Olayele Adelakun is an Associate professor of MIS at DePaul University Chicago, Illinois, College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM). His research focuses on IT Outsourcing, ERP systems implementation, and Information Systems Quality, IT Evaluation and Emotional Intelligence among IT Leaders.

Khalifeh AlJadda holds Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Georgia (UGA), with a specialization in machine learning. He has experience implementing large scale, distributed machine learning algorithms to solve challenging problems in domains ranging from Bioinformatics to search and recommendation engines. He is the Sr. Manager Data Science on the Recommendations data science team at The Home Depot. Moreover, He is the founder and chair of the Southern Data Science Conference (www.southerndatascience.com) and a co-founder of the non-profit organization ATLytiCS (www.atlytics.org)

Moe Alkhafaji serves as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Discovery Health Partners, where he brings a history of success as an innovative entrepreneur to the oversight of technology architecture, platform and solution enhancements, new solution development, and IT operations. Moe joined Discovery from HealthEngine, where in the role of CTO he applied his big data and machine learning expertise to rearchitect and transform its healthcare pricing and quality information portal technology. Prior to that, Moe was co-founder of Cancer IQ, a cancer risk analysis API that is fully integrated with hospital information systems and which was widely hailed for its ground-breaking technology. Moe was also a co-founder and CTO at medCPU, where he architected and developed solutions that consisted of natural language processing algorithms, machine learning models, and a decision support engine to deliver an automated medical advisor for large hospital systems. The company was later acquired by UPMC and Merck. Moe has also held roles at Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Argonne National Labs, and Abercrombie and Kent, among other firms.

Rahul is an accomplished digital marketing technologist with specialization in UX. Accredited with 20+ awards in the digital domain, he currently leads digital transformation and UX at Abbott Laboratories, Chicago. Rahul has been honored with Abbott Division highest honor - President Award, 3 years in a row. With a strong technical background in Marketing and Digital, he is an early adopter, yet understands the pragmatic realities of making new technologies work, deeply passionate about applying his talents in the service of marketing & Technology.

In his last stint he was Head - Digital Marketing across all commercial business units at Abbott India Ltd, lead Abbott digital initiatives where Abbott was awarded by Business World as one of the most visible digital pharmacy company in India. He has lead many first in Pharmacy marketing innovation initiatives - mixed reality, augmented reality, virtual reality, 3D printing, Wifi Clinics, Robotic, IOT pilots, robotics, digital experiential conferences at Abbott.

Rahul is holding a MBA in marketing, bachelor in computer science and a graduation in Media by Cannes Lions - Young Lions Media Academy, [France].

Nicholas Barger is the Director of Product Engineering at KeHE. He has built several large scale applications and products in the industries of e-commerce, insurance, medical, and aviation. His involvement in successful projects include hands on development and architecture as well as recruiting, managing, and helping talented software engineers be successful and work together. Perhaps most importantly, Nicholas has brought engineering culture and change to companies resulting in invigorated growth and development of the individuals working there and the revenue generating products they build. Nicholas is deeply interested in new technologies, continuous improvement, and passionate companies that care about others.

Lamont Black is an Assistant Professor of Finance in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University in Chicago. He is also the Academic Director for the Center for Financial Services. Prior to joining the faculty of DePaul, Dr. Black was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. His main research interests are in the areas of banking and fintech. Current research projects analyze small business credit and commercial real-estate securitization. His research has been published in several journals, including Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and the Journal of Banking and Finance. In his work on banking policy, he contributed to issues including incentive compensation and bank liquidity requirements. Dr. Black teaches commercial banking and money and capital markets in the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul. He also teaches money and banking and international finance at the undergraduate level. He received a PhD in Finance from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in 2007, as well as a PhD in Economics. He received his bachelor's degree in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.

A passionate and disciplined technologists, partnering across the enterprise to discover and explore forward-thinking technologies and determine how they might best serve the business; lead Allstate Technology Innovation R&D team partner with other enterprise innovation functions on new product and services development.

Ollie is an Engagement Manager in Deloitte’s Strategy & Analytics practice based in Chicago. Ollie has ~10 years of international strategy & consumer analytics experience across the pharmaceutical, technology and hospitality sectors.

Acting as a bridge between advanced analytics and corporate strategy, Ollie is adept at translating analytical output into actionable business value, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to derive insight from big data.

From understanding how consumers engage with specific messages and channels, to uncovering behavioral insights through text analytics and machine learning, Ollie partners with both leadership and strategy groups within major corporations to help guide key strategic and investment decisions.

Ollie also works on strategic transformation engagements that focus on driving forward firm wide analytical maturity and capabilities.

Ollie holds an MBA from Alliance Manchester Business School, an MS in Global Marketing from York School of Management and a BA(Hons) in Business and Economics

Patrick is the founder of DragonSpears, Inc. – A Midwest based software excellence consulting firm that partners with their clients to enable them to bring new digital products to market faster, respond to changing client’s needs sooner, while leveraging the newest technologies such as cloud. In addition to founding DragonSpears, he also founded the Chicago Innovation Roundtable, a non-profit focused on connecting senior leadership of various organizations to increase innovation adoption. He also is very proud of his work with Mercy Home for Boys and Girls as well as Project RELO, a non-profit that assists our military veterans in transitioning to civilian life. Patrick is a lifelong Chicagoan and a proud father of 5 children, and makes time to coach baseball and lacrosse. Patrick is extremely fortunate and proud of his 16 years of Catholic education.

Roman Dumiak recently retired as a Director in the Technology Innovation group for the Allstate Insurance Company. His focus included directing and facilitating efforts utilizing innovative software and hardware solutions from the ideation phase through implementation as part of Allstate Technology and Strategic Ventures (ATSV).

The mission of Allstate’s Technology Innovation group includes:
-Partnering with various business units and IT software teams to bring advanced and innovative solutions to market. This includes Proof of Concepts, Market Tests and partnering in the production delivery of these solutions.
-Actively seeking out and working with third-party organizations, such as universities and start-up firms to advance innovative solutions throughout the corporation.
-Advancing the role of new agile software methodologies as part of the core software development practices within Allstate.

His previous experience has included roles in application development, database administration, IT infrastructure and enterprise architecture. During his career, he has also functioned as a senior strategic planner working on a variety of IT-wide related strategies including ITIL/ ITSM planning and rollout and a Business Integrated Technology Strategy to create an optimized and integrated set of IT capabilities. Most recently, he was a key player in a fundamental transformation of the way Allstate ATSV develops, delivers and runs their technology solutions by leveraging Agile methodologies, DevOps principles and cloud-based platforms.

Mr. Dumiak has a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from the University of Illinois and a Masters in Telecommunications.

Oliver Gorman is Digital Product Innovation Practice Lead for UL LLC, based in Northbrook, Illinois, United States. The Digital Product Innovation program monitors trends and advances in technology and identifies ways to connect innovations in this space with UL’s mission to foster safe working and living environments for the world’s people.

Oliver is a graduate of the University of Dublin, Trinity College with a BA in Microbiology and of the University of Glasgow with a MSc. in Information Technology (Software and Systems).

IBM Financial Services Executive: Michael has over 20 years experience assisting Financial Services companies in driving exceptional business value through the utilization of technology. Michael has extensive experience across the full Insurance value chain including Sales and Marketing, Underwriting, Rating, Claims, Policy Administration and Billing. Michael has considerable experience in business transformation at many large insurance clients including State Farm, Allstate, AIG, Safeco, and Travelers. Michael also chairs the North American Insurance Blockchain steering committee. Prior to joining IBM, Michael held leadership roles at Accenture, Deloitte and HP.

Nick Ionita is the CEO and Co-Founder of Flux, a SaaS intelligence platform that improves employee progression, utilization and retention by turning jobs into journeys. Nick has 15+ years experience in Product and Engineering roles, and has spent his last 10 years in San Francisco building, growing, and losing his hair at start-ups. Prior to Flux, Nick was Chief Product Officer (CPO) turned CEO of Joyus (acquired by Stack Commerce), and SVP of Product Management at FreeWheel (acquired by Comcast). At FreeWheel, Nick was one of the first 25 employees and helped scale the company globally to 700+ employees. He started his career as an Engineer at IBM’s Chicago Innovation Center and stumbled into Product Management at Tribune Interactive.

Nick has an MBA from U.C. Berkeley, an MS in Information Systems from DePaul, and a BBA in Information Technology & Operations Management from Southern Methodist University. Nick is an active start-up advisor and sits on the board of DePaul’s IdLab. In his spare time he’s an avid traveler, husband, and father of a very witty 2 year old.

Dr. Ram Jambunathan is SVP and Managing Director of SAP.iO, SAP’s organization that invests in and incubates startup innovation to strategically expand SAP’s ecosystem around SAP data sets, technologies, and APIs. Ram is responsible for both the SAP.iO Fund, which makes direct investments into early stage startups in areas strategic to SAP, and the SAP.iO Foundries, a global network of top-tier, primarily zero-equity ask startup programs that provide startups access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technologies, and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.

Ram was a VP in SAP Corporate Strategy, leading various strategic initiatives including Cloud and Platform Strategy, Partner Strategy, and Industry and Regional Go To Market Strategy. Before joining SAP, Ram was a consultant at McKinsey & Co., primarily focused on helping companies in the tech & telco spaces with growth strategies. Prior to McKinsey, Ram co-founded T-Networks (now part of Broadcom), a VC-backed fiber-optics company whose lead investors included Sequoia, Greylock, and US Venture Partners. Before T-Networks, Ram was a Member of Technical Research & Development at Lucent Technologies - Bell Laboratories.

Ram has more than 5 patents and more than 10 peer-reviewed publications, and received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan Ann-Arbor. Ram is based in San Francisco.

Lawrence Johnson is Senior Vice President & Head of Fintech Engagement at Morningstar.

He leads Morningstar’s global financial technology outreach initiatives, working to strengthen the firm’s leadership role with world-class emerging growth companies, and organizations fostering innovation in software, data management, business intelligence, and user experience in the financial services sector. He also spearheads the Morningstar ICO Task Force, the Morningstar Blockchain Guild, and the Morningstar Fintech Forum.

Lawrence is a member of the Fintech ADvisory Board of the Fubon Center for Technology, Business, and Innovation - NYU Stern School of Business, and the Board of Directors of iD-Lab. Lawrence moderated and served on panels at London Fintech Week, Fintech Week Chicago, IBM Think 2018, CryptoCon 2018, Morningstar Investment Conference MIC 2018, 2nd International Blockchain Congress, and Intellsight (CFA Society).

Lawrence has a trackrecord of leading emerging growth companies to successful exists, including RightPond (acquired by Morningstar), a Fintech company using machine learning to harvest structured and unstructured financial data. He was a co-founder of yellowpages.com (acquired by AT&T), and director of CLRS Technologies (medical device - acquired by Solta Medical (Valliant)).

Before his entrepreneurial endeavors, Johnson practiced law in the area of securities and technology law. He began his career at IBM.

Lawrence holds a commerce degree from McGill University and a law degree from the Université de Montréal. He is a member in good standing of the California Bar.

Colette Matthews, Ph.D. is the Vice President of Innovation and Marketing at the Alpha Guardian company. Colette is an experienced marketing and product development professional with over a decade of experience in both the CPG and Durable goods industry. In her current role, Colette oversees all aspects of consumer-centric disruptive innovation, Brand Marketing and New Product Development. In her previous role previous roles at the world's leading manufacturer of major home appliances, Whirlpool Corporation, Colette led the Global Innovation, Connectivity & Smart Home Strategy, as well as, Consumer Insights & Strategy teams where she was instrumental in helping shape brand positioning, consumer understanding and build innovation roadmaps within Whirlpool Corporation to drive product and brand leadership. She kicked off her career at Procter & Gamble with product development roles in both the Global Beauty (China and developing markets) and Health Care business units. Later she accepted a position at Newell Rubbermaid, Beauty & Style Business Unit, where she helped drive consumer driven innovation with assignments in both Brand Management and Consumer Insights. Matthews has led the development and/or worked on a broad array of brands, including Olay, Old Spice, Goody, Solano, the entire portfolio of Whirlpool Corp. brands. Colette holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Bachelors of Biochemistry from North Carolina State.

Dr. Bamshad Mobasher is a professor of Computer Science and the director of the Center for Web Intelligence at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media in Chicago. He is also the co-founder and the director of the Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics at DePaul University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Iowa State University in 1994. His general research areas include artificial intelligence and data mining. In particular, he is considered one of the leading authorities in Web mining, Web personalization, and recommender systems. He has published 5 edited books and approximately 200 scientific articles. As the director of the Center for Web Intelligence, he directs research in these areas and regularly works with the industry on various joint projects. He serves in leadership positions of several international conferences, including the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and the ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization. He has been an organizer of several long-running and highly regarded workshop series on Web mining and personalization, including the WebKDD series of workshops on Knowledge Discovery on the Web, the Workshop on Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization, and the Workshop on Recommender Systems for the Social Web. These workshops have been held regularly at conferences such as ACM KDD, IJCAI, UMAP, RecSys, and AAAI. Dr. Mobasher serves as an associate editor for the ACM Transactions on the Web, the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology and the ACM Transactions on Intelligent Interactive Systems. He has also served on the editorial boards of several other prominent computing journals, including User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, and the Journal of Web Semantics.

Kal is a Practice Area Director for Slalom, a full-service consultancy focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. As a technology enablement leader for Slalom, Kal works with clients to help them solve their most challenging business problems, get the most value from their technology investments, mitigate risk, and find new ways to accelerate innovation, create meaningful customer experiences, and increase collaboration and engagement.

Kal has more than 25 years of experience as software engineer, architect, product manager, and delivery leader. He leads the definition, design, and development of complex software solutions in diverse environments – from fast-growing technology leaders and venture-backed startups to the Global 2000. At Slalom, Kal works across multiple technology platforms and thrives on developing digital strategies, teams, approaches, and capabilities to address the many challenges and opportunities presented by the rapidly evolving digital business and technology landscape. Kal specializes in establishing and cultivating product development teams that use lean and agile techniques in combination with DevOps and the cloud to drive innovation, value, velocity, and sustainability.

Kal is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a BSE in Electrical Engineering and also holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

Rodney Nelson is the Head of Investor Relations for CarGurus, the world’s most trusted and transparent automotive marketplace. Prior to joining CarGurus, Rodney spent seven years at Morningstar, most recently serving as a senior equity analyst for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. His coverage spanned enterprise software, including mega-cap software vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle, software-as-a-service providers such as Salesforce and Workday, and other application and infrastructure software vendors. Nelson holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Chicago.

Dwayne specializes in global delivery model design and implementation with functional skills in organization design, shared services implementation, outsourcing advisory and robotic process automation. Mr. Prosko earned his MBA at the University of Chicago with a concentration in Finance and Strategy.

Melissa Quinn is a Partner and Innovation Practice Leader at Performance Coaching Inc. She has spent 20 years in a variety of roles including leadership coach, strategy and innovation advisor, head of training and development for a global company, and COO of Doblin, Deloitte Consulting’s design and innovation practice. Through these roles, she has both observed and directly experienced the challenges of innovation leadership. Today she focuses on helping leaders make the mindset and behavior changes to lead innovation effectively in a large organization.

John Reece is CIO for GE Transportation’s Services and Digital Solutions business units. Under his leadership, the IT teams supporting these organization are driving diverse technology-driven programs the optimize shop floor processes, power commercial software capabilities and weave a digital thread through factory operations. A 14-year veteran of GE, John has led various IT initiatives leveraging technology to digitize business processes and drive outcomes for GE’s customers around the globe. He has a passion for building talented teams and creating both capacity and capability for innovation, turning cutting-edge technology into business growth and customer value.

John resides in Chicago, IL and is a dedicated husband and father of 3. He received his BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and an MBA from Loyola University.

Lauren Rosen has nearly 20 years of experience working with leading organizations on innovation, strategy, and designing compelling experiences. Prior to Salesforce, Laurenoversaw Strategic Innovation and Long-Term Growth for Beam Suntory, after several years leading Whiskey Innovation for brand icons like Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, and Knob Creek. She also spent many years as a consultant with Doblin and parent company Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte), focusing primarily on marketing strategy, innovation, and organizational change.

Lauren began her alternate life in finance, at the Federal Reserve Board and Goldman Sachs. She graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with majors in economics and psychology. She has taken courses in industrial design at Pratt Institute and holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Don Scheibenreif is a Vice President, Distinguished Analyst with Gartner's Technology Innovation and CTO research group. He is also a founding member of Gartner’s ground-breaking work on Digital Business. He works with CTOs, technology innovation and other IT leaders around the world on how emerging trends and digital business will impact enterprise digital business transformation. Prior to joining Gartner in 2010, Mr. Scheibenreif spent more than 20 years as a corporate marketing leader at companies like Quaker Oats, Coca-Cola, True Value, and Grainger. A Chicago native now residing in Seattle with his wife, he remains on a quest to find a decent hot dog in the Pacific Northwest.

Patrick Soule is a director within Allstate Roadside Service-IT supporting all ARS Operations business units. In this role, he leads technology strategy and support efforts for the ARS Assist Centers, Billing and Payment Services, Provider Network, RoadSmart® and all ARS Operations functions.

Allstate Roadside Services supports over 13 million calls and 3 million rescues per year on behalf of Allstate and more than 100 strategic business partners that include GM, BMW, Ferrari, AARP, Verizon, T-Mobile and other companies.

Patrick has more than 30 years of experience in IT and has overseen several major technological initiatives at Allstate. He was the lead for Allstate’s Enterprise IT Service Management (ITSM) strategy and optimizations; he designed and implemented a Production Support Operating Model for all Distribution Marketing and Enterprise Application; and he served as a Domain Architect for Claims.

Patrick has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a MBA from DePaul University. He and his wife, Jan, have two boys, Liam and Aidan.

Dr. Velkoski leads data science at the National Association of REALTORS®, where he spearheads development of the organization's Member Insight Datalab (MInD). In addition, Aleksandar lectures in the College of Computing at DePaul University, where he instructs courses encompassing topics in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dr. Velkoski is a frequent speaker at conferences, where he discusses artificial intelligence and its impact on real estate. He earned his doctorate in business with a focus in economics from Lawrence Tech. University, and holds an M.B.A. and B.S. from the same institution.