Amit Zavery

Head of Platform for Google Cloud

Amit is currently responsible for Google’s market leading Apigee product portfolio for API management and application integration. Prior to joining Google, Amit was an Executive Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Cloud Platform and Middleware products generating more than $6 billion of Oracle’s revenue annually. He led Oracle’s product vision, design, development, and go-to-market strategy for cloud platform, middleware, and analytics portfolio and oversaw a global team of more than 4,500 employees.

Amit has a proven track record of designing and delivering market leading products and building organizations by recruiting and retaining world-class talent. He was instrumental in building Oracle’s Fusion Middleware product portfolio that scaled from zero to $5B in annual revenue in less than 10 years. He led Oracle's transformation into a cloud platform provider by starting and building Oracle Public Cloud and operating multiple cloud native services that generated more than $800M in annual recurring revenue.

Rebecca Nugent

Associate Department Head, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Statistics and Data Science Department

Rebecca Nugent is the Associate Department Head and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies for Carnegie Mellon Statistics & Data Science. She received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington. Prior to that, she received her B.A. in Mathematics, Statistics, and Spanish from Rice University and her M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University. She has won several national and university teaching awards, including the American Statistical Association Waller Award for Innovation in Statistics Education, and serves as one of the co-editors of the Springer Texts in Statistics. She recently served on the National Academy of Sciences study on Envisioning the Data Science Discipline: The Undergraduate Perspective and is the co-chair of the current NAS study on Improving Defense Acquisition Workforce Capability in Data Use. She is the Founding Director of the Statistics & Data Science Corporate Capstone program, an experiential learning initiative that matches groups of faculty and students with data science problems in industry, non-profits, and government organizations. She has worked extensively in clustering and classification methodology with an emphasis on high-dimensional, big data problems. Her current research focus is the development and deployment of low-barrier data analysis platforms that allow for adaptive instruction and the study of data science as a science

Tony Uphoff

President & CEO,
Thomas

Tony Uphoff is President and CEO of Thomas, the parent company of Thomasnet.com: the leading platform for product sourcing and supplier selection for the Industrial and Manufacturing markets. His career in business information has given him a ring side seat for every major technology transformation of the last 25 years. Tony regularly speaks on the digital transformation of business and the overarching impact technology is having on business management and leadership. In addition to his role at Thomas, Tony also serves as an advisor and board member of several tech and media companies as well as a mentor at Mucker Labs and a Trustee of Linfield College.

Gustavo Lopez

General Manager for MSA’s Safety io, Portable Gas Detection and Sierra Monitor businesses.

Gustavo oversees a broad range of product group responsibilities, both short- and long-term, including managing product offerings and product positioning, establishing product launch pricing, driving operating margin performance, managing all voice-of-customer activities, establishing product development priorities, and enhancing MSA’s global technical selling capabilities. Gustavo joined MSA in 2004 as a Staff Engineer tasked with leading a new product development project for portable instruments. Over his 15-year tenure with the company, he has held several roles of increasing responsibility, including Portfolio Analyst; Product Line Manager for Detection products; and Product Group Manager for Portable Instruments, where Gustavo and his team were tasked with building MSA's wireless and connectivity group, thereby solidifying the foundation for the various connectivity platforms MSA is launching today. Gustavo received both his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, and his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Pittsburgh. He also holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.A native of Venezuela, Gustavo is fluent in Spanish and resides in the Franklin Park area of Pittsburgh, Pa., with his wife and three children.

Priscilla Beal

Global Head, G4A Digital Health Ecosystem & Engagement

In her current role as Head of Digital Health Engagement for Bayer G4A, Priscilla applies her passion for helping people live happier, healthier lives to identifying, establishing and growing digital health partnerships with startups, entrepreneurs, VCs and the innovation ecosystem at-large. Her passion and contributions to Digital Health were recently recognized by CB Insights, who named Priscilla one of “15 Smart People in Healthcare” (Nov 2018) and MM&M’s “Top 40 Healthcare Transformers” (March 2019). In addition to helping Bayer Consumer and Pharmaceutical Health divisions deliver new products, solutions and experiences to the patient/consumer, Priscilla is dedicated to people development, especially where diversity and inclusion is concerned. She joined Bayer in 2014. Prior to Bayer, she spent 10 years managing the digital projects and strategies of global clients, where her focus was on customer centricity and delighting people with usable, engaging and beautiful digital experiences.

Christina Weir

Vice-President, Enterprise Clinical Operations

Highmark Health Clinical Transformation Office

Christina currently serves as the Vice President of Enterprise Clinical Operations at Highmark Health, reporting directly to the Chief Clinical Transformation Officer.  In this role, Christina is responsible for the development and implementation of transformative clinical strategies and innovations that span the integrated delivery system and finance model. She joined Highmark Health as the Director of Innovation in 2017 where she led multiple areas of healthcare innovation and transformation, including clinical transformation strategy and the development of Accelerate 25, a Human Centered Design Innovation accelerator. 

Prior to joining Highmark in 2017, Christina led Business Innovation & Digital Health at Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, where she was responsible for the development of digital therapeutic and connected health strategy and market operations. Prior to joining Boehringer-Ingelheim, Christina spent  seventeen years with Pfizer Inc., holding various roles and gaining experience in leadership, commercial effectiveness planning, product strategy and development, customer segmentation and go-to-market planning in the bio-pharmaceutical and medical device technology industries.

Dave Mawhinney

Executive Director, Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University

Dave is an experienced entrepreneur, investor and senior executive with a demonstrated history of creating valuable companies. Rapidly promoted in higher education for strong classroom performance and creating broad and deep experiential learning programs to benefit students, faculty and alumni. Strong business development professional with a MBA with Distinction focused in Entrepreneurship from Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper School of Business. Summa Cu Laude graduate from IUP with a major in Physics and minors in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science

David Passavant

CEO, numo

David is the CEO of numo— a fintech incubator subsidiary of PNC Bank.

numo finds new ideas in fintech— then builds products & businesses around those ideas with a team of in-house entrepreneurs & engineers. Successful products are spun out into standalone companies.

David was previously an early employee at billion dollar Silicon Valley startups Deem and SquareTrade Inc. Prior to his startup work David held consulting positions with Accenture and Stone Yamashita Partners.

David holds a degree in Computer Science from Washington & Lee University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sean Ammirati

Professor, Tepper Business School

Director & Co-Founder, Corporate Startup Lab

Partner, Birchmere Ventures

Sean is a Venture Capitalist, teaches graduate entrepreneurship courses at Carnegie Mellon, and leads a lab at CMU dedicated to helping large companies better adapt and integrate entrepreneurial best practices into their own innovation processes.

Earlier in his career, Sean spent a dozen years founding, building and selling businesses in the software and media industries.  He started and sold 3 businesses including being the co-founder and CEO of mSpoke, which was LinkedIn's first acquisition.

He recently completed his first book The Science of Growth, which was released by St Martin's Press in April 2016 and was subsequently translated and published in Korean and Mandarin.

Lou Musante

Founder, Echo Strategies

Lou is a serial entrepreneur and research designer who spent the 1970’s and early 1980’s working in large global corporations. Started his first company in 1984 and has launched and helped start dozens of others. His background is in chemistry with a master’s in information science. Areas of focus: Digital Transformations & Work Process Automation, Methods for Measuring and Influencing Subjective Well-Being, Human-Centered Product Design, Transformational Innovation Strategy & Corporate Entrepreneurship.

Lou lectures at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Melon University. He has been an advisor to the Corporate Startup Lab at CMU since inception.  

Lou enjoys hanging out with his wife and five daughters, helping corporate entrepreneurs learn new tricks and walking on the streets in large cities and in the woods.