Speakers

• Alex Cahana BTBlock Health Group, UN/CEFACT Healthcare and Blockchain
  

  Alex Cahana

  BTBlock Health Group, UN/CEFACT Healthcare and Blockchain

  Dr. Alex Cahana is the Chief Medical Officer and EMEA Market Lead for ConsenSys Health, Web 3.0 (Healthcare) Expert for UN/CEFACT, and advisor for the Internet Foundation.

  Alex is an oracle, healthcare ecosystem designer, and Web 3.0 champion. His areas of expertise are WellBeing, Social Determinants of Health, Systems Engineering, and Phenomenology. He specializes in offering big-picture, cross-disciplinary advice, strategically assessing early-stage ventures, and designing disruptive solutions in healthcare. His solutions embrace the “holocratizing” of healthcare with Universal Health Income (UHI) with the goal of transforming people from passive health service consumers into active, self-sovereign health and wealth producers.

• Anna Gotlib Brooklyn College, CUNY
  

  Anna Gotlib

  Brooklyn College, CUNY

  Prof. Anna Gotlib: Anna Gotlib is an associate professor of philosophy and a collegiate adviser for those students interested in law and law-related careers. Before joining the faculty at Brooklyn College, she was an assistant professor of philosophy and director of the Pell Honors Program at Binghamton University (SUNY). Prior to her academic career, she was employed as an attorney, specializing in international law and labor law.

• Barry Smith National Center for Ontology
  

  Barry Smith

  National Center for Ontology

  Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology, especially in the biomedical domain. He is the author of some 500 publications on ontology with some 30,000 citations. Smith is SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the National Center for Ontological Research in the University at Buffalo (UB). Smith’s pioneering work on the science of ontology led to the formation of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry, a suite of resources designed to support information-driven research in biology and biomedicine. Since 2009 Smith has also served as ontology consultant to Hernando de Soto of the Institute of Liberty and Democracy (ILD) supporting the work of the ILD on creating modern legal frameworks that help the poor of the developing and ex-communist world access property and business rights.

• Bob Trojan Token Insights
  

  Bob Trojan

  Token Insights

  Bob Trojan is an international business lending expert, thought leader and speaker. He is President and CEO of Financial Services Insights, his advisory firm that specializes in global strategy, fintech, bank partnerships, operations, credit risk management, and regulatory/legislative affairs.

• David Koepsell BTBlock
  

  David Koepsell

  BTBlock

  David Koepsell, J.D., Ph.D. is an entrepreneur, author, philosopher, attorney, and educator whose research focuses on the nexus of science, technology, ethics, and public policy. He has been a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management in the Netherlands, Visiting Professor at UNAM, Instituto de Filosoficas and the Unidad Posgrado, Mexico, Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at COMISION NACIONAL DE BIOETICA in Mexico, and Asesor de Rector at UAM Xochimilco. He is the co-founder and CEO of EncrypGen, Inc., the world’s first blockchain-mediated genomic data free market.

• Declan Kirrane Director ISC Intelligence in Science and Coordinator EU Africa Radio Astronomy Platform
  

  Declan Kirrane

  Director ISC Intelligence in Science and Coordinator EU Africa Radio Astronomy Platform

  Declan Kirrane is Managing Director of ISC Intelligence in Science, a specialized science, technology and R&D public affairs firm based in Brussels, Belgium. ISC develops and implements Strategic Research Agendas for science and technology-based organisations in the EU and US.
  His practice areas cover IP, R&D consortia development, management and dissemination and is responsible for themes of ICT, health, security, defence, space and related policies, legislation, programmes and funding mechanisms. Declan Kirrane has a background in analysing the relationship between public and private R&D funding and the impact on R&D performance: he has worked extensively on science and technology policy evaluation methodologies and technology options for policy- and decision-makers. The EU’s Digital Agenda, emerging European space, security and defence policies are part of his remit.

• Dele Atanda Internet Foundation
  

  Dele Atanda

  Internet Foundation

  Dele Atanda started his career in 1997 and up to 2006, he was the president and founder numerous startups and ventures. In 2012, Dele founded Digitteria, a pioneering start-up developing sustainable identity and personal data management solutions for citizens, consumers and enterprises. He is also a founder of Quantifyle, a quantified living app that helps people use their personal data to improve their health while earning insurance rebates and personalised rewards for doing so, and the Internet Foundation, a trans-Atlantic NGO dedicated to promoting universal digital rights as a natural extension of human rights and the sustainable use of personal data in commerce. Currently, Dele is the founder and CEO of MetaMe, and chief digital innovation officer at IBM. In addition, Dele serves as an advisor at CryptoOracle.

• Gene Vayngrib Tradle, Inc.
  

  Gene Vayngrib

  Tradle, Inc.

  CEO & Co-founder @Tradle, Inc. KYC and identity on blockchain across all sectors of finance. Founded a company that pioneered pre-blockchain distributed business networks that helped ship and invoice millions of tons of products in a complex supply chain spanning 20 countries. Prior to that, managed a division of IBI, an Enterprise software provider in NYC, where the team created solutions that run at 90% of Fortune 500 companies. Prior to that, pioneered the use of AI in industrial control systems.

• Helen Disney Health UnBlocked
  

  Helen Disney

  Health UnBlocked

  Helen Disney: Founder of Unblocked, a hub for Blockchain events, education and information. Unblocked makes Blockchain technology accessible for a non-technical business audience. Previously, set up Blockchain Intelligence Global, a global platform for news, networking and conferences about Blockchain technologies and worked at the Bitcoin Foundation where she launched Europe’s first major Bitcoin conference and drove a programme of strategic events to communicate the innovative potential of Bitcoin and Blockchains to innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers and thought leaders.

• Irene Arias Hofman IDB Lab
  

  Irene Arias Hofman

  IDB Lab

  Irene Arias Hofman, a Spanish national, was appointed CEO of IDB Lab, the IDB Group innovation laboratory, in January 2018. Irene leads a purpose-driven multidisciplinary team that fosters innovation for inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Under her direction, the lab uses tools of financing, knowledge, and connections to co-create projects and support entrepreneurship. IDB Lab looks for market-driven solutions able to transform the lives of populations that are vulnerable due to economic, social or environmental factors. Previously, she developed her career working for more than 20 years with the World Bank Group, specifically with the IFC, the largest international development institution focused on the private sector. Her focus has been on innovation, venture capital, and fintech.

• Irene Kiwia Afya Rekod
  

  Irene Kiwia

  Afya Rekod

  Irene Kiwia is an Entrepreneur and activist who is known for being both the founder and executive director of the company Frontline Porter Novelli. She is also known for having launched the NGO Tanzania Women of Achievement program which helped enable women to contribute in social, political, and economic ways to Tanzania. She attended the University of Dar-es-Salaam. She graduated with her degree in International Relations and Public Administration. She then started working as a broadcast producer for East Africa Television and IPP Media before founding Frontline Porter Novelli, or FPN in 2006. She is a co-founder of Afya Rekod and TWAA, among numerous other ventures.

• Jane Thomason Center Blockchain Technology
  

  Jane Thomason

  Center Blockchain Technology

  Dr. Jane Thomason is an author and thought leader in technological innovations and blockchain for social good. Recognised in Forbes Magazine (2018) and The Introducer Magazine (2019) as a leader in Blockchain for Social Impact, Jane is a firm believer in the potential of Blockchain and Frontier Technologies for global social impact. She is focussed on emerging economies and how Frontier Technologies can accelerate poverty reduction and improve service delivery. She is a Co-Founder of the British Blockchain and Frontier Technology Association, Fellow of the Australian Digital Commerce Association and Section Chief Co-Editor Blockchain for Good: for Frontiers in Blockchain. She is a regular blockchain hackathon judge and mentor including London Blockchain Week, London Fintech Week, Consensys Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition Hackathon and EOS Global Hackathons. She believes that the next wave of transformational innovation will be from emerging economies. She has published a book on Blockchain and global social change

• John Callahan Chief Technology Officer at Veridium
  

  John Callahan

  Chief Technology Officer at Veridium

  Dr. John Callahan, chief technology officer of Veridium(veridium.com), leads an informative discussion on the current state of biometric security. Dr. Callahan oversees the development of Veridium’s biometric solutions that seek to put an end to identity theft, which is a growing problem in our ever-expanding digital world. His team is comprised of highly sought-after software developers, computer vision scientists, as well as sales engineers. Callahan’s background includes work at the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research Global, London UK, in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

• John Kamara Afya Rekod
  

  John Kamara

  Afya Rekod

  Founder, CEO Afya Rekod. Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa Director (Non-Executive role) Company NameMachine Intelligence Institute of Africa Tasked with growing the use of Artificial Intelligence in Africa. Connecting Africa with AI and growing data science use cases in Africa. Helping organisations to understand the value of machine learning, working with governments, and education ecosystem.agencies and other international organisations to bring Artificial intelligence to the African business and education ecosystem.

• Jonathan Holt CMIO at ConsenSys Health my role is to wrangle the disperse systems into a cohesive whole.
  

  Jonathan Holt

  CMIO at ConsenSys Health my role is to wrangle the disperse systems into a cohesive whole.

  Dr. Jonathan Holt brings 20 years of experience with a comprehensive and holistic approach to genetics, clinical medicine and informatics approaches to solving hard problems in healthcare. Previous to starting TranSendX, he was the Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, and Chief Informatics Officer at Seqtech Diagnostics, LLC. In this role, he developed novel bioinformatic algorithms for use in next-generation DNA sequencing to combat food fraud. He continues to serve SeqTech as Secretary on its board of directors. As a contributor to standards development, he has volunteered as a domain expert for the HL7 clinical genomics working group and as an invited expert to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• Juan Caballero Decentralized Identity Foundation
  

  Juan Caballero

  Decentralized Identity Foundation

  Dr. Juan Caballero is an identity technologist who has spent years studying how identity systems can be built that decentralize power while honoring the data rights and obligations of individuals, organizations, legal persons, governments, and software. He has worked extensively in various sectors of the startup economy in both the United States and Germany to further this work

• Kaliya Young Identity Women
  

  Kaliya Young

  Identity Women

  Kaliya Young (formerly Hamlin) is an expert in self-sovereign identity and identity on the blockchain. She is the co-author of a Comprehensive guide to Self-Sovereign Identity and is widely known as Identity Woman (it’s also the name of her blog and her twitter handle). She has committed her life to the development of an open standards based layer of the internet that empowers people. In 2005, Young co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop with Doc Searls and Phil Windley. Five years later she founded the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium to catalyze a network of companies working to give individuals the tools to collect, manage and gain value from their own personal data generated actively and passively as they interact with all kinds of digital systems.

• Leigh M. Johnson Christian Brother Univ
  

  Leigh M. Johnson

  Christian Brother Univ

  Dr. Leigh M. Johnson, Associate Professor, is a native Memphian who received her Master’s in Philosophy from Villanova University and her Ph.D. in Philosophy with a Doctoral Minor in Africana Studies from The Pennsylvania State University. Her primary areas of teaching and research are in moral and political philosophy, including feminist philosophy, critical race theory and theories of gender and sexuality. She is also an avid technophile and a documentary filmmaker, and has brought those interests into the classroom over the last several years by incorporating philosophy of film and philosophy of technology into her courses. Her current scholarship focuses on democratic theory, humanism and human rights, terrorism and torture, as well as the changing moral, political, social and cultural landscapes of the “digital age.”

• Mikael Björn BTblock
  

  Mikael Björn

  BTblock

  Specializing in large network systems architecture, security and development, Mikael has 30 years of experience in building secure systems for finance, telco and defense industries. Mikael has a background as principal engineer at Sun Microsystems and Unisys Corporation. He has been the major force in modernization of old development methodologies to new secure Agile CI/CD methods. He also has a long background in cloudification of old on premise large-scale enterprise systems. Today Mikael is heading the business unit responsible for secure development, audit and reviews in the Blockchain & DLT space including smart contracts.

• Sorcha Mulligan SME | Supply Chain | FinTech | Blockchain | Technology | Sustainability | Futurist | @Sorcha_FinTech
  

  Sorcha Mulligan

  SME | Supply Chain | FinTech | Blockchain | Technology | Sustainability | Futurist | @Sorcha_FinTech

  I support FinTech & Blockchain Supply Chain & Trade Finance Platforms who are seeking to achieve growth through Investment, Joint Venture Partnerships & direct Client Acquisition in EU & UK markets. Essentially, matching people with people who can work together to achieve a combined, aligned objective in their field. EQ with IQ is the winning formula.

  My expertise lies within driving Growth & Business Development Strategies from a blank canvas, profile raising the brands I work for in new markets both directly & through developing reciprocal relationships with Key Business Introducers & Intermediaries, building a global high profile Corporate & Professional network of key connections

• William Ruddick Grassroots Economics
  

  William Ruddick

  Grassroots Economics

  William Ruddick is a development economist focusing on currency innovation. After completing graduate school researching high energy physics as a collaboration member at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, he found his analysis skills and passion drawn to alternative economics and development. Since 2008 Will has lived in East Africa and managed several successful development programs in environment, food security and economic development. He is dedicated to connecting communities to their own abundance, and is an advocate for, and designer of currencies for poverty eradication and sustainable development. Mr. Ruddick has pioneered Community Currency Programs in Kenya since 2010 and is the founder of the award winning Bangla-Pesa program. He consults on Community Currencies worldwide and while researching with the University of Cape Town’s Environmental Economics Policy Research Unit. Mr. Ruddick is also an associate scholar with the University of Cumbria’s Institute for Leadership and Sustainability.