think 2019

Ginni Rometty
Chairman, President, and CEO
IBM

Now serving as CEO, President, and Chairman, Ginni Rometty began her career with IBM in 1981 in Detroit. She currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of trustees of Northwestern University, as well as the board of overseers and the board of managers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Joe Montana
Legendary NFL Quarterback

Widely considered one of the best NFL quarterbacks of all time, Joe Montana personifies excellence and personal integrity both on and off the field. Yet the word most closely associated with him is not "winner"-it's "leader." During his career, Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowls Championships. Montana won more than 70% of the games he started during his 16-year career.

Tony Hawk
Legendary Skateboarder & Entrepreneur
Founder, The Tony Hawk Foundation

Now the most recognized action sports figure in the world, Tony Hawk was nine years old when his brother changed his life by giving him a blue fiberglass Bahne skateboard. By fourteen he’d turned pro, and by sixteen he was widely considered the best skateboarder on earth. In 1999, he became the first skater to ever complete a 900, and shortly thereafter, teamed up with Activision to launch Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, now a billion dollar video game franchise. He has created a Tony Hawk brand that includes Birdhouse Skateboards, Hawk Clothing, and the Tony Hawk Signature Series sporting goods and toys, authored a New York Times bestseller, and his 900 Films production company launched The RIDE Channel, the most popular skateboarding destination on YouTube. His Tony Hawk Foundation has given away over $7.4 million to 609 skatepark projects throughout the United States.

Tiffany Pham
Founder & CEO
Mogul

Tiffany Pham is the Founder & CEO of Mogul, an award-winning platform enabling women to connect, share information, and access knowledge from each other. A coder, she developed the first version of Mogul, which now reaches millions of women per week from over 196 countries and 30,470 cities worldwide, and was named one of the 100 Most Exciting Startups by Business Insider.

Arvind Krishna
Senior Vice President
Hybrid Cloud, and Director of IBM Research

As SVP of Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research, Arvind Krishna leads the company’s hybrid cloud business as well as IBM’s technical strategy in core and emerging technologies.

Dr. Kate Darling
Research Specialist
MIT Media Lab & Harvard University

Kate Darling is a researcher at the MIT Media Lab where she investigates social robotics. Darling explores the emotional connection between people and life-like inventions, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. Her research anticipates difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers and the public must address as human-robot relationships evolve.

Jeff Crose
Software Development Engineer in Test
Alaska Airlines

Jeff is a Software Development Engineer in Test who partners with development and quality assurance teams to provide high quality, right-sized test data sources for functional and performance testing. After spending nearly a decade and a half in the public sector, Jeff joined Alaska Airlines in December 2013 where he took the lead on implementing a test data management strategy for the organization. Driven by a passion for data, he has helped launch a number of mission-critical business applications and supported key airline integration efforts.

Taylor Richardson
Astronaut StarBright

Taylor Richardson, also known as Astronaut StarBright, is an advocate, speaker, and philanthropist with aspirations of becoming an astronaut. After visiting numerous NASA Space Centers and participating in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Space Camp she was inspired to get more girls interested in STEM.

Michelle Peluso
Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
IBM

As SVP and CMO of IBM, Michelle Peluso oversees all global marketing and brand initiatives, strategy, and execution for IBM, including stewardship of thousands of marketing professionals worldwide.

Rodney Mullen
Legendary Skateboarder & Entrepreneur

Widely considered the most influential skateboarder in the world, Rodney Mullen invented the majority of the tricks done in the modern era of the sport and defended his world title an unprecedented 35 times. Rodney’s engineering background and love for Linux & Open Source inspire him to relate the seemingly disparate subcultures of tech and skateboarding, addressing both innovation and resilience in entertaining, pragmatic ways.

Marc-Antoine Auger
Master Product Owner
National Bank of Canada

Marc-Antoine Auger has been working his entire professional life (23 years) with the National Bank of Canada, serving as everything from a customer service clerk to MDM chief advisor. Now, he is in charge of a major transformation program that will change the face of the organization. Using his scientific background in physics, he helped define and promote the data-driven vision that will ensure the organization success in the new digital world.  Making sure the appropriate business data models are implemented to solve data-related issues that the organization is facing, combining business perspectives with technological know-how.

Bridget van Kralingen
Senior Vice President
IBM Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain

As SVP of Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain, Bridget van Kralingen leads IBM's efforts to build a range of strategic capabilities—designed as cloud platforms and solutions—by industry.