later joined the marketing team at BlockFi. Isabelle earned a degree from New York University in Business and Fine Art at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
Peter Klarnet
Peter joined Christies in 2016 after twenty years working with manuscript Americana, spending the first portion of his career cataloging for, and later managing, a Connecticut auction house specializing in historical autographs. In 2005 he left that firm to pursue opportunities as a consultant, agent and dealer. Although his primary interests center on early America, especially the American Revolution and Early Republic, Peter has appraised and cataloged a wide range of material from the 17th to the 20th century including the Leonard Finger Theatrical Collection, the collections of Henry E. Luhrs, Donald Dow, John Lattimer, Douglas O'Dell, the papers of Ernest O'Malley, Louis Filler, and Frederick Towers.
Since joining Christie's, Peter has worked with several important collections including the papers of the Marquis de Chastellux, The Findlay-Wright Papers, the Roger Judd Collection of American Historical Autographs and the Louisiana Purchase Collection of A. J. Tullock as well as the Albert Einstein God Letter, bringing $2.89 million—a world record for an Einstein letter at auction.
Peter holds a B.A. in History from Antioch College, and a M.A. in History from the University of Delaware with a certificate in museum studies. He has curated several exhibits including a major exhibition at Federal Hall in New York celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in 2009. Peter is a member of the Bibliographical Society of America, the New York Historical Society, and is a Trustee of the Manuscript Society.
Samantha Koslow
Samantha is a member of Christie’s Business Development leadership team, focused on efforts for Museums, Institutions and Corporations. She works with Christie’s specialist teams across categories to develop strategies and provide support for clients in these key areas of focus. She has also been leading Christie’s efforts for client engagement in the exciting new field of NFTs.
Across her 13-year career Samantha has held leadership roles in both the Marketing and Business Development fields, overseeing teams in the Americas and globally. She has worked on strategy for many of Christie’s most notable private and institutional collections sold at auction.
Dave Krugman
Dave Krugman is a New York-based Photographer, Cryptoartist, and Writer, and is the founder of ALLSHIPS, a Creative Community based on the idea that a rising tide raises all ships. He is fascinated by the endless possibilities that exist at the intersection of art and technology, and works in these layers to elevate artists and enable them to thrive in a creative career. As our world becomes exponentially more visual, he seeks to prove that there is tremendous value in embracing curiosity and new ideas. His Cryptoart projects include DRIVE, Drip Drop, SPECTERS , Shades of Dusk, and SuperRare works.
Jonathan Levin
Jonathan Levin is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Chainalysis, the blockchain analysis company. In his role as CSO, he is responsible for designing long-term strategic initiatives that help government agencies, cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions investigate illicit activity, comply with regulations and mitigate risk through anti-money laundering technology and education. Jonathan is regularly called upon to testify for the U.S. Congress and other government hearings on the emerging risks and opportunities in cryptocurrencies. He is also a mentor for the Techstars Alchemist Blockchain accelerator.
Jon-Ross Le Haye
Jon-Ross Le Haye leads the global UX product design team for Christie’s website and app, working closely with the Head of Client Experience to deliver global direction and develop special tech incubation projects related to AR/VR, virtual galleries, SaaS platforms and NFTs. A multidisciplinary creative leader, he was previously International Creative Director at the art auction house, where he directed in-person experiences for events such as the George Michael Collection, which welcomed more than 1,800 visitors daily in its first week in London.
Across his 18-year career, Jon-Ross has demonstrated a passion for breaking convention and creating business firsts. While at Whitechapel Gallery in 2008, he led a major rebranding initiative in conjunction with the gallery’s reopening. He also oversaw the running of online event platform ‘First Thursdays’, which brought together London’s first network of independent contemporary art galleries. When he joined Tate Galleries in 2011, he co-founded the Tate Design Studio, becoming this important institution’s first Head of Design and leading the in-house brand refresh in 2015. Many of his brand identity and exhibition marketing materials were featured in design annuals such as It’s Nice That, including his work for the Damien Hirst exhibition, which is to date the most visited in Tate’s history. He lives in the English countryside
Misha Libman
Misha Libman is the Co-Founder and Head of Product at ARSNL, a new digital platform from Artist Rights Society (ARS) that expands upon ARS’s 35-year legacy of intellectual property representation and innovation to guide artists and institutions through the creation of digital projects and ambitious works of art on the blockchain.
Prior to ARSNL, Misha co-founded Snark.art, an art and technology production studio that since 2018 explored the creative possibilities of blockchain technology by developing interactive projects in art, performance, music, and literature. Misha received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and studied film at the New School for Media Studies.
John Linden
John Linden is the CEO of Mythical, a next-generation game technology studio creating universal economies driven by player ownership of NFTs with utility. The studio’s first game is Blankos Block Party, a colorful play-and-earn multiplayer world with a focus on unique minigames, styled like a giant block party for collectible digital vinyl toys. Prior to Mythical, John was the President of Seismic Games (acquired by Niantic Labs), and developer of Marvel Strike Force and Magic the Gathering: Valor’s Reach. Prior to Seismic Games, he was a Studio Head at Activision Blizzard on the Call of Duty and Skylanders franchises.
Before entering the games industry, John was the Co-Founder/CTO at Adknowledge and at OpenX, and built his own startups, Planet Alumni (acquired by reunion.com) and Litmus Media (acquired by Think Partnership). John is passionate about video games, the future of playable NFTs and blockchain technologies, and bringing emerging technologies to the mass market.
Adam Lindemann
Adam Lindemann is best known as a tastemaker in collecting and investing in contemporary art and design. He operates Venus Over Manhattan, the influential gallery devoted to iconoclastic exhibitions both historic and contemporary. Adam held an Art and Tech conference in Miami in 2018 and has studied Web3 and its relationship to art. He has given talks with Beeple as well as Snowfro, for whom he has staged several exhibitions, and the gallery has done two mints of Chromie Squiggles. This September, Adam’s gallery will also do an exhibition for Justin Aversano’s latest project. Adam is also known for his art writing, specifically a popular column he wrote for The New York Observer, as well as two of Taschen’s bestselling art books, Collecting Contemporary (2006) and Collecting Design (2010).
Jacob Lowenstein
Jacob is currently Head of Growth at Spatial, the metaverse for culture, including NFT exhibitions, community gatherings, and live events.
Jacob was previously Spatial’s investor at Samsung NEXT NY, where he led AR/VR investment and business development. He received his MBA from MIT, where he co-founded VR/AR@MIT, which is dedicated to fostering VR/AR/MR innovation. Additionally, he co-founded the VR/AR hackathon at the MIT Media Lab, the biggest in the world. Prior to MIT, he worked in business development and strategy at BuzzFeed and on a C-suite Chief of Staff team at Bridgewater Associates. Jacob received his BA, Cum Laude, from Princeton University, where he studied the intersection of Media Theory and Public Policy.
He has previously presented on VR and AR at Facebook Connect, Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit, and Microsoft Build, as well as at Harvard and the MIT Media Lab. Jacob is based in New York and, when not shouting about VR/AR from the rooftops, he likes to sing Macy Gray at karaoke, drink seltzer, and worship his cat.
Joseph Lubin
Joseph Lubin is a Co-Founder of blockchain computing platform Ethereum and the Founder of Consensus Systems (ConsenSys), a blockchain venture studio. ConsenSys is one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space, building developer tools, decentralised applications and solutions for enterprises and governments that harness the power of Ethereum. Headquartered in New York, ConsenSys also has a global presence, employing top entrepreneurs, computer scientists, software developers and experts in enterprise delivery worldwide.
Joseph graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the Princeton Robotics Lab, at tomandandy music developing an autonomous music composition tool, and at private research firm Vision Applications Inc. building autonomous mobile robots. As a software engineer and consultant, Joseph worked with eMagine on the Identrus project and was involved in the founding and operation of a hedge fund with a partner. He held positions as Director of the New York office of Blacksmith Software Consulting, and VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Through these posts, Joseph focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering and finance. Switching gears, he moved to Kingston, Jamaica to work on projects in the music industry. Two years into his musical endeavours, Joseph co-founded the Ethereum Project and has been working on Ethereum and ConsenSys since January 2014.
Marion Maneker
Marion Maneker is the Chief Content and Data Officer at LiveArt. He was previously President of ARTnews/Art in America, a division of Penske Media Corporation. Marion was the Founder of Art Market Monitor, which was a leading source of global art market information. He has appeared as a commentator on CNBC, National Public Radio and broadcast outlets around the world. Marion has covered the art market for New York Magazine, the New York Sun, the New York Times, and other publications.
Matt Medved
Matt Medved is the Co-Founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of nft now, the premier web3 digital media platform for NFT coverage and curation. Under his leadership, nft now made history as the first-ever digital media publication to curate a major auction house sale and won an NFT Award in 2021 for Best Written Coverage of NFTs.
Prior to nft now, Matt served as the SVP of Content at Modern Luxury and the Editor-in-Chief of SPIN, where he directed the iconic music and culture title's 2019 rebrand. Prior to SPIN, Matt founded Billboard Dance in 2015 and grew the vertical into the leading dance/electronic music publication in North America.
Before joining Billboard, Matt conducted human rights field research and wrote nearly $2 million in funded grants to the US Department of State and USAID as a consultant for conflict resolution NGO Search for Common Ground in Nigeria — where he also reached more than 6 million listeners as a guest DJ at Africa’s largest radio station.
As a DJ/producer, Matt has released music on Interscope, RCA, Astralwerks, and Downtown Records, and performed at top global festivals like Tomorrowland, EDC, Electric Zoo, and Sunburn.
Matt holds a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and J.D. and M.A. degrees from George Washington University.
Alejandro Navia
Alejandro Navia is the Co-Founder and President of nft now, a trusted source of NFT content and analysis. As an advisor, coach and early supporter of web3 and the creator economy, Alejandro has helped numerous founders and creators scale their communities and raise over $96.8 million in funding.
Prior to nft now, Alejandro held leadership positions at startups and enterprises in AI, aerospace and media, including Verizon, where he led Content Strategy and Acquisitions, and Elite Daily, which he helped lead to a $50 million acquisition.
Alejandro currently lives in Miami, where he pursues interests in psilocybin research, spirituality and mental health.
Sukey Novogratz
Sukey Novogratz is the Co-Founder of Maloka, a VR meditation game for the Oculus Quest, and co-author of Just Sit, a meditation guidebook published by Harper Wave. She is a researcher of healing, consciousness and human potential. Sukey is a devoted supporter of the visual and performing arts, international development and neurological sciences. She studied anthropology at Princeton and fashion design at Parsons. She is closely associated with The Kitchen, the Acumen Fund, the Bail Project, NYU Langone Medical Center and Princeton University. Sukey was Executive Producer on the documentaries, The Hunting Ground and I am Evidence, for which she won am Emmy. She is married to Mike Novogratz and they have four children: Gaby, Anna, Christian and Narciso, and a Pomeranian named Pisco.
Andre Oshea
Andre Oshea is a digital creator known for 3D-modelled animations exploring futuristic notions of spirituality and transcendence. He has worked with Vogue, Netflix, Snapchat, Adult Swim, the Grammys, OneOf and NFT Now, among others. Recent projects include Meta Black Creator Day and Digital Diaspora, as well as the documentaries Not a JPEG and Minted.
Audrey Ou
Audrey Ou is Co-Founder and CEO of TRLab, a full-service platform that fuses NFT technology with fine art. TRLab works with artists, foundations and institutions to develop curated NFT collecting experiences that prioritise direct access, long-term value and ongoing innovation. TRLab’s team has successfully conceived and launched numerous projects with leading digital and traditional artists, including ‘Your Daytime Fireworks’, a sold-out interactive collecting experience with renowned contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, which generated $3 million in primary market sales.
Prior to TRLab, Audrey was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Olive Capital, focusing on consumer technology. Her involvement in contemporary art derives from her family’s engagement with Rockbund Art Museum since its formation in 2010, where she assisted with solo exhibitions of artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang and collaborations such as the Hugo Boss Asia Art Project. Audrey is a member of the Asia Art Committee and Young Collectors Committee at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She holds a B.A. in History from Princeton University and an M.S. in Applied Analytics from Columbia University.
Andy Parsons
Andy Parsons is the Senior Director of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), which is creating the open technologies for a future of verifiably authentic content of all kinds. With collaborators across hardware, software, publishing and social platforms, the CAI is empowering creators with secure provenance. For information consumers, this important work restores trust and transparency to the media they experience. Throughout his career, Andy has worked to empower creative professionals with innovative technologies. Prior to joining Adobe, Andy founded Workframe (acquired in 2019), the pioneering visual project management platform for commercial architecture. Andy previously served as CTO at McKinsey Academy, McKinsey’s groundbreaking educational platform. He also co-founded Happify, the world’s leading mobile platform for digital therapeutics and behavioural health.
Ronnie Pirovino
Ronnie K. Pirovino is a recognized art collector, curator and appraiser; these pursuits have evolved to encompass entrepreneurial projects including NFTs. Notably, after his collection grew to prominence, he departed a successful career in digital advertising to focus on his passion for art. Currently, he has partnered with Christie’s on an ongoing series of auction sales, called Trespassing. On Instagram, @pirovino shares his collection and various endeavors to a wide range of audiences. He holds a B.S. in Communications from Northwestern University.
Ari Redbord
Ari Redbord is Head of Legal and Government Affairs at TRM Labs. Prior to joining TRM, he served as a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary and the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the United States Department of Treasury. In this capacity, he worked with teams from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and other Treasury and interagency components on issues related to sanctions, the Bank Secrecy Act, cryptocurrency, and anti-money laundering strategies.
Previously, Mr. Redbord served as a Senior Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he investigated and prosecuted cases related to cryptocurrency, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, export control, child exploitation and human trafficking. He has received numerous awards from FinCEN, the FBI, and the United States Attorney's Office, including the Attorney General's Award for leading an interagency task force dedicated to prosecuting those who abuse and exploit children.
Nicole Sales Giles
Nicole Sales Giles is the Business Director of Digital Art Sales at Christie’s. She oversees the strategy, operations, and business development of the firm’s NFT initiatives. She joined Christie’s in 2012 and has held various positions, primarily within the 20th and 21st Century Art departments in New York. In March 2021, she was the business lead for the historic sale of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, the first purely digital artwork to be sold at a major auction house. Prior to her current role, Nicole was the Associate Vice President and Business Manager of the Private Sales division as well as for the Online Sales group. She has also held management positions in Client Strategy and Business Intelligence. Nicole holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.A. in Art History and Economics from Duke University.
Lexy Schmertz
As Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Christie’s, Lexy creates innovative strategies and programs to build Christie’s brand, drive revenue, and fuel client acquisition. Lexy began her career in finance, working in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and as Director of Finance at the NYC Investment Fund, founded by Henry Kravis. Lexy lived in Tokyo for five years, where she worked as journalist for the Financial Times and as a restaurant critic for the Daily Yomiuri. After returning to New York, she became an online editor at Cookie, Conde Nast’s parenting magazine, and she co-founded CL Partners, a consulting firm. Lexy went on to become Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development at Moda Operandi, an ecommerce start-up that disrupted the fashion industry by enabling consumers to shop-the-runway. Lexy received her BA in from Princeton University and her MBA from the Tuck School of Business Dartmouth College.
Laurie Segall
Laurie Segall is the founder of Dot Dot Dot, a media company focused on onboarding the mainstream into a new era of the internet, web3. Laurie is an award-winning journalist who has interviewed the world’s most influential tech leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. Prior, she was CNN’s senior tech correspondent, covering technology and culture for a decade, and a former reporter for 60 Minutes.
Jen Stark
Jen Stark is a visual artist whose work is inspired by patterns in nature, fractals, evolution and sacred geometries. Drawing upon an ever-expanding use of material and technology, Jen allows her aesthetic to transcend all forms of media, ranging from paintings and sculptures, to animations, interactive projections and NFTs.
Included as one of Fortune's ‘NFTy 50’, Jen made history in March 2021 with her 1/1 genesis NFT as the first female artist to make Foundation's top ten highest-selling creatives. Since then, Jen has had multiple noteworthy drops, including an Art Blocks curated collection, ‘Vortex’, 1,000 unique NFTs created with code.
Over the course of her career, Jen’s work has exhibited globally, with major shows and public art installations in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Thailand and Canada, among others. Her work is currently held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the West Collection, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, NSU Art Museum, and MOCA Miami, among others. Born in Miami, FL, Jen now lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Devang Thakkar
Devang is a multi-disciplinary product, technology, and business leader who currently advises a portfolio of companies in the luxury and tech space on a wide array of areas ranging from innovation, marketing to fundraising.
In his current role, Devang serves the Global Head of Christie’s Ventures, leading a new enterprise through which Christie’s engages with earlier stage companies through direct investment and both brand support and market access. New venture opportunities focus on early-stage technology and FinTech companies, built by proven-track record founders, which can apply solutions to opportunities or challenges in our market.
From 2015-2019, Devang Thakkar was VP of Consumer Marketplace at Artsy, the world’s leading and largest online platform for collecting and discovering art.
Where he lead Artsy’s efforts in enhancing the art buying and selling experience with the goal of increasing participation and expanding the overall art market. Devang also oversaw the build out of Artsy’s auctions business, which provides buyers and sellers access to art auctions across the globe presented by premier auction houses.
Before joining Artsy in 2015, Devang spent 11 years at Microsoft in Seattle where he contributed to the development of major operating systems from Windows XP to Windows 10 and product lines such as Bing apps, MSN. His last product at Microsoft was Microsoft Teams.
Devang holds master’s degrees in economics and Computer Science from Columbia University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Washington.
He is also an artist – he paints and maintains a studio practice.
Brian Trunzo
Brian Trunzo comes to Web3 and the metaverse with a unique perspective. Having started his professional career as a financial services attorney, he pivoted into the creative world, becoming a leading voice in men's fashion. After successfully exiting two fashion businesses, Brian went on to lead WGSN, the authority in trend forecasting, in growing their North American consulting business. While there, he earned a reputation as a leading thinker on the burgeoning metaversal economy: from digital scarcity to crypto-economics, Brian consulted clients on how to think about this emerging world. In the lead up to his post as Metaverse Lead at Polygon Studios, Brian built a metaverse consultancy to advise legacy brands on how to leverage their IP in the metaverse while heading up America's largest men's fashion trade show at Informa Markets.
Steven Vasilev
Steven Vasilev is the Co-Founder and Senior Director of Digital and Physical Products for RTFKT Inc, a leading brand that leverages cutting-edge innovation to deliver next-generation collectibles that merge culture and gaming. His key responsibilities include spearheading marketing, NFT and physical product strategy.
Neda Whitney
Neda joined Christie’s at the start of 2021, and in her role she develops marketing strategy for the Americas, while leading Creative, Content, Strategy and Communications teams. She oversees the marketing campaigns for the Specialist Art Portfolios in the Americas, with a focus on innovation, data and best in class creative execution. Prior to Christie’s, Neda spent 2 decades working agency side in NY, SF, London and Paris. Most recently she was SVP, Managing Director of Client Services at R/GA where her client portfolio included Verizon, L’Oreal, Tiffany & Co, Unilever, Uber, Planned Parenthood, Amazon and ESPN.
James Wu
James Wu is a Principal for M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, covering infrastructure software with a focus on DevOps, Web3, FinTech and cybersecurity. He has led M12’s crypto investments (Bakkt, Space and Time) and has been angel investing in crypto projects since 2019. He sourced and led M12’s investment in Arkose Labs where he serves as a board director, and co-led M12’s investments in Pachyderm — the fund’s first investment in open-source software — and SuperAwesome, which was subsequently acquired by Epic Games. James has also contributed to investments in Applied Intuition, Bakkt, Go1, Incorta, Innovaccer, Syntiant and Skedulo, and manages M12’s growth stage investments in existing portfolio companies.
Janine Yorio
Janine Yorio is the CEO and Co-Founder of Everyrealm, a metaverse innovation and investment platform. Everyrealm is among the largest owners of digital real estate NFTs in several metaverses including Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Axie Infinity, and among the most active developers of in-metaverse developments including the Metajuku shopping center and the Fantasy Islands ultra-luxury master-planned community NFT project. Janine was previously the CEO of Compound, a fintech app focused on real estate investing backed by leading VC firms NEA and Founders Fund, that was acquired by Republic in 2020. She also previously worked in private equity for Northstar Capital and in real estate and hotel development at The Standard Hotels. She is a graduate of Yale University.
Laura Yungmeyer
Laura Yungmeyer is Head of Marketing at TRM Labs and brings a wealth of experience in the risk and compliance space. Prior to joining TRM, she was global marketing director for Dow Jones’ Risk & Compliance division, a provider of financial crime compliance and risk management solutions. While at Dow Jones, Laura led customer acquisition and expansion activities to support 21 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth. She has extensive experience bringing complex product suites to market, having worked on a number of Dow Jones’ news-derived data services and enterprise SaaS solutions prior to joining the Risk & Compliance business.
Ryan Zarick
Ryan Zarick is the CTO and Co-Founder of LayerZero Labs. He invented LayerZero, the first trustless, direct, cross-chain communication protocol, and Stargate, the only cross-chain bridge to solve the bridging trilemma. LayerZero enables native asset transfers across chains with unified liquidity pools and guaranteed finality. Ryan also created Stargate’s novel resource balancing algorithm 'Delta' (Δ).
Before his web3 entrepreneurship, Ryan co-founded, built and sold BuzzDraft, a Daily Fantasy Sports company with real-time data, community-driven contests and lightning-fast platform in 2013. Ryan was also co-inventor of the novel DCFR+ algorithm, extending the existing work of CMU and uAlberta and achieving more than 5,000x performance increase over existing state of the art AI Systems.
Ryan holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire, where he worked at the industry-acclaimed network research hub: InterOperability Laboratory. As a researcher, Ryan worked on the IEEE-1588 standard used for clock synchronization and precision timing for networked computers at the sub nano-second level, and co-invented DRR-AWC, a packet fairness algorithm for data centers.
Ryan Zurrer
Ryan Zurrer is the founder of DIalectic, a Swiss-based family office focused on alternative assets. He also leads Vine Ventures, a biotechnology fund investing in neurotech, longevity and psychedelics. Ryan was an early investor in some of the best-performing venture investments of the 2010s. Ryan has built a reputation for being a
hands-on, value-add venture investor with a uniquely global purview. Previously he was CEO of a large Brazilian renewables firm and is responsible for roughly 1GW of wind and solar power development globally along with a range of renewable energy innovations.
Ryan brings his unique global purview and direct support of artists into his collecting activities. He is building an important digital art portfolio and works very directly with leading digital artists such as Beeple, Refik Anadol, Mad Dog Jones, Ash Thorp and many others. Ryan will be showcasing some of these important digital artists in an auction with Christie’s for the benefit of MAPS (the multi-disciplinary association of psychedelic science) in June.