Sarah Friar
CFO
OpenAI
Bio
Sarah Friar is the Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI. Before joining OpenAI, Sarah served as Chief Executive Officer of Nextdoor from 2018 to 2024, and as Chief Financial Officer of Block (formerly Square) between 2012 and 2018. Before her tenure at Block, Sarah served as SVP of Finance & Strategy at Salesforce, she held executive roles at Goldman Sachs and started her career at McKinsey in London and South Africa. Sarah currently sits on the board of directors of Walmart and Consensys, as well as on the advisory boards of HOPE Global, the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford University. She previously served as a director of Nextdoor, Slack and New Relic. She is the co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit that celebrates and empowers women entrepreneurs. Sarah graduated from the University of Oxford with a Masters of Engineering in Metallurgy, Economics, and Management and also from Stanford Graduate School of Business with an MBA.
Grace Beverley
Founder, TALA, SHREDDY & The Productivity Method
Co-Founder, Retrograde
Forbes 30U30
Bio
A serial entrepreneur, changemaker and digital broadcaster, Grace Beverley is an innovator by nature. Founder of activewear brand TALA, fitness tech brand Shreddy, and personal organisation brand The Productivity Method, and Co-Founder of AI company Retrograde, Beverley has a global following of over 3 million people. Grace has raised over $14m in Seed & Series A funding for TALA and Retrograde in rounds led by blue-chip venture capital funds. Beyond this, Grace is an established speaker and podcast host and was named first in Forbes 30 under 30’s retail and e-commerce list at age 23. Grace’s first book ‘Working Hard, Hardly Working’ was an instant Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller. Her podcast of the same name has a reach of over 100 million people and hasn’t left Spotify’s Top 5 in the Business Charts.
Known for confronting big topics in an informal & accessible way, Grace is a leading voice on female funding, the representation of women in media, sustainable fashion and entry into entrepreneurship, which she has spoken about on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Bloomberg News and Vogue Business. However, despite tackling mammoth topics such as these, she’s always proving that you don’t need to take yourself too seriously to be a revered businesswoman.
Hiroshi Ishii
Professor of Media Arts and Sciences & Associate Director
MIT Labs
Bio
Hiroshi Ishii is the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. He was named Media Lab Associate Director in May 2008. He is the director of the Tangible Media Group which he founded in 1995 to pursue new visions in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): “Tangible Bits” and “Radical Atoms.” Ishii and his team have presented their research at a variety of scientific, design, and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, SIGGRAPH, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Milan Design Week, Cannes Lions Festival, Aspen Ideas Festival, Industrial Design Society of America, AIGA, Ars Electronica, Centre Pompidou, Victoria and Albert Museum and NTT ICC) emphasizing that the development of a vision requires the rigors of both scientific and artistic review. In 2006 Ishii was elected to the CHI Academy by ACM SIGCHI, and received the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2019. He was named an ACM Fellow in 2022 for his contributions to Tangible User Interfaces and to Human-Computer Interaction.
Prior to joining the MIT Media Lab, from 1988-1994, Ishii led the CSCW research group at NTT Human Interface Laboratories Japan, where he and his team invented TeamWorkStation and ClearBoard.
Fawad A. Qureshi
Global Field CTO
Snowflake
Bio
Fawad is a strategic technology leader with more than two decades of international industry project experience involving consulting on enterprise data warehouses, big data analytics, and cloud solution architectures. He has worked across all stages of the technology life cycle starting from engineering, professional services, pre-sales, and business development. In his current role he works as Global Industry Field CTO, helping customers in multiple industries across the globe. He is passionate about sustainability and helps his clients in achieving their sustainability goals through the use of data and analytics.
Dr. Alessandra Sala
Sr. Director of AI and Data Science
Shutterstock
Bio
A research and scientific leader in Artificial Intelligence, Alessandra is the Sr. Director of AI and Data Science at Shutterstock. Alessandra has over 18 years’ experience in research and innovation gained whilst working in academic and commercial environments. Alessandra is passionate in advanced analytics, machine learning, and computational models with the focus of transferring innovation from research to products.
Alessandra chairs the AI and Multimedia Authenticity Collaboration, which brings together IEC, ISO, ITU and other standards organizations to foster a unified response to deepfake technology, addressing risks while harnessing the benefits of generative AI.
As Co-chair of the UNESCO Women for Ethical AI Platform, Alessandra is working with a strong community of women to foster diversity, inclusion and equality for women and minorities while encouraging a global ethical approach in AI. As Global President of Women in AI (a non-profit do-tank working towards gender-inclusive AI that benefits global society) Alessandra leads a community of women from 171 countries that empowers women and minorities to become AI & Data experts, innovators and leaders. In an advisory capacity, Alessandra also serves as the Governance Committee Chair at the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning.
Among several awards, Alessandra won the 2024 Grace Hopper and the 2021 XV International Prize “Le Tecno-visionarie” in the AI – Industrial Research category.
In her previous appointment Alessandra was Head of Analytics Research at Nokia Bell Labs where she was leading research teams in several locations and developing a successful strategy for the Data Analytics division while driving changes across different activities like her contributions to the Nokia AI Ethics Advisory Board.
David Parry-Jones
Chief Revenue Officer
DeepL
Bio
David Parry-Jones is the CRO of DeepL, an AI company transforming global communications through the world’s most accurate machine translation. He brings a breadth of expertise in enterprise software and cloud technologies, having held senior positions at Microsoft, VMware, and Twilio. He has spent over 20 years scaling and guiding global tech companies through major transformations. David puts people at the center of his work and values customer centricity as well as company culture. By focusing on building, motivating, and retaining strong teams, he enables organizations to become high-performing businesses.
Trevor Hughes
President and CEO
IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals)
Bio
As President and CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), J. Trevor Hughes leads the world’s largest association of privacy and AI governance professionals. Trevor has appeared at SXSW, RSAC and other privacy and technology events. He has contributed to media outlets such as the New York Times, TechCrunch and WIRED. He has provided testimony on issues of privacy, surveillance and privacy-sensitive technologies before the U.S. Congress, U.S. Federal Trade Commission and British Parliament. Trevor received his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his Juris Doctor from the University of Maine School Of Law, where he is an adjunct professor and member of the Law Foundation Board.
Clare Hickie
Chief Technology Officer, EMEA
Workday
Bio
Clare Hickie, Chief Technology Officer, EMEA joined Workday in June 2018. She is a passionate leader and technology champion who started her tech career in the .com era, moving with the times to cloud and digital transformation, with current focus on AI. She serves on the Board of Directors for Workday Limited. Prior to joining Workday, she worked for large blue-chip organisations including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and General Electric. Clare advocates for greater diversity and inclusion in the workplace, nurtures talent and promotes future generations in STEM through mentorship and leadership, both within and outside of Workday. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Studies and Business Studies from Brunel University, London.
Michael Green
UK&I Managing Director & Country Leader
Databricks
Bio
Michael Green is a seasoned technology and sales leader with over two decades of experience scaling high-growth businesses and driving market expansion. As UK&I Managing Director & Country Leader at Databricks, he has been instrumental in accelerating the company’s presence in the region, including the launch of its new EMEA hub office in central London.Before joining Databricks in 2022, Michael served as Senior Vice President at Salesforce, where he spearheaded business growth across three industry sectors, working with FTSE 350, Enterprise, and Commercial accounts to expand market share. Prior to that, he joined IBM through its acquisition of Princeton Softech, where he specialised in data and information management solutions.Beyond his leadership in enterprise technology, Michael is an active investor and advisor, supporting Pennies, a pioneering UK fintech charity that leverages technology for social good. He holds a BSc in Computing with Business and earned a distinction from IBM Global Sales School.
Sophia Spitzer
Chief of Staff
Marvel Fusion
Bio
Sophia is Chief of Staff at Marvel Fusion. She focuses on building strategic partnerships with potential early customers, market development, and fundraising.
Before joining Marvel Fusion, Sophia worked at McKinsey & Company, specializing in sustainability transformation and the energy transition. Her work spanned renewable energy strategies, business building in the hydrogen economy, and the future of energy systems, supporting a wide range of clients from utilities and oil & gas companies to energy equipment OEMs. Sophia holds a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering and is currently pursuing her doctorate at the Chair of Management Accounting at TU Munich. Her research focuses on the energy-economic, legal, and technical prerequisites necessary for fusion energy to assume a significant role in future energy systems.
Bianca Zwart
Chief Strategy Officer
Bunq
Bio
As Chief Strategy Officer at bunq, Bianca drives the company’s user-centric mission forward. By deeply understanding the wants and needs of bunq’s users, Bianca shapes the company’s long-term strategy and removes roadblocks on bunq’s path to becoming the world’s first global bank for digital nomads. In this role, Bianca is in charge of bunq’s PR and communications teams that shape bunq’s public image and spread the word about bunq’s story with millions of bunq’s current and potential users. Moreover, as the company’s chief strategist, Bianca steers the team at the heart of everything bunq does: user operations. After joining bunq as a frontline support guide in 2016, Bianca’s return to operations is a full circle. Having quickly grown to team leader in user support and Head of PR & Communications, Bianca left bunq to pursue her own entrepreneurial ventures. In 2018-2021, Bianca founded and scaled Black & White Communications, a PR agency working with fast-growing European companies and their inspiring founders, and Pioneer Academy, an educational, subscription-based platform that enables early-stage startup founders to build their own in-house PR-machine. After a successful exit, Bianca rejoined bunq as the company’s first Chief of Staff in 2022 where, involved in all facets of the business, she served as the co-pilot to bunq’s founder and CEO, Ali Niknam, and focused on removing operational obstacles that stood in the way of bunq’s mission. A digital nomad, Bianca lives an international lifestyle, experiencing firsthand the challenges and opportunities faced by bunq’s location-independent users around the world. This unique perspective helps her keep the company’s focus on what matters most: bunq’s users.
Pat Casey
Chief Technology Officer and EVP, Dev Ops
ServiceNow
Bio
Pat Casey joined ServiceNow in 2006 and is one of the company’s founders. He currently serves as Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Dev Ops. In this executive leadership role, Pat oversees the company’s developer productivity, quality engineering, cloud operations, advanced technologies, product operations, customer service and support, and product and apps engineering. His global organization includes more than 7,000 employees who are driving innovations and products that are transforming customer outcomes. Pat has held several executive leadership roles at ServiceNow, including Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering and Principal Architect. Prior to joining ServiceNow, Pat previously worked at Peregrine Systems, Inc. as the Product Author of the application suite, as well as Adobe Systems.
Christine Heckart
Founder and CEO
Xapa World
Bio
Christine Heckart is a 30-year tech industry veteran known for creating new business and consumer market categories. She is the founder and CEO of Xapa World, a mobile app designed to help companies develop leaders, managers, and global talent through scalable, daily skill-building. Xapa democratizes access to personal and professional development, traditionally reserved for the privileged few. Prior to Xapa, Christine was CEO of Scalyr, a data analytics company acquired by SentinelOne, and held executive roles at Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, and Juniper Networks. She currently serves on the boards of Lam Research, SiTime, 6sense, and Contentful, among others.
Recognized as one of the ten top strategic thinkers and 50 most powerful people in tech before age 30, Christine has been named among the Fifty Most Powerful Women in Technology, Top Women in Cloud, and Silicon Valley’s Top 100 Female Leaders.
Tech Hive Stage Speakers
Ben Colman
CEO and Co-Founder
Reality Defender
Efua Akumanyi
Co-CTO
Coding Black Females
Brendan Barry
CTO
Equal 1
Nabanita Roy
Senior Manager – Data Science, EY
Education Lead, Women in AI Ireland
Dr Sabina Brennan
Neuroscientist, ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin
Irish Times No 1 best-selling author
Fernando Dominguez Pinuaga
Vice President
SandboxAQ
Richard Skinner
CEO
Phased AI
Robert McArdle
EMEA Director, Senior Threat Researcher
Trend Micro
