Contributors

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Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek

⁠⁠Ranked the #4⁠⁠ in Voice AI Influencer, ⁠⁠Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek⁠⁠ is the CEO of ⁠⁠Clarity AI⁠⁠, Founder of ⁠⁠Women in Voice⁠⁠(501c3 with 20+ chapters), and Host of ⁠⁠Your AI Roadmap⁠⁠. With a decade in software and AI, she has worked at Nuance, VERSA Agency, and OneReach.ai in data and analysis, product, and digital transformation. She's also an investor and technical advisor to startup (AI, computer vision, NLP) and enterprise (medical hardware). A CES and VentureBeat speaker and Harvard Business Review published author, she has a PhD and MA and is based in Seattle.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jpb/

Guests

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Bobak Tavangar

Bobak Tavangar is the co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Labs, a company creating an open-source AR glasses hardware platform and pairing that with powerful generative AI models to help you engage with the real world.


Bobak studied at George Washington and Georgetown universities before completing a graduate degree at Cambridge University.


Bobak is a serial entrepreneur with a core theme running through his entrepreneurial experiences: how to create better ways for people to find and utilize information based on the context of where they are and what’s around them.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobak-t-29445012/

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Chelsie Hall

Chelsie Hall is the CEO and Co-founder of ViralMoment, where she empowers brands to unlock the potential of social video and decode the complexities of internet culture. ViralMoment is the only AI technology that can watch hundreds of thousands of social videos so that brands can see past the algorithmic fog, enabling them to craft potent strategies, safeguard their reputation, and gain a deeper understanding of their audience. 

Chelsie is an expert on the intersection of culture and content, with a passion for understanding the way influence moves through society. An award-winning technologist, she is driven by the challenge of inventing creative solutions to wicked problems. Before founding ViralMoment, Chelsie was instrumental in shaping the Department of Defense's disinformation technology assessment methodology. Chelsie is a proud graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned a Master's degree in Integrated Innovation for Products & Services.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsie-hall/

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Daniel Robbins

Daniel C. Robbins is a Principal Designer in Seattle, working on both strategy and interface design across all of Adobe's 3D/AR/VR projects with a focus on generative AI. He's also helped craft integrity aspects of Horizon Worlds at Meta, advanced AR/VR projects at HTC, VR for architects at Visual Vocal, and capped a long tenure at Microsoft by helping bring the  Microsoft Envisioning Center to life. His art projects have ranged from an art car for Burning Man to very ambitious Halloween costumes for his kids. Dan regularly mentors and sponsors people from underrepresented groups who are entering the design field and he brings a passion for joy, equity, anti-racism, and justice through the lenses of curiosity, compassion, and contradiction.

http://bit.ly/danwork

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Dr. Stefania Druga

Dr. Stefania Druga is a Research Scientist at Google Gemini AI. She was a principal researcher at the Center of Applied AI Research at the University of Chicago. She graduated with a PhD in Creative AI Literacies at the University of Washington and a master of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 


During her PhD, she did several research internships at Google X, Microsoft Research, and Fixie.ai focusing on Large Language Models applications for developer tools, programming languages, and data science applications. She loves trail running and drawing with robots.


https://www.linkedin.com/in/drugastefania/

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Emerson Sklar

Emerson Sklar is the Chief Evangelist of Amazon Alexa, where he helps enterprises and developers around the globe realize the benefits that conversational AI can bring to their customers. He is a recognized thought leader, public speaker, and recipient of the 2022 AI Excellence Award. He has spent his whole career helping companies improve their apps, devices, and experiences with a user-centric focus on quality. Before Amazon, Emerson worked at Applause, Bespoken, Borland, and the Army Research Lab. Outside of work, Emerson can be found volunteering for Scouting America, relaxing with his family and flat-coated retrievers, and making unnecessarily complex meals.

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Gabby Bajorek

Gabrielle Bajorek is an aspiring leader in innovation, emerging technology, and design. Balancing her roles as a product innovator at Coca-Cola and a master’s student in Technology Management at Columbia University, she is dedicated to being at the forefront of emerging trends through physical or technological innovation. With undergraduate degrees in Emerging Technology in Business & Design, Entrepreneurship, and Digital Innovation, Gabrielle brings a unique blend of creativity and strategy to everything she pursues. Her accolades include being a Tech Entrepreneurial Fellow, an Altman Scholar, a Senior Service Leader Award recipient, and the 2022 John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship Leader Award recipient.

Gabrielle’s passion lies in cultivating ideas at the intersection of technology & innovation. She takes pride in bringing people together to disrupt industries and solve problems.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabbybajorek/

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Gracie Ermi

Gracie Ermi is a machine learning scientist specializing in building machine learning & AI applications to support wildlife research and inform environmental policy. She uses aerial imagery, remote sensing, bioacoustics and more to study marine and terrestrial species, and monitor global land use and land cover. As one of the co-creators of the Conservation Tech Directory, she works to encourage more connection and communication across the conservation technology field. Gracie also prioritizes educating and inspiring the next generation of innovators, and as an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador and an AGU Voices for Science Fellow, she has spoken to over 150 audiences around the world about the intersection of conservation and technology.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracieermi/

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John Pasmore


John Pasmore is CEO and Founder of the "Black GPT" called Latimer.ai. Latimer is built to be the premier online Artificial Intelligence resource for accurate historical information and bias free interaction for Black and Brown audiences. Unlike other LLMs, Latimer uses licensed content from esteemed sources, such as an exclusive partnership with New York Amsterdam News, to build its training platform, improving data accuracy and fairness of economic sharing between content creators, owners, and data deliverers.

John is a seasoned executive whose strengths are serving in a leadership capacity or in designing and executing the strategy to align a business against key performance indicators. He co-founded Oneworld Media with Russell Simmons, producing a magazine and TV program. He later founded VoyageTV, sold to Next 1 Interactive. John holds a BS from SUNY and a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpasmore/

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Lauren Dycus

Lauren Dycus has spent the last 15 years shipping features in software and AI product development at Amazon, AWS, DISCO, LTK, Microsoft, Upwork, and more. Focused on building with agile methodologies and user research, she develops teams and products that solve problems while growing global businesses. Dedicated to mentorship and diversity, Lauren's leadership expertise spans games, ecommerce, robotics, legal tech, and cloud computing, to prioritize safe, collaborative environments for product innovation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurendycus

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Megan Gray

Megan Gray is driven to use technology to improve lives. As a U.S. inventor with patents in AI, she is a pioneer in the field. With only 1.3% of the world's 340,000 AI patents being held by women as of the end of 2023, her contributions are significant. She has over a decade of experience in developing complex AI systems. Megan has spoken nationwide at National Academies of Science and Engineering, Amazon Alexa, NVIDIA, Google Startups, Verizon, and several universities. She's been featured in Forbes and Amazon Developer, and has also consulted with AI and product teams. Her previous role at Google sparked her curiosity to design and build bold, innovative technology. Currently, Megan is the CEO of Moment AI, a company that has raised millions from top VCs. She's committed to building AI that empowers everyone around her.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/msmegangray/

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Miguel Jetté

Miguel Jetté is Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Rev. He leads Rev’s speech research and development team with over 20 years’ experience in speech recognition and machine learning. Before joining Rev, Migüel was a speech scientist at VoiceBox and Nuance Communications where he created state-of-the-art speech models across major industries in multiple languages. Migüel has a Master’s in mathematics and statistics from McGill University.


https://www.linkedin.com/in/migueljette/

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Nicolle Merrill

Nicolle Merrill is Founder, Principal AI Consultant & Trainer at Boring AI. Nicolle Merrill has spent the last 6 years working at the intersection of AI and design. She’s worked for startups and corporate clients building conversational AI solutions for fintech and HR. In 2019, she published the book Punch Doubt in the Face: How to Upskill, Change Careers, and Beat the Robots to help employees at all levels adapt to AI in the workplace. Prior to working in AI, Nicolle worked in coaching and executive training at Yale School of Management. She founded Boring AI to combine her love of training with her background in Ai to help people build critical AI literacy skills for a rapidly changing workplace.  Nicolle has spoken at conference in the US and internationally. She’s never met an audience she didn’t love. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicollemerrill/

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Noelle Russell

Noelle Russell is a multi-award-winning technologist with an entrepreneurial spirit who specializes in helping companies with data, cloud, conversational AI, Generative AI, and LLMs. She has led teams at NPR, Microsoft, IBM, AWS and Amazon Alexa, and is a consistent champion for Data and AI literacy.


In the last year, she was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for Artificial Intelligence (for the 3rd year) as well as VentureBeat’s Women in AI Responsibility and Ethics award. She is the host of the Good Morning, AI Podcast that can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and IHeartRadio.


https://linkedin.com/in/noelleai

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Peter Geovanes

As the Chief Innovation and AI Officer at McGuireWoods LLP, Peter directs the development and implementation of innovative business and legal solutions, leveraging AI-enhanced tools to better serve clients and boost firm performance. His expertise spans data science, advanced analytics, AI/ML, business strategy, innovation, R&D, project management, and management consulting. He has successfully implemented cutting-edge analytics and AI solutions for leading law firms and Fortune 1000 corporations. Peter has been honored with the 2024 OnCon Icon Awards "Top 100 Data & Analytics Professional," CDO Magazine’s "Champions of Data in the Midwest 2024," and Corinium Intelligence's 2022 Data Value Award, and has been a finalist for the "Legal Innovator of the Year" Award. He holds both a J.D. and an MBA and proudly served as an Officer in the U.S. Navy for eight years.  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pgeovanes/

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Prem Kumar

Prem Kumar is currently the CEO and co-founder of Humanly.io, a venture-backed generative AI platform that empowers hiring teams to have more effective and equitable job candidate conversations. The process should be driven by humans while automating only essential tasks. He has previously led product management and design teams at TINYpulse, an employee engagement company focused on real-time people data for building world-class cultures in organizations. Before his time at TINYpulse, Prem spent 10 years at Microsoft working in various product capacities including HR Technology, New Ventures, Dynamics 365, and Office 365. In recognition of his work, he has received several honors such as Geekwire's "Startup CEO of the year - 2023", being named a PSBJ 40 under 40 honoree, Forbes NEXT 1000 honoree, TAtech Top 100 leader, Top-100 HR Influencer, and was listed on "The Most Inclusive HR Influencer List" in 2021 by Social Micole. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/premskumar/

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Rana Gujral

Rana Gujral is an entrepreneur and CEO a Behavioral Signals, a Cognitive AI company building essential building blocks of AGI with its acoustics-based deep learning technology. As a thought leader in AI, Rana often leads keynote sessions at industry events such as the Leap, DeepFest, World Government Summit, VOICE Summit, TNW, Collision, and The Web Summit. His bylines are featured in publications such as FastCompany, Inc., and Entrepreneur, and he is a contributing columnist at TechCrunch and Forbes. 


Rana has been recognized as among ‘Top 40 Voice AI Influencers to Follow’ by SoundHound, ‘Entrepreneur of the Month’ by CIO Magazine, ‘Top 10 Entrepreneurs to Follow’ by Huffington Post, and an ‘AI Entrepreneur to Watch’ by Inc Magazine. In 2022, the CEO Monthly listed him among the “Most Influential CEOs.”

https://www.ranagujral.com/

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Stephanie Blucker

Stephanie Blucker is a senior content design manager who’s worked for Microsoft for nearly 7 years. She leads the M365-OPG Copilot & Apps content design team, which handles UX content for Copilot/AI integrations, web, and mobile apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Loop, Planner, and M365. Previously, she was the lead content designer for Word, PowerPoint, and the Accessibility UX in Windows settings; led the refresh of the Inclusive Language feature in Microsoft Editor; drove a team in establishing guidelines for managing sensitive topics in conversational interfaces; developed bot personalities for Project Personality Chat; and wrote for Cortana. Before Microsoft, she worked in the nonprofit field for 10+ years. She has a Bachelor of Journalism and a Master of Science in Human-Centered Design & Engineering.


Connect w/ Stephanie on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieblucker/

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