Fadi Abuelroos is a technology consultant with an empathetic approach to engaging his clients. By day Fadi works in the digital world for North America and Global clients in industries automotive, insurance, manufacturing, travel, transportation, and telecommunications. A civic-minded, creative yogi with a strong analytical side he bridges his career in technology with his passion for social good. With over 15 years engaging in social justice and gender equality issues, Fadi has a strong pulse on the social-economic issues that impact our communities daily. Fadi enjoys cooking daily and experimenting with food. When not cooking, Fadi is often engaged in social good conversations through hosted dinners and focused book clubs.

Executive Director, ChicagoNEXT

Alya Adamany Woods is the Executive Director of ChicagoNEXT, World Business Chicago’s dedicated effort to drive growth and opportunity for Chicago’s tech economy. Governed by a council of technology leaders, ChicagoNEXT strategic focus areas include capital, talent, industry and community and her portfolio of programs includes the Chicago Venture Summit, ThinkChicago, and the Blackstone Inclusive Entrepreneurship Challenge.

Prior to her role at World Business Chicago, Alya was the Managing Director for Innovation Initiatives at the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC), a statewide advocacy group dedicated to cultivating technology-based economic development in Illinois. She co-founded and managed the ISTC’s award-winning Corporate-Startup Challenge, a program designed to create a bridge between major corporations and startup and emerging growth technology firms. She was also the co-creator of the Illinois Innovation Index, a monthly publication developed in conjunction with World Business Chicago to benchmark the city and state’s ability to attract capital, create and retain talent and business, and drive dynamic technologies.

Prior to that, Woods worked for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where she most recently served as the Assistant Director for studies, and prior to that as the Interim Director for the Global Midwest Initiative. There, she tackled global policy issues including energy, immigration, and agriculture.

Alya received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago. She has lived in Chicago since 2002 and currently resides in Logan Square with her family.

CEO & Founding Partner, 270 Strategies

Jeremy Bird is CEO and a Founding Partner at 270 Strategies with extensive experience working with startups, domestic and international political campaigns, labor and policy organizations, and Fortune 500 companies. He helped launch 270 Strategies after serving as the national field director for the 2012 re-election campaign of President Barack Obama.

Dubbed the campaign's "Field General" by Rolling Stone magazine, Jeremy was listed among "The Obama Campaign's Real Heroes" and has been cited as "a former Harvard divinity student who took to political organizing as though it were his higher calling." In 2013, he was featured in Fortune magazine's "40 Under 40" list, which highlights 40 individuals the magazine considers to be the most influential executives and "the year's most important young innovators, risk-takers, and rule-breakers in business."

Jeremy is the founder of Battleground Texas, a long-term grassroots effort to get out the vote and register millions of Texans whose voices have been silenced in the political process. His work with the organization has garnered extensive media attention, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO, The Colbert Report, MSNBC, and Bloomberg News.

Jeremy serves on the Board of Directors of iVote, a voting rights organizationdedicated to the notion that every eligible citizen should vote. He explored the issue of voting rights as part of his 2014 TEDx Talk and penned an op-ed on the topic for The New Republic, "We Can’t Just Play Defense on Voting Access. It's Time to Make Voting Easier." While at 270, Jeremy has been an advisor on several mayoral, gubernatorial, and Congressional races. He also works on issue campaigns, like the Scouts for Equality’s push to reverse a decades-long anti-gay discrimination policy by the Boy Scouts of America.

The Wall Street Journal described Jeremy's theory of organizing as "one part data, and one part emotional connection. He keeps close track of which states are making their targets each day, but also preaches the value of relationships - between the campaign and its volunteers, and between volunteers and voters." His contributions to this groundbreaking organizing model led Rolling Stone to recognize him on its 2012 "Hot List," calling him "the Obama campaign's secret weapon" with "a massive army of staff and grassroots volunteers for which Romney has no answer."

Prior to organizing with the President, Jeremy worked for several issue campaigns and candidates at the federal and local level, including the presidential campaigns of then-Senator John Kerry and former Governor Howard Dean. He also has experience advocating for educational equality and worked as a field director for the United Food and Commercial Workers international union.

Jeremy is a graduate of Wabash College, where he serves on the Board of Trustees, and Harvard Divinity School. He grew up in a trailer park in High Ridge, Missouri and is passionate about grassroots politics, traveling the world, and talking about sports - especially his hometown St. Louis Cardinals and his newfound love of soccer.

ThinkChicago Program Manager, World Business Chicago

Brenna Conway joined World Business Chicago in July 2017 as Program Manager of ThinkChicago, inviting top university students to meet Chicago technology leaders, explore innovative companies, and encouraging graduates to choose Chicago to live and work.

Prior to joining World Business Chicago, Brenna served as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Illinois Director for the Roosevelt Institute, a national student think-tank with chapters on over 130 campuses in 40 states. She opened the organization’s first local office serving Illinois students, and designed a curriculum to support student policy research and advocacy projects across the country. Brenna has experience in state and local advocacy, working previously as Campaign Director for the Active Transportation Alliance, where she designed a policy agenda on public transportation, organized transit riders, and lead community engagement around projects such as Bus Rapid Transit in Chicago. She got her start in local politics, working for Governor Pat Quinn and other campaigns at the state and local level in both Chicago and Milwaukee.

Brenna is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has lived in Chicago since 2010 and currently resides in Bridgeport. In her free time Brenna serves as a volunteer leader for Chicago Cares, remains active in local politics, and can be found bike touring throughout the Midwest.

Social Entrepreneur, Investor, Philanthropist, Youtopia

First with Legos, then with code, Cameron Croft has always learned best by building. His latest challenge is taking good non-profits and transforming them into great ones. Studying Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois was a natural fit. While at school he was active in building his network, leading several organizations like the Illinois Society of General Engineers and The Illini Waterski Club.

After graduation, he served a two-year term as President of the Chicago Illini Club, and visits Champaign often to speak to classes and catch some Illini Basketball. He is known in Chicago’s young professional community for hosting dozens of charity events and galas each year like Lookingglass Theatre’s Madhatter’s Ball, Art Institute’s Night Heist, and ChicagoTEN’s Alumni Challenge, and has helped raised over a million dollars for charity.

Network Relationship Manager, Pritzker Group

Kristi Dula is an accomplished sales and operations professional with extensive experience developing corporate partnerships and building community relationships. She is responsible for facilitating relationships for Pritzker Group’s family of companies and connecting them with the firm’s wide network of experts, strategic partners and potential customers.
 
Prior to 1871, Dula was vice president of events and content creation for 1871, the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center’s flagship technology incubator. Dula operationalized 1871’s focus on connecting businesses, organizers and entrepreneurs during its early stages and oversaw all marketing, communications and logistics efforts for more than 1,500 events.

Chief Technology Officer and First Deputy Commissioner, City of Chicago

Danielle DuMerer is Chief Technology Officer and First Deputy Commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT). She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the City’s central IT department and oversees its key technology initiatives. Since joining the City, Danielle has directed the development of WindyGrid (the City’s award-winning situational awareness and incident response system), its Office 365 migration, data center relocations, digital inclusion programming, and Data Portal. Danielle also serves on the Smart Chicago Collaborative's Operations Committee, an organization founded in part by the City and focused on improving lives through technology. Before joining the City of Chicago, Danielle developed K-12 educational technology products at the McGraw-Hill Companies, and worked in the Library and Archives field, serving a variety of educational and non-profit organizations. Danielle holds a Master of Library Science from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Lead Organizer, Chi Hack Night

Derek is an entrepreneur, developer and one of the leaders of the civic technology community in Chicago. He is founder and partner at DataMade, a company that tells stories and builds tools with data, co-founder of Open City, a collective that makes civic apps to to improve transparency and understanding of our government, and organizer for the Chi Hack Night, America's premier weekly event for building civic technology with open data.
 

He has built and collaborated on dozens of civic and data applications including 2nd City Zoning, Chicago Lobbyists, Look at Cook, Chicago Councilmatic and Dedupe.

Mayor​, City of Chicago​

Rahm Emanuel has served as the 55th mayor of the city of Chicago since 2011. During that time he has made the tough choices necessary to secure Chicago’s future as a global capital. The Mayor added more than 200 hours to the school day and year, taking Chicago from having the least educational time of any large school district in the country to being on par with its peers. He implemented full-day kindergarten for every Chicago child, and fought for and won new accountability measures to ensure every teacher and principal had the necessary resources to succeed. The Mayor’s comprehensive public safety strategy is focused on expanded prevention programs for at-risk youth, smarter policing strategies, and empowering parents and communities to reduce violence in their neighborhoods. He attracted numerous companies to Chicago and helped to build the next generation of start-ups, while investing in the infrastructure, public transportation, open space and cultural attractions that make Chicago a great place to live, work, and play. And he has worked to make our government more effective, to deliver better services at a more competitive price, and to open government to the public.

Prior to becoming Mayor, Emanuel served as the White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Chicago’s 5th District. He previously served as a key member of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998, rising to serve as Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy.

Mayor Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 and received a Master's Degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. He is married to Amy Rule, and they have three children.

Director of Research and Development, Tovala

Peter Fiflis is the Director of Research and Development at Tovala, a company that makes an internet-connected smart oven that pairs with its companion meal service. The company’s mission is to deliver a healthy and convenient home cooking experience. Before joining Tovala, he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, graduating with a Ph.D. in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering. Fiflis had participated in the Cozad New Venture Competition at the University of Illinois with a startup called BreakfastBox, an internet-connected appliance that would automatically cook breakfast in the morning. He is also an alumni of the ThinkChicago program, both at Chicago Ideas Week, and Lollapalooza.y.

Vice President of Product, CityBase

Josh is the Vice President of Product at CityBase, where he is responsible for organizing CityBase's product strategy and overseeing product management. Before CityBase, Josh was CEO and co-founder of the Department of Better Technology (DOBT), a company that was acquired CityBase in 2017. Before DOBT, Josh was a PhD candidate at Princeton University, where he worked on prediction problems in public policy. Josh is an ultra-marathon runner and a small time investor, most recently in Duma, a Kenyan startup to help job seekers connect with employers.

Head of Technology, Farmer's Fridge

Raj Karmani is the the Head of Technology at Farmer's Fridge, a venture-backed startup on a mission to make fresh food available 24/7 through smart fridges. He oversees all technology projects including mobile, fridge and web applications as well as back-end and data infrastructure, with a vision to deliver a personalized fresh food experience for its customers.

Raj has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During the last year of his PhD, he co-founded a public benefit corporation Zero Percent, which combined his passion for technology, volunteerism, and entrepreneurship. Zero Percent provided an online food rescue platform for restaurants and food operators to donate any excess food to local charities in an easy, reliable and safe way. The platform coordinated more 1.5 million meals from 100+ businesses to 80+ nonprofits in Chicago, Champaign and Nashville.

Founder and Co-Chairman, Chicago Ideas Week; Co- founder and CEO, Uptake

Brad is the Founder and Chairman of Chicago Ideas Week. one of the major ideas and innovation platforms in the world He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches a course on entrepreneurship and disruptive technology. He is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Illinois Innovation Council, appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn. He has served on the Mayor’s Committee on Technology. Brad Keywell, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Uptake Technologies. He is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Lightbank. He is a Co-Founder and Director of Groupon. Brad is the Chairman of the Future Founders Foundation, which runs programs designed to help teach and inspire high school students in entrepreneurship, and connect them with mentors and role models for guidance and inspiration. He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan School of Law (1993) and his Bachelor of Business Administration with honors from the University of Michigan (1991). He also studied in 1990 at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the State Bar of Illinois and the Michigan Bar Association.

CEO & Co-Founder, BallotReady

Alex Niemczewski is CEO and co-founder of BallotReady, an award-winning voter guide to every race and referendum on the ballot. Previously she founded a human-centered design consulting firm and taught coding at the Booth School of Business and The Starter League. She has a background in workforce development and is an alum of the University of Chicago. She was recognized in Crain’s Chicago Business “20 in their 20’s” list, Techweek100, and as a Bluhm/Helfand Social Innovation Fellow.

Director, Program Design, City Digital

Katie Olson is the Deputy Director of City Digital at UI LABS. In her role, Katie oversees all lab operations and leads partner communications and outreach to industry, university, government, and start-ups to facilitate the development and growth of the consortium. Before joining UI LABS in February 2014, Katie led the Neighborhood and Place-Based Assets strategy at World Business Chicago to drive Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs. Previously, she worked for The Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based community development financial institution, and served as a Mayoral Fellow for the City of Chicago in 2011.

Katie holds a master’s in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s in Communications, Economics, Legal Institutions & Government from American University. Katie also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi from 2008-2010.

Co-Founder & CEO, Xaptum, Inc.

Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, Xaptum, Inc. - an industry trailblazer who runs technology businesses through the life cycle of start-up to exit with an incisive understanding of value drivers for technology products in the marketplace. Pasam had previously founded successful technology businesses in technology services and outsourced product development. In 2013, AT&T named him one of AT&T’s innovators in Internet of Things. Pasam is the co-founder & CEO of Xaptum, the company that built the Internet for Things – a IP network optimized for IoT that exchanges IoT data between the world of Things and the world of Cloud Applications and Big Data securely, reliably at massive scale.

CEO, CodeNow

Neal Sales-Griffin left a position as founder-in-residence at a venture capital firm in 2010 to fulfill a three-part desire: solve problems, make things, and have fun doing it. His company was the first to work in the 1871 Chicago incubator space, and one year later Sales-Griffin launched The Starter League with his partner Mike McGee, one of the first coding boot camps, with the goal of helping people solve problems through technology and code. Since The Starter League's launch in 2011 up until its acquisition by Fullstack Academy in March 2016, over 1,500 students learned tech and entrepreneurship skills through the program. Today as CEO of CodeNow, Sales-Griffin is bringing that philosophy to a new audience: middle school and high school students. The nonprofit hosts coding workshops for students from low-income backgrounds.

Chief Data Officer, City of Chicago

Tom Schenk is a researcher, author, and an expert in a number of fields, including open government, data visualization, business and research and policy in education. He is currently the Chief Data Officer at the City of Chicago, which includes overseeing Chicago’s open data portal, advanced analytics team, and the City’s data and business intelligence team. He leads the strategic use of data to improve the efficiency of city operations and improve the quality of life for residents.

Tom has lead the expansion of Chicago’s leading open data portal, deployed predictive analytics in the City to improve data services, and has streamlined the City’s data operations. Tom wrote Circos Data Visualization How-To, an introductory book on using the biology data visualization libraries for use in the social sciences. He has previously served as a consultant for Institutional Effectiveness and Accountability at the Iowa Departments of Education, where he led efforts to use student-level longitudinal data to evaluation education programs, including an evaluation of Project Lead The Way and calculating rates of return for community college graduates. He also led science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) policy in Iowa and a coauthor of Iowa’s STEM roadmap.

Tom was a visiting scholar with Iowa State University’s Office of Community College Research and Policy where he studied graduate-student unionization. He was also a lecturer at Grand View University where he taught statistics and economics. He earned a Master’s degree in economics from Iowa State University and a Bachelor’s from Drake University.

Director & Community Advocate, Microsoft Chicago

They say that great work stems from a combination of passion and commitment, something that Shelley certainly possesses when it comes to her life and career. She currently serves on the boards of the Women’s Business Development Center, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Thrive Chicago, Year Up and LISC Chicago. At Microsoft Chicago, she’s the Director of Civic Engagement, working at the intersection of computing and community, promoting STEM programs and using Microsoft technology to spur growth in the community. So no matter if it's work, play, or giving back, Shelley always makes sure her drive and professionalism help her complete her life's goals.

Head of Research Operations, Morningstar

I’ve worked for Morningstar since 1992 where I’ve held various product development and operational roles. In particular, I was IT Director for eleven years and also ran a major product development initiative on Morningstar’s flagship software platform. Currently, I manage operations in the firm’s Research Group.
 
Outside of Morningstar, I’ve published two collections of poems, surfaces (2004) and Paramnesia (2016) and two translations of Greek tragedies, Sophocles’ Ajax (2008) and Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (2015), all four books published by Flood Editions. I am, in turn, the publisher of Verge Books, a small literary press. I sit on the boards of Hypocrites Theater, where I’m vice-president, and Green Lantern Press.

Digital Product Manager

Larry is a digital product manager, who enjoys solving problems at the intersection of business and user impact. Passionate about design thinking, Agile principles, and marketing analytics, he leverages tools from each to ensure that the products he manages delight users and drive business value. His experience brings impactful digital solutions across a range of industries: retail, utility, health, gaming, finance, non-profit and mobile payment. Larry received his undergraduate degree from University of Florida, Master’s from Northwestern University and is currently pursuing his MBA at Chicago Booth. In his spare time Larry enjoys hitting the links for a quick 9, trying new food spots in Chicago and volunteering for causes related to education and animal advocacy.