Speakers

Peter H. Diamandis

Founder, Exec. Chairman, XPRIZE Foundation

Founder, Exec. Chairman, Singularity University

In 2014 Fortune Magazine named Peter Diamandis as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

Diamandis He is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions.  He is also the Co-Founder & Exec Chairman of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that counsels the world’s leaders on exponentially growing technologies.

As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started 17 companies. He is the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan, and Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and prospecting of asteroid for fuels and precious materials.

Diamandis is a New York Times Bestselling author of two books: Abundance & BOLD.  He earned degrees in Molecular Genetics and Aerospace Engineering from the MIT, and holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

In 2016 the Greek Government honored him by issuing a 1.2 Euro stamp into circulation. Also in 2016, the book How To Make A Spaceship, Peter’s biography and the story of the XPRIZE was written by Julian Guthrie with a Foreword by Richard Branson and an Afterword by Prof. Stephen Hawking.

Jeff Dean is a  Senior Fellow in Google’s  Research Group, where he leads the Google Brain project. His areas of interest include large-scale distributed systems, performance monitoring, compression techniques, information retrieval, application of machine learning to search and other related problems, microprocessor architecture, compiler optimizations, and development of new products that organize existing information in new and interesting ways.

John Paul DeJoria, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, John Paul Mitchell Systems and The Patrón Spirits Company, is a first-generation American turned entrepreneur, philanthropist and pillar of the business community. He has struggled against the odds not only to achieve success, but to share his success with others, always living his motto: “Success unshared is failure.”

In 2011, John Paul signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s “The Giving Pledge” as a formal promise to continue giving back. The same year, he established JP’s Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation as a hub for his charitable investments, which support the core values of his companies: sustainability, social responsibility and animal-friendliness.

Xavier Niel is the majority shareholder and historic leader of the Iliad Group. A self-taught entrepreneur, he has been a player in the telematics, Internet and telecommunications industries since the late 1980s.

In 1999 he launched Free, the first free access internet provider in France. In 2002, he created the Freebox, the first multi-service set-top box providing access to “triple play” (internet-phone-TV) in the home and since 2012, Free has also brought mobile phone usage within everyone’s reach.

He is also the founder of 42(a free IT university open to everyone and aimed at training 1,000 developers a year) and 1000 start-ups@ La Halle Freyssinet (the world’s largest digital incubator). Along with with Pierre Bergé and Matthieu Pigasse, he is also the controlling shareholder of the newspapers Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur.

Xavier is based in Paris, France

Twitter: http://twitter.com/@Xavier75

Anousheh Ansari is co-founder, chairwoman, and chief executive officer of Prodea Systems, an innovative Internet of Things platform that connects people, data, and devices. As she launched her new company in 2006, she blasted off for an 11-day space expedition and captured headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer, the first astronaut of Iranian descent, and the first Muslim woman and fourth private explorer to visit space. This was the accomplishment of her childhood dream. As a successful serial entrepreneur and active proponent of world-changing technologies, she and her family provided the title sponsorship for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million cash award that ignited a new era in private space industries. Ansari has published her memoirs, titled “My Dream of Stars,” to use her life story to inspire young woman around the world. She is a board member of the X Prize Foundation and a Vision Circle member. She is a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador and serves on the board of The Peace First and Museum of Mathematics, as well as several other not-for-profit organizations focused on STEM education and youth empowerment. She currently works to enable social entrepreneurs to bring about radical change globally, with organizations such as ASHOKA, which supports social entrepreneurship around the world. Ansari holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University; a master’s degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University; and honorary doctorates from George Mason University, Utah Valley University, and the International Space University.

Classically trained, Harry Hamlin has degrees in acting from Yale University and The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Mr. Hamlin’s stage credits include the Broadway revival of Clifford Odets’ AWAKE AND SING playing Moe Axelrod, the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ SUMMER AND SMOKE playing John Buchanan and the Broadway revival of CHICAGO playing Billy Flynn. Mr. Hamlin played the title role in HAMLET at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton before playing Henry V in HENRY V at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C.

On television, among many projects over thirty years, Mr. Hamlin received multiple best actor Golden Globe nominations for his role as Michael Kuzak on NBC’s drama LA LAW and recently received an Emmy Nomination for his role as Jim Cutler on AMC’s MAD MEN. His film credits include MOVIE MOVIE ( Golden Globe Nomination), CLASH OF THE TITANS, MAKING LOVE, and the soon to be released independent films SHIVA AND MAY and THE EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE, THE FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH, and DIRECTOR’S CUT  with Penn Jilette.

Mr. Hamlin is co-founder of Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. and lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lisa Rinna and their two daughters, Delilah and Amelia.

Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director and producer whose notable career spans more than four decades providing breathtaking imagery using his time-lapse, high-speed and macro cinematography techniques. His three TED talks have over 47 million combined views.  Louie’s recent theatrical releases include Mysteries of the Unseen World (IMAX) with National Geographic, narrated by Forest Whitaker, and Wings of Life for Disneynature, narrated by Meryl Streep. His Gratitude Revealed web series was featured on Oprah.com. Louie also directed Soarin’ Around the World, an international update to the original Soarin’ ride now showing at Disney Parks worldwide.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez: Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced Shoe-tez-cot) is a 16 year old Indigenous Environmental Activist and eco hip-hop artist and public speaker from Boulder, Colorado.  He has been speaking at environmental and climate change rallies, events and conferences since he was six years old.  He is co-founder and youth director of Earth Guardians, an international organization committed to protecting the air, the water, the earth and the atmosphere.  He has worked in his local community with City Council and County Commissioners to get pesticides out of parks, help get coal ash regulated, bans and moratoriums on Fracking in Colorado cities, GMO’s and more. 

Xiuhtezcatl has spoken in the United Nations and was one of the youngest speakers at the Rio+20 UN summit in  Rio, Brazil.  He has won numerous awards for his work and was also the youngest of 24 change makers nationally that were chosen to serve on Obama’s youth council. 

Xiuhtezcatl is also a piano composer and hip-hop artist and writes and performs original hip-hop music to educate and inspire his generation to connect with their passion and take it into positive action to protect the Earth. 

Pablos is a futurist, inventor, and notorious hacker.  He helped create the world’s smallest PC; 3D printers at Makerbot; & spaceships with Jeff Bezos.  Currently, Pablos is working for Nathan Myhrvold at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory inventing solutions to the world’s biggest problems

Pedro Domingos is Professor at University of Washington and the author of “The Master Algorithm”. He is a winner of the SIGKDD Innovation Award, the highest honor in data science. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and has received a Fulbright Scholarship, a Sloan Fellowship, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, and numerous best paper awards.

His research spans a wide variety of topics in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science, including scaling learning algorithms to big data, maximizing word of mouth in social networks, unifying logic and probability, and deep learning.

Poppy Crum is Chief Scientist at Dolby Laboratories. At Dolby, Poppy directs the growth of internal science. She is responsible for integrating neuroscience and psychophysical knowledge into algorithm design, technological development, and technology strategy. At Stanford, her work focuses on the impact and feedback potential of new technologies with gaming and immersive environments on neuroplasticity.
Poppy also represents scientific interests among external standards bodies and scientific organizations.

She is currently a U.S. representative to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and was a fellow of the US Defense Science Research Council. Prior to joining Dolby Laboratories Poppy was Research Faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where her research focused on the functional circuitry of the auditory cortex. Poppy is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society. She completed her: Post-Doctoral work at Johns Hopkins in Biomedical Engineering; PhD at UC Berkeley in Neuroscience/Psychology; M.A at McGill University in Experimental Psychology, and B.Mus at the University of Iowa in Violin Performance.

Dr. Barmak Heshmat is a research scientist and technology conceiver at MIT media lab. Dr. Heshmat research is focused on novel optical materials and imaging systems including computational and ultrafast imaging systems and his designs evolves and combines elements from mechanical and electrical engineering. Dr. Heshmat received his Ph.D. (on optoelectronics and nanomaterials) at the University of Victoria in 2013 before he moves to MIT. He has published over 20 journal papers and is cofounder of the iMT ‘The Imaginarium of Technology’. Dr. Heshmat has developed numerous concepts for different companies such as TOYOTA, DENSO, KYOCERA and many others. His inventions have been featured on cover page of MIT website and MIT news multiple times. He has also given numerous invited talks on cutting edge technologies and their future such as: “Future of imaging” at TEDxBeaconstreet, “Before your immortality” at Boston Convention center.

Juan Pablo is an Argentinian actor and singer. He is best known in the US for playing the role of Jesus Christ on NBC’s “A.D. The Bible Continues” for which he won the Movieguide Grace Award for ‘Most Inspiring Performance” by an actor; and for portraying the role of the outrageous Fernando on Netflix’ Original series “Fuller House”. Juan Pablo has an extensive music theatre background, appearing in the movie “Mamma Mia!”, in London’s production of “Chicago” and originating the role of Danny Zucco in the Spanish production of “Saturday Night Fever” in Madrid.

As a musician, Juan Pablo has performed concerts around the world (Buenos Aires, Madrid, London and Los Angeles) and recorded an album entitled “Primer Acto”. His song ‘We Wanna Rock” was No. 1 on iTunes Spanish Charts. He appears on 3 original cast recordings (“Mamma Mia! The Movie”, “Mas de 100 Mentiras” and “Saturday Night Fever”) and is currently recording his second solo album, produced by Rion Michael. The second season of “Fuller House” premieres on December 9^th

Brent Bushnell is the CEO of Two Bit Circus, a Los Angeles-based experiential entertainment company building products and events that combine story and technology. Most recently the team launched STEAM Carnival, a showcase of high-tech entertainment and workshops to inspire invention. They also built a 360 video production pipeline and deployed Virtual Reality content with haptic feedback for live events with clients including NFL, NBA, Indy, Olympics, Sundance and more. The company regularly serves as immersive entertainment partners for brands and location-based facilities. Previously, Brent was the on-camera inventor for the ABC TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He was a founding member of Syyn Labs, a creative collective creating stunts for brands like Google and Disney and responsible for the viral hit Rube Goldberg music video for OK Go which garnered 45 million views. Brent is board president of the non-profit Trash For Teaching which upcycles clean corporate waste for school art supplies. In his spare time, Brent enjoys mentoring teens in entrepreneurship via programs such as NFTE. He’s a supporter of Clowns Without Borders and publishes on Twitter at @brentbushnell.

As a screenwriter for movies and video games, John MacInnes was awarded the 2011 Academy Nicholl Fellowship for his script OUTSIDE THE WIRE, a gritty and intense action thriller. The script was picked up by Cinestar Pictures as a vehicle for Zoe Saldana (Guardians Of The Galaxy, Avatar, Star Trek) to star in and produce.

His talent caught the attention Activision, who commissioned John to write CALL OF DUTY, ADVANCED WARFARE starring Academy Award Winner Kevin Spacey. ADVANCED WARFARE went on to be the highest-grossing video game of 2014.

John’s experience crafting Triple A and interactive adventure games as well as studio movies has given him a deep understanding of the role that story, character and world building play in the creation of internationally renowned entertainment. His creativity combined with an extensive knowledge of Game Engine, CG, Performance Capture, 3D technology and film production make John uniquely qualified to produce and create Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality content across all platforms.

Remington Scott has been a pioneer in computer graphic imagery and emerging media for more than 25 years. So it’s no surprise to now find him at the cutting edge of Augmented / Virtual Reality.

He most recently won acclaim for his work as performance capture director on CALL OF DUTY, ADVANCED WARFARE.

Remington’s achievements in motion pictures are extensive, including supervisory digital production under filmmakers Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Robert Zemeckis, Bryan Singer, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Zack Snyder and others. Remington was the man who brought Gollum to life on LORD OF THE RINGS. He was instrumental in creating the digital human characters for SPIDER-MAN 2 & 3, SUPERMAN RETURNS and WATCHMEN and was the performance capture director for the first ever computer-generated theatrically released movie to showcase principle hyper-real digital humans, FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRIT WITHIN.

His passion for digital technology started at an early age. Before graduating from New York’s School of Visual Arts, Remington created the first digitized home video game in the mid 1980s, a full decade before the technology became mainstream in the consumer marketplace. The design of the most realistic human forms in computer games today can be traced to his efforts. Similarly, in the early 1990s he pioneered three-dimensional performance capture technology for the digitization of human characters in games and movies. Over his career Remington has authored patents for realistic digital human animation and replication which can be seen on films such as AVATAR, RISE OF THE APES, TIN TIN, and THE HOBBIT

Stefano Baldassi is Director of Neuroscience and Analytics at Meta. His team is integrating neuroscience theory and research in every step of the development of Meta’s Augmented Reality headset. After receiving his PhD in Human Perception and post-doctoral training at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, Stefano held tenured academic positions in various research and academic centers including University College London, University of Florence, New York University and Stanford University. His research has focused on human visual and multi-sensory interactions with the world, which he believes are the foundations for most of our behaviors.

A native of Marin County, Heather began playing violin at the age of four. Ms. Powell is currently Assistant Concertmaster of the Santa Rosa Symphony, Concertmaster of the Merced Symphony and performs regularly with the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Ballet. She has been Associate Concertmaster of the Stockton Symphony and a member of the Sacramento Philharmonic, and appeared with many other groups across Northern California. In addition to her busy concert schedule, she is committed to maintaining a sizeable private teaching studio in the town of Davis, where she has taught violin and viola for the past 7 years.

Heather has received awards from the Harvard Musical Association, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the New England String Ensemble, the Gordon Symphony Orchestra and at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.  Ms. Powell began her early instruction at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Program with Zaven Melikian, and subsequently worked with Eva Gruesser and Marylou Speaker Churchill at the New England Conservatory of Music.  In areas outside music, her studies have been wide-ranging including Italian and Film History at the Universitá di Genova and Viticulture and Enology at U.C. Davis. In 2004, Heather received her B.A Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in the Social Sciences.

Ms. Powell performs on a beautiful Guarneri model violin made by J.B. Vuillaume in 1865.

Arash Derambardh  is a councillor in France, whose campaign against food waste led to a law forcing French supermarkets to donate unwanted food to charity has set his sights on getting similar legislation passed globally.

Arash Derambarsh declares it  “scandalous and absurd” that food is wasted and in some cases deliberately spoiled while the homeless, poor and unemployed go hungry.

Born in New York City to diplomat parents, Elizaveta grew up in Moscow, Russia. She started playing piano and writing songs when she was five years old. Her childhood was full of music, but also shadowed by fears of potential fallout from a major head trauma she received as a baby, which left her with a mild case of synesthesia and prone to dramatic episodes of sleepwalking. When she turned 15, she left home and embarked upon a 3-year journey across Europe. She played piano and sang in seedy European nightclubs, studied herbal alchemy in an Italian monastery, and finished it off by attending the Prague Academy of Music. Her gypsy star then took her to Los Angeles, where she graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in opera and music composition.
In 2011, Elizaveta signed a deal with Universal Republic Records and immediately went into the studio with the multi-Grammy award winner and producer Greg Wells (Adele, Rufus Wainwright, Katy Perry, and Elton John) who helped Elizaveta hone her “opera-pop” vision and style. The result was her 2012 major label debut Beatrix Runs, which featured the iTunes Song Of The Week & single “Dreamer.”
With that debut, Elizaveta distinguished herself as the “5th Element” of pop by mixing opera with electronica, classical and soul. Elizaveta left Universal Republic Records in 2013 and launched her own label ‘Flower Army Records’ later that year. In spring of 2014, the self-titled track “Hero” from her Hero EP was remixed by electronic music duo Pegboard Nerds and featured in the viral video “Superman with a GoPro,” garnering over 17 million views on YouTube.
Since then, Elizaveta’s music has been featured in a cadre of films and numerous television shows, such as “Pretty Little Liars,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Scandal” and “The Affair,” amongst others. She is also the voice of the Tavern Bard in the award winning video game “Dragon Age-Inquisition” and has toured widely both in Europe and the United States, gracing the TED stage numerous times.
Elizaveta has also toured & collaborated with the iconic Russian rock band B-2 – their duet ‘Only Love Will Fix This’ went to #1 on Russian pop charts in spring 2015. Her single ‘Trap’ is featured in a major Russian motion picture ‘Призрак’.

Marcus Shingles is the Chief Executive Officer of The XPRIZE Foundation (www.XPRIZE.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded by its Executive Chairman, Dr. Peter Diamandis.  XPRIZE is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models that utilize the unique combination of gamification, crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies to solve the world’s grandest challenges.

Prior to XPRIZE, Marcus was a Partner at Deloitte Consulting LLP and leader of Deloitte Consulting’s Innovation Group where he worked with corporate executive teams to better understand and plan for the opportunities and threats associated with disruptive innovation driven by “exponentials” (e.g., 3d printing, block-chain, crowd-sourcing, AI) resulting from the accelerated pace of discovery, invention, and technology.  At Deloitte, Marcus also championed the strategic global partnership with Singularity University, and helped establish and lead the Innovation Partnership Program (http://ipp.biz) with XPRIZE and SU.

Marcus has over 20 years of experience, and prior to his most recent roles at XPRIZE and Deloitte, he was a successful entrepreneur founding a management consulting business working with Fortune 500 leadership teams on innovation, technology, and analytics initiatives. Earlier in his career he was the leader of the Consumer Products CRM consulting practice at Ernst & Young, and he started his career in industry at the Kellogg Company in Sales & Marketing, Global IT, and the Customer Strategy departments.

Marcus has published numerous thought-leadership pieces and presents regularly on technology trends, disruptive innovation, and related business and social impact strategies.

In his spare time, Marcus has pioneered a program in partnership with the public school system in both Los Angeles and Boston to bring “exponential entrepreneurial” training and contemporary thinking to high school students in currently underserved communities.  The program has been implemented as part of a multi-year curriculum in the classroom, designed to teach self-sufficiency and prepare students for an optimistic and exponential future.

Elizabeth Espinosa is a multilingual, two-time Emmy Award-winning reporter for KTLA.

She can also be seen on CNN Latino’s “Sin Límites,” available on KBEH-TV Channel 63 in Los Angeles

Elizabeth was previously a general assignment reporter and weekend anchor at KTTV-TV, where she spent six years as one of the station’s pinnacle reporters on the Fox 11 morning news and “Good Day L.A.” In addition to her local work with KTTV-TV, she was a correspondent for “Good Day Live,” a nationally syndicated variety program on the FOX network, which hit the airwaves in 2001.

Elizabeth was born and raised in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of UCLA and speaks five languages. She is an avid dancer, loves all types of music and is a world traveler.

Rick Reiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, four-time Golden Mike winner and three-time Emmy nominee.

He is co-host of “Studio SoCal” on the Los Angeles region’s PBS flagship station, PBS SoCal, and host and producer of “Inside OC with Rick Reiff,” which airs on PBS SoCal, Cox3-TV in Orange County and Palos Verdes and Cox 4TV in San Diego.

He previously produced and hosted the station’s “SoCal Insider with Rick Reiff” and an earlier version of “Inside OC with Rick Reiff” for 10 seasons.

Reiff is current editor at large and former editor of the Orange County Business Journal. He wrote the paper’s popular “OC Insider” column for 15 years.

He was a staff writer with Forbes magazine and a reporter at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, where he was the lead reporter on a team that won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Goodyear’s battle with a corporate raider.

Danay Garcia is an actress who can currently be seen as a series regular in the AMC hit television show “Fear the Walking Dead.” Garcia has been working steadily in film and television since arriving in the United States from Cuba in 2003. Television audiences first got to know Garcia as the star of the popular Fox series “Prison Break,” which ran for four seasons beginning in 2006. Garcia played the lead role of Sofia Lugo during the series’ final two seasons and achieved instant fame, appearing in hundreds of magazines around the world.

Garcia has also appeared in episodes of “Supernatural,” “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: New York.” Garcia just completed filming the action-thriller film “Loca,” costarring Lou Diamond Phillips, Steven Bauer, Emilio Rivera and Danny Trejo, which will be released in 2017. Other film credits include “Liz in September” (2014), by acclaimed director Fina Torres; “Eternal Ashes” (2011), which opened to critical acclaim at the Montreal Film Festival; “Rehab” (2011); “Peep World” (2010); “From Mexico With Love” (2009); “Havana Rush” (2007); and “Danika” (2006), a psychological thriller co-starring Marisa Tomei. A highly sought-after model, Garcia has been featured in print ads for brands including Mercedes-Benz and Macy’s, and has appeared in countless U.S. and international fashion magazines. Garcia is also classically trained in ballet.