Wharton DC

Keynote Speaker: Midday Keynote Panel - David S. Rose

David Rose is a long time leader of the tech industry, and has been described as "New York's Archangel" by Forbes, "patriarch of Silicon Alley" by Red Herring, and a "world conquering entrepreneur" by BusinessWeek.

He is a serial entrepreneur, active angel investor, Inc 500 CEO, Founding General Partner of True Global Ventures, Founder & CEO of the US Real Estate Market, and Founder & Executive Chairman of Gust, the SaaS platform powering over 1,000,000 startups and 85,000 early-stage investors. He is the NYT best selling author of "Angel Investing" and "The Startup Checklist."

David founded, and is Chairman Emeritus of, New York Angels, one of the world’s largest and most active angel investment groups. He is Chairman of NFT pioneer Pinktada, runs the AREA proptech accelerator, and serves on the boards of KoolSpan and Moven.

He was the original investor in, and Chairman of, JUMP Bikes (exited to Uber), Comixology (exited to Amazon) and Panjiva (exited to S&P Global) and has funded over 120 early stage companies with exits to Facebook, Google, Intel, and other industry leaders.

He founded the Finance, Entrepreneurship & Economics track at Singularity University, and is a keynote speaker on the future of business and technology. Dubbed by BusinessWeek "The Pitch Coach," he is a guest lecturer at business schools including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and NYU. He founded wireless Internet pioneer AirMedia in 1988, and in 1997 was honored as a finalist for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Earlier in his career David was co-founder of the Computer Classroom, one of the world’s first computer training firms, and spent a decade developing technology-enhanced real estate at Rose Associates, Inc. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Director of the New York office of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Keynote Panel Speaker: Disruptive Innovation

Ankur Daga is Founder/CEO of Angara.com, a high growth, vertically integrated fine jewelry eTailer. Angara.com was named the Best Online Jeweler in the US by Newsweek in 2020 and has a growth rate of over 10x of the industry average. Angara’s vertically integrated operations span from rough gemstone cutting/polishing to designing jewelry to manufacturing jewelry to retailing over the web. Angara sells jewelry in over 30 countries and has a team of over 450 across offices in the US, Thailand, India and Ireland.

Ankur is also an active angel investor with investments in multiple unicorns worldwide. Notable investments include Eruditus (he serves on the Board of Eruditus) and Notion. Ankur was previously a Consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Keynote Panel Speaker: Disruptive Innovation

Cherie Kloss is the founder and chief executive officer of SnapMedTech, the parent company for SnapNurse, the largest healthcare staffing platform in the US, and its technology brands InstaStaff and Paymint.

With more than 225,000 registered nurses serving over 1,000 partnered facilities, SnapNurse’s staffing technology fills short-term nursing vacancies in less than 48 hours, a departure from the 14-day average of traditional staffing agencies.

The company has grown exponentially since its founding in 2017. As the only business of its kind, the company logged meteoric growth during the pandemic, expanding sales by more than 77,000% in 12 months. SnapNurse’s Q1 2020 to Q1 2021 growth rate of 40,000% is one of the fastest growth rates of any company in any industry in recorded history.

Cherie, who served as an anesthetist for 18 years, founded SnapNurse to offer a more efficient ecosystem for healthcare systems and nurses to work together. She realized how broken the industry’s credentialing and hiring process was, so she created the company to ultimately help solve the world’s critical nursing shortage.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Cherie guides the SnapMedTech family, building technologies and service businesses around the automation of booking, credentialing, and payment processes crucial to healthcare staffing.

Cherie holds a BS in biology and premed from Westmont College and a master’s degree from Emory University School of Medicine. In 2021, Cherie was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year National Award Winner.

Keynote Panel Speaker: Disruptive Innovation

Gautam Mukunda is an internationally recognized expert in leadership and innovation. He often jokes that his life’s ambition is to have the world’s most confusing resume and that he’s most of the way there. He is the Head of Research at Rose Park Advisors, a firm co-founded by his mentor Clayton Christensen that provides companies that are supported by the theory of disruptive innovation the capital investment and strategy that allows them to grow to make the world a better place. Gautam is also a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, the author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012) and Picking Presidents: How To Make The Most Consequential Decision in the World (University of California Press, forthcoming October 2022), and the host of Nasdaq’s podcast World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda.

Gautam has been a professor at Harvard Business School and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. He has published articles in Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Slate, Fast Company, Parameters, Politics and the Life Sciences, and Systems and Synthetic Biology on topics including leadership, reforming the financial sector, military innovation, network-centric warfare, the security and economic implications of synthetic biology, and the TV show Mad Men. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, Economist, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and on All Things Considered.

Gautam was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and Program on Emerging Technologies. He was a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow, an NSF IGERT Fellow, a Next Generation Fellow of The American Assembly, and a Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation’s Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. He served on The Chief of Naval Operation’s Executive Advisory Panel and as a member of the New England Regional Selection Committee for the White House Fellowship and was a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership. He was a Jeopardy Champion.

At MIT, Gautam was the National Science Foundation Synthetic Biology ERC Postdoctoral Fellow resident at MIT’s Center for International Studies. He received his PhD from MIT in political science focusing in International Relations and Security Studies, where he was a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow and an NSF IGERT Fellow. He received his AB in Government from Harvard, magna cum laude. Before his academic career he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he focused on the pharmaceutical sector.

Gautam is a member of the board of directors and chair of the Mentorship Committee of The Upakar Foundation, a national non-profit devoted to providing college scholarships to underprivileged students of South Asian descent. He is on the Advisory Boards of Bionic Solutions and Fount Bio. He is an Overseer of the Boston Ballet and a member of the Museum Council of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Keynote Panelist: Cybersecurity: Increasing Threats, Growing Needs

Dr. Mumm has spent a combined twenty-eight years in government and contractor service building teams to address hard problems in the areas of national security, homeland security, and advanced technologies. He was the Division Chief for Cyber Security at the Office of The Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) programming and executing a budget of over $140M. Subsequently, he accepted a Branch Chief position with the CIA and built a unique set of continuous monitoring capabilities in support of the ICD503 Risk Management Framework. His achievements include establishing a rogue wireless framework, as well as the funding, technology, and teams to support the ICD 503 initiatives.

Dr. Mumm is a proven leader in a diverse set of fields, including autonomous systems, AI/machine learning, energy research, advanced fuel systems, nuclear energy use and technologies, cognitive scientific research, and all aspects of the military intelligence communities. He is a published researcher in both the scientific and social science arenas and has won grants and contracts to further test and evaluate his original research. He has notable experience in research and systems engineering, which includes winning awards and contracts for UAV research and the creation of an advanced multiple fuel system (AI-based) where he operated the world’s first and only helicopter that flies on five separate fuels without engine modifications. His research extends into emerging and disruptive technology for offensive and defensive missions supporting US and coalition operations. His UAV and robotics expertise has focused on determining the specific uses, exceptions, and allowances for robotics operations, including studying the unintended consequences, future use, and misuse of such technologies.

Dr. Mumm holds a Doctorate of Management with a concentration in Homeland Security from Colorado Technical University (CTU), an MS in Strategic Intelligence from American Military University (AMU), and a BS in Management from Chadwick University..

In 2016, Dr. Mumm was awarded the People of Distinction Humanitarian Award as well as being granted a US Patent and Trademark for How to Harmonize the Speed of Innovation and Change with the Human Spirit’s Need for Leadership. In 2005, he was recognized as one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Americans”, and in 2003, he was awarded the National Defense PAC “American Patriot Ingenuity Award” for his service during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Dr. Mumm is an adjunct professor at the California University of Pennsylvania (CALU), instructing Homeland Security courses in the Criminal Justice Department.

He recently co-authored "Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS -Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) the sixth in a series of textbooks, which includes two editions titled “Unmanned Aircraft in the Cyber Domain; Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets”, “Unmanned Vehicle Systems & Operations on Air, Sea, Land,” and an early 2020 book titled “Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technologies and Operation.” These textbooks are a follow-up to his international best-selling book in 2017 titled “Lightning Growth” and his best-selling book in 2015 titled “Applying Complexity Leadership Theory to Drone Airspace Integration.”

Keynote Moderator: Opening Keynote: Disruptive Innovation & Keynote Moderator & Panelist: Closing Panel Keynote: Cybersecurity: Increasing Threats, Growing Needs

Brian is a startup evangelist, advisor, and angel investor. He is also the Managing Partner at the SparkLabs Cyber+Blockchain (Formerly AOL Fishbowl Labs), which is the premiere startup accelerator in the Washington DC area and he has helped raised more than $150M in funding for their portfolio companies (MHelpDesk, ThreatQuotient, Xmode, Urgent.ly, Curator, Airside Mobile).
He is the DC Chapter Director of Startup Grind, which is one of the largest hi-tech startup communities in the world with over 2,000,000 startup entrepreneurs in 600 cities.
Prior to Startup Grind, he has over 20 years professional experience in web/online/mobile product development from AOL, Merrill Lynch and has started three previous startups. He is on the board of Monte Jade DC and is the chapter director for Startup Grind DC.
He has been featured in Forbes as “17 Top Business Gurus to Follow” and other publications such as Washington Post, Huffington Post, Politico, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Washington Business Journal, and DCInno “50 on Fire” 2017 and 2018.
He has a BS in Information Systems/Policy & Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Keynote Panelist: Cybersecurity: Increasing Threats, Growing Needs & Session Panelist: Workforce, Workplace, and Innovation Districts

Chris has 20+ years of experience as a Verizon Sales and Operations Leader in consumer and business products, enterprise solutions, iOT deployments, project management and customer service. He brings strong financial acumen, cross-unit collaboration and culture development to his leadership roles.

Chris is Director – Small Business Innovation for the Verizon Business Group, leading Verizon Wireless business innovation initiatives for the Small Business & Channel organization, overseeing strategic projects, driving sales evolution and supporting sales operations in collaboration with key internal partners.

Prior to this role, Chris served as National Sales Director – Indirect Channel Partners and Solutions Architects, leading two national small business sales organizations, as well as business transformation initiatives, marketing campaigns and product launches. Previously, Chris served as Executive Director for Wireless Small Business and Strategic Data sales for the Western U.S., Business Director for Southern California and Pacific Northwest, and Retail Director for the Southern California and Mountain territories. He began his career as a Retail Sales Representative in 1997 for Bell Atlantic.

In his Verizon career, Chris has been honored with 2 President’s Cabinet Awards, 1 Gold Club and 7 Winner’s Circle Awards.

Chris earned a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Mathematics from Towson University. He received an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland. He also completed the Cybersecurity program at Rutgers University.

Keynote Panelist: Cybersecurity: Increasing Threats, Growing Needs

Dr. Merrick S. Watchorn, DMIST, QIS is the Program Chair for the Quantum Security Alliance (QSA) and his current research areas include Quantum Information Systems (QIS), High Performance Computer (HPC), Cloud Computing (CC), Cybersecurity concepts, supply chain and open source intelligence technologies. With over 35-years of pragmatic Information Technology experience, he blends his efforts within government, commercial and academic endeavors. Dr. Watchorn spends his time on injection innovation, creativity, critical problem solving into a myriad of efforts and activities to support the QSA. In 2009, Dr. Watchorn invented the Cyber Exome Ancestry Tool (CEAT), which began to explore the impacts of Cyber Awareness and Resiliency (CAR) concepts within the cyber domain. Several white papers, technical analysis reports have been produced by this pioneering research capability. This type of research acumen was the primary reason he was selected to be the Program Chair for the QSA, and his selection of subject matter expertise was instrumental in the success of the QSA’s research focused approach to emerging Quantum topics.

Dr. Watchorn has a Doctor of Management with a specialization in Organizational Leadership, Information Systems and Technology from the University of Phoenix, School of Advance Studies (UOP-SAS). With more than a dozen board certifications, including as a Social Media Intelligence Analyst, Cyber Threat Forensic Investigator, Cyber Warfare Planner, and Professional Criminal Investigator, he provides Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) thought leadership with his relationships with numerous organizations. He is an adjunct professor at both the University of Maryland and Pace University.

As a result of his work, he was recently added to the Purdue Global, Technical Advisory Board, McAfee Online Learning Institute, Board of Directors.