Future of Money & Technology Summit: Speaker Bios

Mary Adams, I-Capital Advisors, President

Mary Adams is one of the leading U.S. experts on intangible capital and is co-author of Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization. Mary is also the author of the Smarter Companies blog and creator of the IC Knowledge Center, a global community of 250 IC thought leaders. She is a co-founder of two consulting businesses, Trek and ICA, that help companies measure, manage and monetize intangible assets. Prior to her consulting career, she spent fifteen years as a high-risk lender at Citicorp and Sanwa Business Credit.

Bruce Bower, Plastic Jungle, CEO

Bruce was first introduced to Plastic Jungle in December 2008, joined as President in April 2009, and assumed the CEO position in September 2010.

For more than 20 years, Bruce has been contributing to early and mid stage technology enterprises. His management experience spans the payments, media, education, and alternate energy markets, with a particular emphasis on new business and international markets development.

Prior to Plastic Jungle, Bruce led International and Business and Corporate Development as Senior Vice President at Blackhawk Network, the largest third party distributor of gift cards in the world. Bruce also has served as Chief Executive Officer of Soliloquy Learning and as the President and SVP/General Manager of LearningGate and the educational media division of ZapMe!

Bruce also serves as a director or senior advisor to a number of companies in the payments space, including KargoKard, Radical Payments and Visa. He is a frequent speaker on a variety of new market concepts, including global payments and e-commerce strategies for emerging businesses.

Bruce began his career practicing law with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati. He graduated in 1984 from Brown University with a B.A. in International Relations. In 1988, he received his law degree from University of Virginia.

Arthur Brock – The MetaCurrency Project, Founder/Developer

Arthur Brock builds targeted currencies that are at the core of the emerging post-industrial economy. He has created more than 100 designs for multi-currency systems and his software company has built and deployed dozens of those systems.

Initially, Arthur put his degree in Artificial Intelligence to use at GM, Chrysler & Hughes, but he soon realized he was committed to bringing intelligence to social architectures rather than to computers. He started student-run schools and award-winning, employee-run businesses and discovered that the self-managing feedback loops needed to operate these types of organizations were built on particular patterns of incentives and measurement.

Based in Denver, Colorado, Arthur Brock consults worldwide with organizations which are actively restructuring themselves for the new economy. Contact him at http://LifebloodDesign.com.

Ryan Gilbert – BillFloat, CEO

Ryan Gilbert is CEO of BillFloat, an early stage payments company backed PayPal and Venrock.  Ryan was previously Vice President of MoneyGram International’s PropertyBridge division, following MoneyGram’s acquisition of PropertyBridge in October 2007. Ryan was PropertyBridge’s CEO and co-founder.  He is an active investor and advisor to innovative early stage payments companies including Eventbrite and Square. Ryan is a member of the State Bar of California, and is also admitted to practice law in the United Kingdom and South Africa. He earned his Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Sean Harper, FeeFighters, CEO

Sean is the co-founder and CEO of FeeFighters – a comparison shopping website for business financial services (formerly known as TransFS). Prior to starting FeeFighters, Sean worked as a venture capitalist at Longworth Venture Partners and William Blair Capital Partners and as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. Sean holds an A.B. in economics from the University of Chicago, where he also studied computer science and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Kevin Hartz, Eventbrite, Co-Founder & CEO

Kevin Hartz is Co-Founder & CEO of Eventbrite, a company changing the way events come together online, and happen offline. Kevin was previously Co-Founder and CEO of Xoom Corporation, an international money transfer company, servicing more than 40 countries worldwide. Xoom is backed by Sequoia Capital, NEA, Fidelity Ventures, Stanford University, and Peter Thiel.

Kevin began his career as a product manager and later co-founded ConnectGroup, a start-up providing high-speed Internet access to the hotel industry. ConnectGroup was acquired by Lodgenet (NASDAQ: LNET).

Kevin holds a BA and BS from Stanford University, as well as an MA from Oxford University (University College).

He has been an active early stage investor and advisor to start-ups including PayPal, Geni, Friendster, TripIt, Flixster, Adnectar, Yammer, TokBox, iControl, Boku, Lookout, Anonymizer, Palantir and Trulia, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Xoom, Lookout, TownHog, and TokBox (observer). In his spare time, Kevin advises university students on entrepreneurship through Youniversity Ventures. Kevin lives in San Francisco with his wife, Julia, and young daughter.

Ron Hirson, BOKU, SVP Product & Markting / Co-Founder

Ron brings over fourteen years experience in product and general management in the consumer Internet space to the BOKU team. Most recently, Ron served as VP of Product at AT&T Interactive, which he joined through the acquisition of service marketplace and performance advertising company Ingenio. Ron spent 6 years at Ingenio, where he served as VP of Product Management. Prior to Ingenio, Ron was co-founder and CEO of The Digs Network, an early social network focused on Gen Y, which was bought by iDrive. He started his career as a Management Consultant for Price Waterhouse focused on technology integrations. In addition to his role at BOKU, Ron served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Khosla Ventures and actively advises several companies in the consumer Internet space.

Andy Kleitsch, Billing Revolution, CEO & Founder

Andy is a serial entrepreneur bringing a deep background in mobile operator billing technology and mobile data product management. Prior to founding Billing Revolution with its Single-Click Checkout product, Andy was the Sr. Manager of the AT&T Wireless mMode portal. Before entering mobile, Andy was the founder of WeddingChannel.com (a leading wedding planning web destination) which was later sold to the Knot for $80+MM.

Dan Robles – The Ingenesist Project, Director

Dan Robles is the Director of The Ingenesist Project, a private think tank in Seattle. TIP serves to predict and specify the framework for a new economic paradigm with the controversial thesis for an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media where knowledge assets are tangible outside the construct of Wall Street.

Dan is recognized internationally for his early participation in the NAFTA negotiations for the international recognition of engineering professionals – the first modern attempt to treat knowledge assets like a financial instrument.

Dan is also a creative and prolific blogger to several top social media communities. His noteworthy experience in aerospace and aviation as well as the Hollywood entertainment industry in special effects, artistic direction, and musical performance add a refreshing twist to his perception and articulation of complex associations among seemingly disparate values.  His clients arise from aerospace, higher education, finance, and diverse corporate marketing concerns.

Steve Schultz, Pageonce, Chief Operating Officer

A recognized leader in consumer finance, Steve Schultz joins Pageonce from Yahoo! where he was head of the Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Real Estate businesses in North America. During his tenure at Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance doubled its market share attracting more than 40 million unique visitors according to Comscore. He led its business and content strategy, business development and strategic partnerships which included relationships with Intuit, Fidelity Investments, Dow Jones, ScottTrade, Bankrate and Bloomberg.com. He was also responsible for Yahoo! Finance’s original content strategy, oversaw the site’s push into mobile applications, and managed strategic partnerships with dozens of financial content and data providers. With Yahoo! Real Estate, Steve helped lead the site from the #10 to the #2 real estate destination on the Web, was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the real estate industry by Inman News in 2009, and architected a strategic partnership with Zillow.com in 2010. Steve has held several product and marketing leadership roles throughout his career. He was Director of Product Marketing at Epiphany, a CRM and marketing automation solution, where he held product line management responsibilities for the company’s leading ad serving and personalization platform. Steve started his career in management consulting for Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett (now part of Charles River Associates).

Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Davis and an M.B.A. from the Haas School at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jeff Thomas, Second Market, Inc., Senior Vice President, Private Company Market

Jeff Thomas is a Senior Vice President with SecondMarket, the largest marketplace for alternative assets. Mr. Thomas leads the business development team for the Private Company Market from SecondMarket’s Palo Alto office. He and his team are focused on creating liquidity solutions for private companies.

Prior to SecondMarket, Mr. Thomas was a Vice President at Gerson Lehrman Group, where he helped private equity and venture capital investors source deals, perform due diligence, and manage their portfolio companies by leveraging the GLG Councils, a worldwide network of subject matter experts. Before GLG, Mr. Thomas was a Sales Manager at Altera Corporation, where he led the worldwide technical account team for Cisco Systems.

Mr. Thomas graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon University and received a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. He currently holds the Series 7, 63, and 24 licenses. He is a frequent speaker at conferences on trading alternative assets and liquidity options for private companies.

Brian Zisk, Future of Money & Technology Summit, Executive Producer

Brian Zisk is a serial entrepreneur and technology industry consultant specializing in digital media, web broadcasting and distribution technologies. Brian is a co-founder of Collecta, the ultra-hot realtime search engine. Additionally, Brian is a Co-Founder and Technologies Director of the Future of Music Coalition and a Board Member and/or Strategic Advisor for a wide variety of tech companies and non-profits. Brian was previously a founder of The Green Witch Internet Radio which was sold to CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI) at the turn of the millennium. He is active in many influential computer-mediated forums, is quoted and published extensively in the media, frequently appears on panels and at industry events domestically and abroad, and is an expert at frenzy whipping, brand awareness, and in creating new business models. Brian is also the executive producer

More speakers will be added shortly. Stay tuned!

Mary Adams – I-Capital Advisors, President

Bruce Bower -Plastic Jungle, CEO

Arthur Brock – The MetaCurrency Project, Founder/Developer

Ryan Gilbert – BillFloat, CEO

Sean Harper – FeeFighters, CEO

Kevin Hartz – Eventbrite, Co-Founder and CEO

Ron Hirson – BOKU, Co-founder / SVP Product & Marketing

Andy Kleitsch – Billing Revolution, CEO & Founder

Ted Nelson – University of South Hampton, UK, Visiting Professor of Electronics and Computer Science / Founder of Computer Hypertext

Dan Robles – The Ingenesist Project, Director

Steve Schultz – Pageonce, Chief Operating Officer

Jeff Thomas – Second Market, Inc., Senior Vice President, Private Company Market

Brian Zisk – Future of Money & Technology Summit, Executive Producer