The Business Implications of Generative AI @ MIT (BIG.AI@MIT)

Enjoy pre-conference networking and breakfast.

• Sinan Aral – Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Sinan Aral is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor, who is ranked among the top 50 management scholars in the world and was rated the World’s “Top Digital Thinker” in 2021. He is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT and Data Science at MIT, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and a Founding Partner at the venture capital firms Manifest Capital and Milemark Capital. He has been called “one of the first and most prescient scholars of social media” by former U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Stengle.

Sinan was the Chief Scientist at SocialAmp, one of the first social commerce analytics companies (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin, a social platform that the Wall Street Journal called the first “Social Operating System” (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). He has served on the Advisory Boards of the Alan Turing Institute (the British National Institute for Data Science in London), the Center for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Norway, and C6 Bank, the first all digital bank of Brazil.

Sinan’s research and teaching has earned the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, the PopTech Science Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Fulbright Scholarship, the Jamieson Award for Teaching Excellence (MIT Sloan’s highest teaching honor), and the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award. In 2018, he became the youngest ever recipient of the Herbert Simon Award of Rajk László College in Budapest, Hungary. His first book, The Hype Machine, which New York Magazine called “prophetic,” was named a 2020 Best Book on Artificial Intelligence by WIRED.

Sinan earned his PhD at MIT and his Master’s degrees at the LSE and Harvard. You can find him on Twitter @sinanaral and Instagram @professorsinan.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Des Dearlove – Co-Founder, Thinkers50

Panelists:

• Scott D. Anthony – Professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College
• Rita McGrath – Professor, Columbia Business School
• H. James Wilson – Global Managing Director of Technology Research and Thought Leadership, Accenture

For all the hype about GenAI, and all the doomsday predictions, the big (biggest) question is how significant will its impact be on humanity and the planet? Is it a game changer, or a whole new game? That is at the heart of concerns about job losses, algorithmic biases, ethical dilemmas, and a host of other issues. It is also the question on the minds of business leaders. Few business leaders doubt that AI has the power to transform the world we live in. But is it simply the next in a series of ‘disruptive innovations’, or is it a new paradigm altogether? Do our existing strategy and innovation frameworks, tools and theories still hold in this brave new world? Or do we need new thought-leadership to make sense of and navigate through the AI inflection point?

In this session, world-leading business thinkers discuss whether it’s time to throw away the old MBA toolkit and create a new one fit for the AI era.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Sinan Aral – Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Panelists:

• Susan Athey – Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Sendhil Mullainathan – Professor of Computer Science and Economics, MIT
• Daniela Rus – Professor, MIT and Director, MIT CSAIL

Generative AI is a once-in-a-generation disruptive technology that has the potential to transform how work is performed across every industry and function. While its potential is becoming more tangible, the specifics of how Generative AI impacts organizations and roles is rapidly evolving along with the technology, challenging leaders to understand how, where, and when to best leverage investments in Generative AI to drive differentiated outcomes. 65% of executives can’t explain how their AI models make decisions. 78% of organizations use third-party AI tools, which is a concern given that 55% of all AI failures (e.g. hallucinations) come from third-party tools. And like any tool, GenAI and the underlying Large Language Models and associated generative Diffusion Models may generate out of date, biased, incorrect, or inconsistent results. The focus of this session is to bring together the world’s leading researchers in the GenAI space to discuss, debate, and propose the research necessary to understand the causal impact (positive and negative) on organizations, roles, and individuals in the context of the future of work.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Sinan Aral – Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Panelists:

• Michiel Bakker – Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan
• Manish Raghavan – Professor, MIT Sloan and MIT EECS

Enjoy lunch and networking with conference attendees and invited speakers. The Impact of AI on Society panel will begin at 12:45pm.

This session is all about AI, fairness, bias, model development, new trends, solutions and the societal impacts of AI.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Lan Guan – Chief AI Officer, Accenture

Panelists:

• Vala Afshar – Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce
• Bhavesh Dayalji – Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at S&P Global and Chief Executive Officer of Kensho
• Rose Mei – VP Integrated Business Planning & Artificial Intelligence, Tronox
• Soumya Seetharam – Senior Vice President & Chief Digital & Information Officer, Corning Incorporated
• Dr. Savannah Thais – Associate Research Director, Columbia University Data Science Institute

As generative AI technologies gain traction, businesses are seeking strategies to harness their potential while grappling with scaling challenges. This session will focus on cutting-edge applications of generative AI that have delivered significant business impact. We will examine trends, such as model consumption, customization, and the deployment of AI agents. Additionally, we will discuss the essential prerequisites for businesses to scale generative AI effectively to drive innovation and growth.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Bill Aulet – Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship

Panelists:

• M.L. Carr – Partner, New Technology Ventures
• Lily Lyman – General Partner, Underscore VC
• Stephanie MacConnell – Director, MIT delta v NYC
• Heidi Messer – co-Founder and Chairperson, Collective[i]

The question is not whether AI is coming but rather the question is how big, how fast and in what areas? While we might not be able to answer those questions, we do know that the future will be driven by entrepreneurs. Many of those entrepreneurs will be fueled by Venture Capital. In fact, today the dominant share of the all the venture capital funding being deployed is going to AI companies. In this session we will discuss what can we learn from the investment patterns evident from this tsunami. We will also look at this from an entrepreneur’s perspective and finally how AI is turbo charging the entrepreneurship process itself and the ramifications. All of this is cooking up a never before seen strange brew and in this session, we will take a peek in the kitchen to get some insights on the future.

Enjoy a 15-minute coffee break.

Session Lead & Moderator:

• Sebastian Barriga – Founder & General Partner, Milemark Capital

In the first half of 2024, artificial intelligence startups attracted unprecedented investment, securing nearly $40 billion in funding. Notably, five of the six mega-rounds exceeding $1 billion were captured by AI innovators. Meanwhile, 35 US-based AI startups achieved significant milestones, raising over $100 million each. MIT’s thriving ecosystem is a powerhouse for innovation, entrepreneurship, and venture creation, nurturing visionary ideas and transformative technologies. This exclusive session showcases 10 handpicked, high-potential startups from the MIT ecosystem, each boasting proprietary AI models poised to disrupt and capture value across diverse industries. As vanguards of technological progress, early-stage companies drive business, societal, and economic advancement. Join us to glimpse the future of AI and discover the pioneering spirits shaping tomorrow’s landscape.

Closing remarks from conference organizers followed by a networking reception with conference attendees and speakers.

Conference concludes.

Vala Afshar is Salesforce’s Chief Digital Evangelist. He is a world renowned speaker on business digital technologies, a patent holding inventor, a social media contributor with over one million followers on Twitter/LinkedIn (@ValaAfshar). He is the author of, Boundless: A New Mindset for Unlimited Business Success, and host of the most popular weekly web series devoted to business technology, DisrupTV.

Afshar is a regular contributor to technology and business publication, including ZDNET. He is, however, at heart a business leader and practitioner with a successful career as a chief marketing officer (CMO), chief customer officer (CCO), and vice president of engineering at several technology companies before Salesforce.

Scott D. Anthony is a Clinical Professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Scott’s ninth book—Anomalies Wanted: A Brief History of Disruption—will be released in 2025. His previous books include Dual Transformation, Eat, Sleep, Innovate, The Little Black Book of Innovation, and Seeing What’s Next. In 2023 Thinkers50 named him the world’s ninth most influential management thinker. He won the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2017.

Sinan Aral is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor, who is ranked among the top 50 management scholars in the world and was rated the World’s “Top Digital Thinker” in 2021. He is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT and Data Science at MIT, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and a Founding Partner at the venture capital firms Manifest Capital and Milemark Capital. He has been called “one of the first and most prescient scholars of social media” by former U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Stengle.

Sinan was the Chief Scientist at SocialAmp, one of the first social commerce analytics companies (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin, a social platform that the Wall Street Journal called the first “Social Operating System” (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). He has served on the Advisory Boards of the Alan Turing Institute (the British National Institute for Data Science in London), the Center for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Norway, and C6 Bank, the first all digital bank of Brazil.

Sinan’s research and teaching has earned the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, the PopTech Science Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Fulbright Scholarship, the Jamieson Award for Teaching Excellence (MIT Sloan’s highest teaching honor), and the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award. In 2018, he became the youngest ever recipient of the Herbert Simon Award of Rajk László College in Budapest, Hungary. His first book, The Hype Machine, which New York Magazine called “prophetic,” was named a 2020 Best Book on Artificial Intelligence by WIRED.

Sinan earned his PhD at MIT and his Master’s degrees at the LSE and Harvard. You can find him on Twitter @sinanaral and Instagram @professorsinan.

Professor Athey is the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Science and is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economics Association to the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contributions to thought and knowledge. Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and the application of digital technology to social impact. As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and has served on the boards of multiple private and public technology firms. She also served as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. She was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and she is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Labopen in new window at Stanford GSB. From 2022 to 2024, she took leave from Stanford to serve as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Professor Athey was the 2023 President of the American Economics Association, where she previously served as Vice President and Elected Member of the Executive Committee.

Bill Aulet is the Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

He is changing the way entrepreneurship is understood, taught, and practiced around the world. Bill is an award-winning educator and author whose current work is built off the foundation of his 25-year successful business career first at IBM and then as a three-time serial entrepreneur. During this time, he directly raised over a hundred million dollars and, more importantly, created hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value through his companies. Since 2009, he has been responsible for leading the development of entrepreneurship education across MIT at the Martin Trust Center. Bill’s first book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, released in August 2013, has been translated into over 18 languages and has been the content for three online edX courses which have been taken by hundreds of thousands of people in 199 different countries. The accompanying follow-on book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook, was released in April 2017. Bill has widely published in in places such as the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, the Sloan Management Review, the Kauffman Foundation, Entrepreneur Magazine, MIT Sloan Experts and more. He has been a featured speaker on shows such as CNBC’s Squawk Box, BBC News, Bloomberg News as well as at events and conferences around the world.

He has degrees from Harvard and MIT, and is a board member of MITEK Systems (NASDAQ: MITK) and XL Fleet. (Private). He is also a Visiting Professor at University of Strathclyde (Scotland). On July 1, 2017, Bill was named a Professor of the Practice at MIT Sloan, the first at the school in the area of entrepreneurship since Alex d’Arbeloff held that title in 2003. For his efforts, Bill has earned external recognition as well including Boston 50 on Fire, 2017 Favorite MBA Professors from Poets and Quants, and 2018 Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

Sebastian is the founder of Cambridge/Kendall-based VC Firm, milemark•capital, along with 3 MIT partners, investing in Applied-AI early-stage startups from MIT/Harvard.

Advisor to two cutting-edge AI-engineering firms helping enterprises deploy data science projects: Nitid.ai with expertise in explainable-AI (Spain) and Pharu Analytics, Google’s partner (Chile)

Former investor with The Carlyle Group as Director in the $358M inaugural fund for Spanish speaking South America. Board member on all six investments with experience installing and supporting C-Suite management teams in the design and execution of strategy. Previously Vice President in Investment Banking with Citigroup in New York. Operating experience as CFO of a publicly traded company in Brazil.

Board member of integrated wholesaler/retailer of sporting goods with $750M in sales and $100M EBITDA. Advisory Board member for the Sloan Visiting Fellows Program at MIT.

Sloan Fellows MBA degree from MIT and BBA-Finance degree from The University of Texas at Austin.

SPORTS

M.L. Carr started his famed professional basketball career after graduating from Guilford College in 1973, where he was named All American and led his team to the NAIA Championship.  Upon graduating, he was drafted by both the Kentucky Colonels from the American Basketball Association and the Kansas City Kings from the National Basketball Association.  The following season, he played for the Israel Sabras in the European Pro Basketball League, where he was named MVP for guiding his team to the championship.  In 1975, Carr played for the Spirits of St. Louis in the ABA and was named to the ABA’s All-Rookie team.  When the ABA and NBA merged, he joined the NBA by playing for the Detroit Pistons from 1976-79, where he was selected to the All-Defense second team during the 1979 season, after leading the league in steals.

After being regarded as one of the top sought-after free agents in 1979, Carr signed with the Boston Celtics, where he played from 1979-85.  During his tenure with the Celtics, he won two NBA World Championships in 1981 and 1984.  He is best known for the steal and dunk he made in the 1984 NBA finals to seal the victory for the Celtics against the Lakers.  He is also famous for waving a towel to fire up the fans and his teammates.

Carr later became Director of Basketball Operations for the Celtics in 1994.  The following year, he joined Red Auerbach as the only other Celtic to hold dual titles as Director of Basketball Operations and Head Couch during the 1994-95 and 1996-97 seasons.  After the 1997 season, he became the Celtics’ Director of Corporate Development.  In 2004, Carr became a minority owner of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats.

BUSINESS

Since retiring from the Boston Celtics in 1985, Carr launched M.L. Enterprises, a sports marketing/motivational speaking/business consulting firm.  He became a spokesperson for such companies as Bank of Boston, New Balance Athletic Shoe, Putnam Investments and Massachusetts Financial Services.  Mr. Carr is now a partner with New Technology Ventures, a private equity/venture firm located in Newton, Massachusetts.  He currently serves as CEO of dSide AI.

PHILANTHROPY

Since his professional playing days, Carr has always made a strong commitment to give back to the community.  He has received numerous awards for his community work including the President’s Citation award for the “M.L. Carr Stand Tall Against Drugs Program,” Ten Outstanding Young Leaders Award, Dr. Martin Luther King Image Award, Camille Cosby Award and Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Salem State College to name a few.  He is also the founder of the M.L. Carr Scholarship Fund at Guilford College and the John Henry Carr Alzheimer’s and Aging Foundation.

BOARDS

Carr has served on several boards, including CBS affiliate Channel 7/Boston, New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., and Guilford College.  Currently he serves on the boards of dSide Technologies, and New Technology Ventures.

AUTHOR

Carr is the author of three books; Don’t Be Denied (autobiography), Enough is Enough (a book of poetry exposing all forms of discrimination, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism) and Winning Through Persistence (a motivational handbook).

PERSONAL

Carr grew up in Wallace, North Carolina, and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts.  Carr and his wife Sylvia have three children, four granddaughters and one grandson.

Bhavesh Dayalji is the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at S&P Global and the Chief Executive Officer of Kensho. He leads S&P Global’s AI strategy and is the CEO of Kensho, S&P Global’s AI innovation hub.

In his role as Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, Bhavesh is responsible for S&P Global’s AI vision and strategy, championing the use and deployment of AI technology to accelerate innovation across S&P Global and for its customers.

As Kensho CEO, he has worked to drive Kensho’s growth through the use of its products at the world’s largest financial institutions and the U.S. Intelligence Community. Bhavesh was one of the company’s early hires, and has served in a variety of leadership roles focused on developing and scaling Kensho’s products, engineering, and client-facing teams before being named CEO in 2021.

Kensho received backing from Google Ventures, leading financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase and S&P Global and the venture capital arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel. Kensho was acquired by S&P Global in 2018.

Prior to Kensho, Bhavesh was a senior leader in Deloitte’s strategy and M&A practice. He was the engagement leader for many high-profile C-suite clients, advising them on M&A strategy, leading due diligence efforts and developing growth strategies in the financial services industry.

Bhavesh started his career working on the software engineering team at CERN, the European Organization for Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland, the team responsible for the discovery of the Higgs boson particle. Bhavesh graduated with a BS in Software Engineering and Physics from De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. A keen cricketer, he played on the university team and trained and participated in trials for Leicestershire County Cricket Club. Bhavesh lives in the greater Boston area with his wife Emily and his children Bodhi, Vera and Ruby.

Des is a former columnist to The Times (London), contributing editor to Strategy+Business, and co-editor of the bestselling Financial Times Handbook of Management. He has taught at some of the world’s leading business schools, including IE Business School and the Said Business School at Oxford University, where he is an associate fellow. He is also the author of the Archie Greene trilogy of children’s books under the pen name D. D. Everest.

Lan Guan serves as chief AI officer for Accenture. In this role, she works closely with companies across industries and geographies to develop data and AI strategies that drive value and growth. Lan brings deep expertise in embedding AI into business processes and transforming data into actionable insights and leads. Lan is also a member of the Global Management Committee.

Lan also leads the Accenture Center for Advanced AI—the AI epicenter that enables enterprises to capture and create value from their AI investment by leveraging deep  expertise, differentiated scalable assets and solutions underpinned by data prowess and industry knowledge, and market-leading thought leadership and research.

Prior to this role, Lan was the global leader for Data & AI for Accenture Cloud First, where she focused on transforming data propelled by the Cloud Continuum into actionable plans and scalable solutions to maximize market opportunities for clients.

Lan serves on the advisory board of the AI4All, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, development and policy. She is a founding member of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)—an institute dedicated to advancing AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition—where she established the Accenture Stanford Foundation Model Scholar Program.

Lan was listed as one of the Top 25 Consultants and Leaders in AI by The Consulting Report in 2023. She received the Outstanding 50 Asian American in Business award in 2023 and was the recipient of the Top Women Leaders in Consulting for 2022.

Lan holds an MBA degree in Computational Engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and a PhD ABD in Quantitative Econometrics from Wayne State University. She been awarded over ten patents in AI-related areas including content recommendations, digital marketing and sales optimization. Lan is an Adjunct Faculty with Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

Lily is a General Partner at Underscore VC, a Boston-based firm investing at Pre-Seed and Seed stage in bold B2B software founders. There she leads identifying investment opportunities in companies that will define categories, reshape industries, and change the world via the Vertical Software, Future of Work, Digital Transformation. Lily is ideally suited to identify and support companies with global potential, as she offers a truly global perspective: she has lived and worked in over 75 countries, building experience that allows her to connect with founders and individuals from all walks of life. Lily came to Underscore VC from Facebook, where, as a growth leader, she launched products that drove 100M new users in 4 years. Before Facebook, she held strategy, operational, and entrepreneurial roles, including co-founding an Agtech & CPG startup while at Stanford. Today she is a Board Director for the New England Venture Capital Association, MIT Sandbox Funding Board, Harvard Allston Fund, WBUR, and is a leader of the Boston All Raise chapter. Lily earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She also holds a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from Columbia Business School and a Certificate in Public Management from Stanford GSB and was a founding member of the Yard Venture’s Investment Committee.

Stephanie MacConnell is the Director of the MIT delta v NYC accelerator program as well as an angel investor and advisor to early stage startups. Stephanie led the launch of the inaugural year of the MIT AI + Entrepreneurship Certificate collaboration with the City College of New York to upskill non-technical undergraduate students for internships and jobs.

Stephanie is a founder, an angel investor, and focuses on healthcare and fintech with a background at Epic, Clover Health, Project Beacon (acq Ginkgo) and others. She is a Forbes contributor, and has supported companies across stages from pre-seed to growth and large corporates. She is passionate about building great products and helping develop the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Andrew McAfee is the Co-Director of the IDE and a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

His research investigates how information technology changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. At a higher level, his work also focuses on how computerization affects competition, society, the economy, and the workforce. In addition to having numerous papers published, McAfee also writes a widely read blog, which is at times one of the 10,000 most popular in the world. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles, case studies and other materials for students and teachers of technology. Prior to joining MIT Sloan, McAfee was a professor at Harvard Business School. He has also served as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. McAfee received his doctorate from Harvard Business School, and completed two Master of Science and two Bachelor of Science degrees at MIT. He speaks frequently to both academic and industry audiences, and has taught in executive education programs around the world.

Columbia Business School’s Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after advisor and a speaker. Rita is considered one of the world’s top experts on strategy and innovation. She is the winner of the 2022 CK Prahalad award for scholarly impact on practice from the Strategic Management Society, and in the same year was inducted into the Business Excellence Hall of Fame. She ranks among the top 10 management thinkers globally, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50. Rita’s most recent book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Rita is the author of four other books, including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

Rita is one of the most widely published authors in the Harvard Business Review, including the best-selling article “Discovery Driven Planning” (1995), which was recognized as an early articulation of today’s “lean” startup philosophy and was praised by Clayton Christensen as one of the most important ideas in management – ever. She is also a highly-respected academic researcher whose work has won awards from the most prestigious management journals.

On the lighter side, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the 25 smartest women to follow on Twitter.

Rose Mei is the Vice President of Integrated Business Planning and Artificial Intelligence at Tronox, a vertically integrated mining and chemical manufacturing company with operations spanning six continents.

As a dynamic leader, she specializes in creating business value through digital innovation and advanced analytics. With deep expertise in operations, supply chain, global logistics, global trade, enterprise planning, and Data & AI, she has consistently driven profitability, optimized capital investments, and enhanced global value chains. Her leadership has delivered measurable impact by improving operational efficiency and enabling market expansion across diverse industries, including manufacturing, entertainment, retail, logistics, and customer service etc.

She holds a Master of Engineering in Supply Chain and Logistics Management from MIT and has completed executive programs in Leadership, Strategy, and Innovation from top business schools. She is also certified in Artificial Intelligence: Business Strategy from MIT and Cybersecurity from Harvard.

Heidi Messer
X: @heidimesser, @collectivei
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidimesser/

Heidi Messer has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the digital economy since the commercialization of the Internet. Today, she is the co-Founder and Chairperson of Collective[i]™.

Collective[i] has created a groundbreaking Economic Foundation Model (“EFM”) with far-reaching applications across various sectors of the economy. The model has been trained on a massive set of proprietary and permissioned data using artificial intelligence to surface dynamic insights. The model produces intelligence designed to help people and companies prosper in response to changing market conditions.

Collective[i]’s applications and APIs are designed to help leveraging data, human talent, and social connection to optimize and accelerate profitable outcomes. While the company’s initial focus included transforming B2B sales processes, its technology now extends to areas such as supply chain optimization, market forecasting, and strategic decision-making for businesses of all sizes.

Prior to Collective[i], Ms. Messer and her brother, Stephen Messer, co-founded LinkShare Corporation, host to one of the world’s largest online affiliate networks representing the world’s premier publishers and merchants on the web. The company is widely considered to be a pioneer in the world of affiliate marketing, SaaS, digital advertising and the sharing economy.

Under Ms. Messer’s leadership, LinkShare was recognized by Deloitte and Touche for two consecutive years as the fastest growing technology company in the New York Region. Ms. Messer served as a board member, President and Chief Operating Officer of LinkShare until its sale to Rakuten (4755:JASDAQ) for $425 million.

Ms. Messer is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities around the world on artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, entrepreneurship, modern sales, marketing and the future of work. She has been cited in various publications including, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Vogue, the NY Post, The Nikkei, Women’s Wear Daily, and Chief Executive Magazine. Ms. Messer has also appeared on national television and radio programs including the Today Show, Rock Center with Brian Williams, Business Talk Radio, CNBC, Fox News, CBS Morning News and the Fox Morning Show.

Ms. Messer is the host of Collective[i] Forecast, an award winning series that explores the work of the world’s most influential and brilliant minds to discuss important trends, innovations, and global challenges. Past featured speakers include Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Dr. Yann LeCun, Daniel Pink, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, Terry Crews, Ambassador William Taylor, Danny Meyer, Sherilyn Ifill, Goldie Hawn, Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Dr. Avi Loeb, Dr. Alfred Aho, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Dr. Brian Greene, and many other extraordinary individuals.

Ms. Messer has received several honors including being selected as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs (2012) and is a recipient of the Technology Pioneer Award during Women’s Entrepreneurship Day hosted at the United Nations (2015). Ms. Messer has served on the boards of Aperture Investors, the Partnership for NYC, the Partnership Fund for NYC, Union Square Hospitality Group, and the Board of Trustees for New York-Presbyterian Hospital as well as the advisory board for the Johns Hopkins University Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Brown Entrepreneurship Program.
Ms. Messer is an advisor to AXA Venture Partners and serves on the investment committee for The Equity Alliance.

Ms. Messer received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. She received her juris doctorate from Harvard Law School graduating cum laude.

Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor in the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) Department. His current research uses machine learning to understand complex problems in human behavior, social policy, and especially medicine, where computational techniques have the potential to uncover biomedical insights from large-scale health data. He currently teaches a course on Artificial Intelligence.

In past work he has combined insights from economics and behavioral science with causal inference tools—lab, field, and natural experiments—to study social problems such as discrimination and poverty. Papers include: the impact of poverty on mental bandwidth; how algorithms can improve on judicial decision-making; whether CEO pay is excessive; using fictitious resumes to measure discrimination; showing that higher cigarette taxes makes smokers happier; and modeling how competition affects media bias.

Mullainathan enjoys writing. He recently co-authored Scarcity: Why Having too Little Means so Much and writes regularly for the New York Times. Additionally, his research has appeared in a variety of publications including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, American Economic Review, Psychological Science, the British Medical Journal, and Management Science.

Mullainathan helped co-found a non-profit to apply behavioral science (ideas42), co-founded a center to promote the use of randomized control trials in development (the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), serves on the board of the MacArthur Foundation, has worked in government in various roles, is affiliated with the NBER and BREAD, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Prior to his current role at MIT, Mullainathan was the Roman Family University Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth and the inaugural Faculty Director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence. Prior to joining Booth, he was the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he taught courses about machine learning and big data. He began his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mullainathan is a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” has been designated a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, was labeled a “Top 100 Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, and was named to the “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world” by Wired Magazine (UK). His hobbies include basketball, board games, googling, and fixing up classic espresso machines.

Soumya Seetharam was appointed senior vice president and chief digital and information officer in November 2022.  In this role Seetharam is responsible for leading the strategic direction of Corning’s global information technology function and evolving the company’s digital footprint. She will drive operational stability at market-competitive costs and progress technology capabilities to advance Corning.

As CDIO, she partners closely with business units and functional leaders to deliver greater value by reshaping Corning’s digital outlook in the context of data and analytics, connected ecosystems, the “internet of things,” process optimization, and customer service.

Prior to joining Corning, Seetharam served as vice president and general manager of Information Technology at Intel, where she led her team in driving IT vision and strategy for Corporate Functions. She was also responsible for overall IT enterprise architecture and platform management across a complex strategic technology solution portfolio. Prior to Intel, she was the chief systems officer at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

Seetharam holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, computer science, and statistics from Bangalore University, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, and she is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s advanced management program.

Manish Raghavan is the Drew Houston (2005) Career Development Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). His research centers on the societal impacts of algorithmic decision making.

Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Deputy Dean of Research for Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT. Rus’ research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, and data science.

The focus of her work is developing the science and engineering of autonomy, toward the long-term objective of enabling a future with machines pervasively integrated into the fabric of life, supporting people with cognitive and physical tasks. Her research addresses some of the gaps between where robots are today and the promise of pervasive robots: increasing the ability of machines to reason, learn, and adapt to complex tasks in human-centered environments, developing intuitive interfaces between robots and people, and creating the tools for designing and fabricating new robots quickly and efficiently. The applications of this work are broad and include transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, monitoring the environment, underwater exploration, smart cities, medicine, and in-home tasks such as cooking.

Rus serves as Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is the advancement of AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles. She is a MITRE senior visiting fellow, serves as a USA expert member for GPAI (Global Partnerships in AI), a member of the board of advisers for Scientific American, a member of the Defense Innovation Board, and a member of several other boards of technical companies.

Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Dr. Savannah Thais is an Associate Research Scientist in the Data Science Institute with a focus on machine learning (ML). She is interested in complex system modeling and in understanding what types of information is measurable or modelable and what impacts designing and performing measurements have on systems and societies. This work is informed by her background in high energy particle physics and incorporates traditional scientific experiment design components such as uncertainty quantification, experimental blinding, and decorrelation/de-biasing methods. Her recent work has focused on geometric deep learning, methods to incorporate physics-based inductive biases into ML models, regulation of emerging technology, social determinants of health, and community education.

Dr. Thais is the founder and Research Director of Community Insight and Impact, an non-profit organization focused on data-driven community needs assessments for vulnerable populations and effective resource allocation. She is passionate about the impacts of science and technology on society and is a strong advocate for improving access to scientific education and literacy, community centered technology development, and equitable data practices. She was the ML Knowledge Convener for the CMS Experiment from 2020-2022, currently serves on the Executive Board of Women in Machine Learning and the Executive Committee of the APS Group on Data Science, and is a Founding Editor of the Springer AI Ethics journal.

Dr. Thais received her PhD in Physics from Yale University in 2019 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University from 2019-2022.

H. James Wilson is global managing director of Technology Research and Thought Leadership at Accenture, where he leads research programs on the impact of technology on work. Jim is co-author of the best-selling, Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI (Harvard Business Review Press), which will be re-released in Fall 2024 with fresh focus on Generative AI. He is author or contributing author to twelve books on the impact of technology on business and society, including the 2023 Thinkers 50 award-winning Radically Human: How New Technology is Transforming Work and Shaping our Future (HBR Press).

Jim is a frequent contributor to MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and other management publications.