Mostly learn by self

Which opportunities arise online for interaction between art and science? Much collaboration is created when people are in physical proximity, in the same campus or in the same building. Does the online world foster or deter interdisciplinary collaboration? The online world tends to create echo chambers, where one looks for what one is already familiar with, not with the unfamiliar.

Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she was one of the first investors in Lyft and Refinery29, and has been an early backer of many others, including Xamarin and Thinkful. In addition to partnering with entrepreneurs building impactful businesses based on truly intelligent AI, she is a co-sponsor of the AI Grant, a nonprofit research lab that funds work on open source AI.

Kevin Weil is the VP of Product for Novi, a new digital wallet for Facebook’s Libra payment system. Previously, Weil was VP of Product at Instagram, overseeing consumer, growth, and monetization products. Before joining Instagram in 2016, he was SVP of Product at Twitter, where he led product development and design across Twitter’s consumer and ad products, as well as Vine and Periscope. Earlier in his career he held software engineering and data science roles at Cooliris, Tropos Networks, Microsoft Research, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Amy Chang is an executive vice president at Cisco. Following the acquisition of her startup Accompany by Cisco in 2018, she led Cisco’s multi-billion dollar Collaboration business and its award-winning Webex portfolio, which includes Meetings, Teams, Devices, Calling, and Contact Center. Prior to Accompany, Chang was at Google, where she led the teams for Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, Trends, and multichannel attribution. She also previously held roles at eBay, McKinsey, Intel, AMD and Motorola.

Debbie Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, an award-winning children’s multimedia company known for disrupting the “pink aisle” in toy stores around the world, and challenging gender stereotypes with a girl engineer character. In 2015, Sterling was inducted as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under the Obama administration and honored by the National Women’s History Museum with a “Living Legacy” Award for her work to empower girls around the world. She holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz will explore the role of energy innovation in the post-pandemic economic recovery, and the dual challenge of increasing access to energy while reducing the sector's environmental impact. Moniz will be interviewed by Arun Majumdar and Sally Benson, co-directors of Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy.

Bonny Simi is the president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, the venture capital arm of JetBlue Airways that invests in and partners with early-stage startups that are improving the future of travel and hospitality. Simi remains an active JetBlue pilot and is also a three-time Olympian in the sport of luge. She earned three degrees at Stanford University: a BA in communications, and masters degrees in management and engineering.

Adam Pisoni co-founded Yammer in 2008, and oversaw product, analytics, and engineering as the SaaS company scaled to 500 employees and was acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion. More recently, he has turned his attention to the US education system. Abl, the company he founded in 2015, aims to help all schools move beyond the 20th century model of education.

Jeff Seibert is a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor. His current focus is Digits, which he co-founded in 2018 to build modern, intelligent, real-time finance tools for business owners. Seibert previously served as Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product and led the company’s product efforts for iOS, Android and the Web, as well as its Developer and Data platforms. He was also the co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics and the co-founder and COO of Increo. Seibert graduated from Stanford in 2008 with a BS in computer science.

Beverly Parenti and Chris Redlitz are the co-founders of The Last Mile, an organization that aims to break the cycle of incarceration by providing education and career training opportunities in prisons. Founded in 2010 at San Quentin State Prison, The Last Mile has become one of the most requested prison education programs in the United States.