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Confirmed Speakers

22 June 2019

3rd Annual Rhodes Ventures Forum

Convenors

Speakers

  • Tony Abrahams

    Tony is co-founder and CEO of Ai-Media (est 2003) – a technology business with global operations focusing on speech-to-text and related insights. Tony is a Rhodes Scholar with an MPhil in Economics and an MBA from Oxford. He graduated from Commerce Law at UNSW where he with First Class Honours and the University Medal in Accounting.

  • Narges Baniasadi

    Narges Baniasadi is an entrepreneur, board member, and investor in Health Tech and Social Impact companies. She supports entrepreneurs to create and grow mission-led businesses driven by science and scaled through technology. Previously, she started and built the successful Bioinformatics company Bina, out of a decade of research at Stanford University and UC Berkeley to accelerate the science of DNA Sequencing. She sold her company to Roche in 2014 where she served as Vice President of Informatics for three years and led Roche Genomics strategy and development in digital and data solutions. Narges holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

  • Andrew Barnes (Queensland & Exeter 2014)

    Andrew is the CEO and co-founder of GO1.com which helps individuals and organisations access training from hundreds of providers which has raised over $45m in VC funding. He was named one of the Top 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs by Forbes (2016) for his role in co-founding Libromat. Andrew completed his Masters at the University of Oxford in Education, researching the role of technology in learning, and holds a PhD from the University of Queensland Business School. He has a keen interest in identifying, exploring and implementing creative solutions in education.

  • Cedric Bisson

    Cedric Bisson has extensive entrepreneurial experience across Canada, USA and Europe creating, building and advising businesses in biopharmaceuticals, healthcare and the innovation sector in general. Over his career in venture capital at Teralys and previously at iNovia, he has structured and executed over $4 B in transactions in funds and companies. He is committed to building lasting innovation ecosystems and also passionate about using the VC and impact model in global innovation engines such as Grand Challenges Canada where his is board and investment committee member. Cedric holds dual M.D.(McGill) and J.D. (UofM) degrees, and previously worked at McKinsey & Company.

  • Martin-Immanuel Bittner

    Martin-Immanuel Bittner (Germany & Trinity 2014) is the CEO of Arctoris, the world’s first cloud lab dedicated to cancer drug discovery. Arctoris enables researchers to configure their experiments remotely and have them executed in a fully automated laboratory based in Oxford. A medical doctor by background, Martin completed his DPhil in Oncology at Oxford, co-founding Arctoris at the end of his doctorate. In recognition of his research achievements, Martin was elected a member of the Young Academy of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

  • Daniel Bloomfield (New Jersey & St John's 1982)

    Dan is chief medical officer of a Cardurion Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company. After spending 8 years on the faculty at Columbia University, Dan spent 14 year at Merck in a variety of roles and was a senior vice president in global clinical development prior to leaving. In 1986 Dan created the American-South African Scholarship Association which provided university scholarships for disadvantaged students in South Africa and he went on to become the Founding President of the Friends of Mandela Rhodes Foundation (USA). Dan earned a BA in chemistry from Haverford, an MPhil in social anthropology from Oxford University, and an MD from Harvard.

  • Eric Braverman

    "Eric Braverman is the chief executive of Schmidt Futures, which advances society through technology, inspires scientific breakthroughs, and promotes shared prosperity. Named by Fortune magazine in 2010 as one of the “40 Most Influential Leaders in Business” worldwide under 40 years old, Eric previously served as CEO of Rex Group from 2015-2017, CEO of the Clinton Foundation from 2013-2015, and a partner and co-founder of McKinsey & Company’s government practice – as part of a career at the firm from 1997 to 2013. Eric is a senior fellow at Yale, teaching about ethics in public leadership and innovation at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Yale and a J.D. from the Yale Law School. He serves on the board of Arena Stage and other organizations, and remains a member of the New York State Bar."

  • Lilly Bussmann

    Lilly Bussmann is a Principal at Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) where she looks after investments in both physical and life sciences. OSI has raised over £550 million to invest and accelerate startups coming out of Oxford University. OSI’s investors include Google Ventures, Temasek, Tencent, Lansdowne, Woodford, the Wellcome Trust and Oxford University’s own endowment fund and many others. Prior to OSI, Lilly worked for an early-stage VC firm in London, helped launch a startup in Shanghai, and worked for an incubator in Zurich. In 2012, she was recognised as a ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum. Lilly holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Magdalen College, Oxford.

  • Stephen Caddick

    Stephen joined the Wellcome Trust in June 2015 and leads the Innovations Division. He is also Professor of Chemical Biology at UCL. Previously, he was a member of UCL’s Senior Management Team as Vice Provost (Enterprise & London). He is a member of the Royal Society’s Science, Industry and Translation Committee and of the Council of Sussex University. He is co-founder of Thiologics, an antibody-drug conjugate biotech spin-out company, and his laboratory focuses on chemical modification of proteins and antibodies for the development of therapeutics and diagnostics.

  • Jeeshan Chowdhury

    Dr. Jeeshan Chowdhury (Alberta and Hertford, 2006) is the co-Founder of Listrunner, a digital health start-up. Listrunner aims to provide clinical teams with a point-of-care collaboration tool to manage patient lists, and empower clinicians to focus on care delivery by improving hospital workflow and removing unnecessary clerical work.Jeeshan holds an M.Sc. in Diagnostic Imaging from Oxford and a B.Sc. in medical sciences from the University of Alberta. In the summer of 2012, he obtained an MD/DPhil from the University of Alberta and the University of Oxford. His doctorate in the Department of Surgery at Oxford focused on the business case for the use of information technology in radiology departments to improve access to diagnostic services.

  • Matt Clifford

    Matt Clifford MBE is cofounder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, the leading technology company builder in Europe and South East Asia. Entrepreneur First invests in top technical individuals to help them build world-class deep technology startups from scratch in six locations across Europe and Asia. Since 2011, Entrepreneur First has created over 200 startups worth over $1.5bn including Magic Pony Technology, Tractable and CloudNC. Matt sits on the board of Code First Girls, which he co-founded in 2013 to teach young women how to code. Matt started his career at McKinsey & Co. and holds degrees from Cambridge and MIT, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He was awarded an MBE for services to business in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

  • Toby Coppel

    Toby Coppel is a Co-Founder and Partner at Mosaic Ventures. Toby has been in investing and operating roles in the internet sector since 1996, and has made investments in companies such as Criteo, CreativeLive, Hailo, Pinterest and Transferwise and served on numerous boards. Toby was previously Senior VP of Corporate Development and Chief Strategy Officer at Yahoo! from 2001-2007 where he led the team that invested $1 billion into Alibaba for a 40% ownership stake in 2005 and acquired over 30 startups for an aggregate of over $4 billion. Toby also ran Yahoo!’s European operations from 2007-2009.

  • Sangu Delle

    Sangu is Managing Director of Africa Health Holdings a company based in West Africa and focused on "building Africa's healthcare future." He also serves as Chairman of Golden Palm Investments Corporation, an investment holding company focused on building world class technology companies in Africa. Sangu is the co-founder of the nonprofit Cleanacwa, a Trustee of the Peddie School, a member of the Harvard Medical School Global Health and Service Advisory Council, an Elected Director of Harvard University's Alumni Association, and an advisory panel member for AXA. Sangu graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in African Studies and Economics from Harvard College, a Doctor of Law from Harvard Law School, and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

  • Emma Dicks

    Emma pioneers transformative education models that prepare youth for the 21c workplace. She is a dedicated global advocate for a more diverse and inclusive economy and tech industry. As a successful South African social entrepreneur, she has a particular interest in supporting young people in pursuing entrepreneurial activities. Her work has been recognised globally by Fortune Most Powerful Women, Google, Mail & Guardian, and HM the Queen who honoured her with The Queen’s Young Leader Award. Emma presents on the topics of education, youth innovation and diversity. She also discusses these topics on a variety of panels and shares her story as a social entrepreneur at various events. Presentations: - Teaching 21c Skills | Education Innovation Africa, Nairobi - Learn unlearn relearn | EDGE Conference, Hamburg - Rethinking CSR | Jong Management Congress, Breda - The Digital Gender Divide | GIZ, Johannesburg - Ideas for the Future: Using Design Thinking for Innovation | Transnet Customer and Growth Conference, Johannesburg - Empowering Women in the Workplace | Activating Activism across Gender Lines, Cape Town

  • Peter Donnelly (Queensland & Balliol 1980)

    Professor Sir Peter Donnelly is co-founder and CEO of Genomics plc and Emeritus Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford where he was Director of the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics from 2009-2017. Peter grew up in Brisbane and after graduating from the University of Queensland he studied for a doctorate in mathematics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. A successful academic career followed, and after Professorships at the Universities of London (where he became a professor at age 29, at the time the youngest professor in the UK) and Chicago, he returned to Oxford in 1996. He has been centrally involved in many of the major human genetics projects over the last 20 years, playing a major role in the International HapMap Project, the successor to the Human Genome Project, and later chairing the landmark Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium and its successor (a large international collaboration studying the genetic basis of more than 20 common human diseases and conditions in over 60,000 people). More recently he led an Oxford collaboration with Illumina to sequence the genomes of 500 individuals with a range of clinical conditions to assess the potential for whole-genome sequencing in clinical medicine - a study which led to the NHS 100,000 Genomes Project, and led the genetic work culminating in the genotyping of all 500,000 participants in UK Biobank. In 2014, Peter and 3 colleagues, including Gil McVean the then inaugural director of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, founded Genomics plc, with Peter becoming the company’s CEO in 2017. Genomics now employs over 100 people, with offices in Oxford and Cambridge, UK, and Cambridge Massachusetts. It has developed an extensive data platform linking genetic variation in humans to phenotypic outcomes, and powerful statistical and machine learning tools to jointly analyse the data. Genomics uses this in two ways, in Therapeutics to find novel drug targets, and in Precision Health to develop and deploy powerful risk prediction tools for population health and clinical decision support. Peter has received numerous awards for his research, including a knighthood in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the understanding of human genetics in disease. His TED talk has been downloaded over a million times. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

  • Sean Gourley

    Sean Gourley is founder and CEO of Primer, a machine intelligence company specialising in natural language understanding. Before Primer, Sean was co-founder & CTO of Quid, an augmented-intelligence company. He holds a PhD in physics from Oxford, where his research as a Rhodes Scholar focused on complex systems and the mathematical patterns underlying modern war. He sits on the Knight Commission for truth, media and democracy, serves on the Board of Directors at Anadarko (NYSE:APC), and is a TED Fellow.

  • Whitney Haring-Smith (1)

    Whitney Haring-Smith is an entrepreneur and investor focused primarily on industrial and technology businesses. As a Managing Partner at Anzu Partners, Dr. Haring- Smith leads the portfolio support functions and has led most of Anzu’s acquisitions and software companies. Dr. Haring-Smith is currently on the board of several technology companies in the United States and Canada for the Anzu portfolio. Prior to Anzu Partners, Dr. Haring-Smith was a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he focused on energy, industrial goods, and globalization while working in BCG’s San Francisco, Seattle, and Hong Kong offices. Dr. Haring-Smith earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees simultaneously from Yale University, magna cum laude, and received his doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar from Pennsylvania.

  • Amy Honjo

    An early Nest employee, Amy held various roles to kick start several programs. Amy built and led a cross-functional team that delivered the first 5 years of Nest product packaging. As the head of packaging, Amy was responsible for packaging strategy and execution including: industrial design, sustainability goals, user-experience, brand messaging, graphic art, localisation, engineering, and manufacturing operations. Prior to running the packaging team, Amy was the program manager for factory testline readiness, marketing launch readiness, and defining business guidelines for the contract manufacturer. Before Nest, Amy held positions in market research, management consulting and software program management. She graduated from Denison University (Physics & German) and Georgia Institute of Technology (MBA).

  • Shige Honjo

    Nest’s second employee and founding team member, Shige Honjo, was on the executive team and built and led various roles at Nest -> Product Management, Industrial Design, User Experience, User Interface, HW Engineering, New Product Innovation, Engineering Program Management and Manufacturing Operations.

  • Leslie Kenny

    Leslie is a Partner at Willow Brook Capital, which introduces investment from Asia to UK university spinout companies, primarily in biotech. She is also an adviser to the University College, Oxford, Investment Committee. Earlier in her career, she was a VC-backed pioneer in online matchmaking in Asia with her software and database providing the backbone for Meta4Group’s WorldFriends, Asia's largest white label matchmaking platform. Leslie also worked as an executive at both Walt Disney Studios and SBC/ UBS. She has a BA cum laude from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is also an executive coach.

  • Elizabeth Kiss

    Before taking up the Wardenship in 2018, Dr Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced ‘quiche’) served for twelve years as president of Agnes Scott College, Georgia. During her tenure, Agnes Scott broke records for enrolment and retention and was named the second ‘Most Diversified College in America’ by Time and the country’s most successful liberal arts college for graduating low-income students by the U.S. Department of Education. In December 2017, the Chronicle of Higher Education named Elizabeth Kiss on its 2017 list of the most influential people in U.S. higher education.

  • Lukas Lange

    Lukas is the CEO of Probably Genetic. Probably Genetic’s mission is to help 200 million rare genetic disease patients get diagnosed. Prior to co-founding the company, Lukas worked as an Associate for The Boston Consulting Group, in seed-stage VC in Germany and was a consultant for an international healthcare NGO. Lukas is currently completing his DPhil in Genetics at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He holds an MPhil and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge and the Technical University of Munich respectively.

  • Tshilidzi Marwala

    Tshilidzi Marwala is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg beginning on 1st January 2018. From 2013 to 2017 he was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalization and from 2009 to 2013 he was the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment both at the University of Johannesburg. From 2003 to 2008, he progressively held the positions of Associate Professor, Full Professor, the Carl and Emily Fuchs Chair of Systems and Control Engineering as well as the SARChI Chair of Systems Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. From 2001 to 2003, he was the Executive Assistant to the technical director at South African Breweries. From 2000 to 2001 he was a post-doctoral research associate at the Imperial College (then University of London). He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (magna cum laude) from Case Western Reserve University (USA) in 1995, a Master of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pretoria in 1997 and a PhD specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Engineering from the University of Cambridge in 2000.

  • Abhilash Mishra

    Abhilash Mishra is a policy researcher and social entrepreneur based at the University of Chicago. At UChicago, he is leading the development of a new policy lab with a mission to generate cutting-edge policy ideas at the intersection of technology and global development. As a social entrepreneur, Abhilash led the design and evaluation of India’s first STEM teacher-residency program. He is the founder of Science for All (www.scienceforall.org), a nonprofit that trains and supports the next generation of science educators and researchers in developing countries. Abhilash holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Caltech and a MPhys from Oxford. He was recognized as one of the top 20 emerging social entrepreneurs incubated by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2017.

  • Kate O'Brien

    Kate is in-house counsel for Oxford Sciences Innovation PLC, a £600m investment company dedicated to building thriving science and technology companies in Oxford. She plays an active role in OSI’s investment process, from diligencing potential opportunities to moulding transaction terms and executing deals. OSI portfolio companies are typically IP-driven and Kate enjoys managing OSI’s IP strategy. Kate graduated from Magdalen College with a degree in Law & Spanish Law, and subsequently trained and practiced with Herbert Smith Freehills LLP before moving in-house. She has two cats: Harry and Houdini.

  • Patrick Pichette (Québec & Pembroke 1987)

    Patrick Pichette has 25+ years of financial and operating expertise. He has led world-class companies like Google, McKinsey, and Sprint Canada to break through the complexities of 'hyper growth'. As CFO of Google from 2008 to 2015, he took an active part in the creation of the Alphabet structure. Patrick was actively involved in Google’s extensive corporate M&A agenda, engaging in close to 200 acquisitions, including Nest ($3B) and Motorola ($13B). After departing Google, Patrick served as a board member of Bombardier and Twitter. In addition, he has been an independent investor, advisor and board member to a number of startups around the world, including Zoona (Sub Saharan Africa), OkHi (Kenya), Boosted Boards (Mountain View), and Arctoris (UK), among others. Patrick graduated with a Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford in 1989 and with a BBA from UQAM in 1987.

  • Geoff Ralston

    Geoff Ralston ran engineering at Four11, where he built RocketMail, one of the first web mail services, which in 1997 became Yahoo! Mail. At Yahoo! Geoff worked in engineering, then ran a business unit, then became Chief Product Officer. After Yahoo! he was CEO of Lala, which was acquired in 2009 by Apple. In 2011 Geoff co-founded the world’s first educational technology accelerator, Imagine K12 which funded dozens of edtech companies including ClassDojo, Remind, and Panorama Education. Imagine K12 merged with YC in 2016. He has an AB in Computer Science from Dartmouth, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, and an MBA from INSEAD.

  • Arfa Rehman

    Arfa is the CEO and co-founder of Virtue, a London-based startup developing solutions for healthy ageing and longevity. Virtue created the award-winning Virtual Reality "time travel therapy" platform for people with dementia which is part of the NHS's first clinical audit on VR as a therapy for dementia. Arfa was previously a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where she completed a dual Master's in Sociology and an MBA (St Antony's and UAE 2015). At Virtue, she combines her experience in product design, research, and policy with her passion to help people lead longer and healthier lives

  • Matt Rogers

    Matt is a builder at heart. He started at Apple, building the software team for 10 generations of the iPod. He was one of the first engineers on the original iPhone and involved in the development of 5 iPhone generations, and the first iPad. As co-founder of Nest, Matt built the team that built the first machine learning thermostat. And by doing so, has built the leading connected home brand — Nest.

  • Abigail Seldin

    Abigail Seldin is the Managing Director of Blue Bead Capital. A Rhodes Scholar and Forbes Education “30 Under 30,” Seldin co-founded College Abacus, an edtech company known as the “Kayak.com of college financial aid,” in 2012. She served as the company’s CEO until she led the successful sale of the company in 2014. She served as VP of Innovation & Product Development at the acquirer, where she started and led their DC-based innovation Lab, an 80% female technology and design center. Seldin now serves on the boards of Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community & Justice and the Association of American Rhodes Scholars.

  • Omid Veiseh

    Dr. Omid Veiseh, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. He is also the co-founder of Sigilon Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA- based biopharmaceutical company that discovers and develops immune-privileged living therapeutic implants for the treatment of chronic diseases. Dr. Veiseh received a dual Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering and Nanotechnology from the University of Washington. He completed his postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Daniel Anderson at MIT and Harvard Medical School. Over the course of his career he has authored, or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications including those in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, Nature Biomedical Engineering and is an inventor on 20 pending or awarded patents, many of which have been licensed for commercialization by 3 separate biotechnology companies. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including: a $2 million CPRIT Scholar In Cancer Research Award from state of Texas, and was recently named one of MedTech Boston's 40 Under 40 Healthcare Innovators for 2017.

  • Caroline Winnett

    Caroline is Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck, UC Berkeley's flagship startup accelerator. At SkyDeck she leads a program that hosts over 200 companies per year. She recently launched the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, a $25 million VC fund investing in SkyDeck startups that shares half of fund profits with UC Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley SkyDeck, Caroline was a serial entrepreneur. Caroline co-founded the pioneer company in the neuromarketing industry, NeuroFocus, which was acquired by Nielsen in 2011. Before her career in startups, Caroline was a professional concert violinist. Caroline is a recognized speaker on startups, accelerators, and consumer neuroscience. Caroline received her MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Her undergraduate studies were at Brown University and she earned her Violin Performance degree at the Indiana University School of Music.

  • Dillon Woods

    Dillon Woods has served as the Chief Executive of Donald Woods Foundation since January 2006. His previous NGO experience includes serving as International Director for Programme Development for the Fred Hollows Foundation; being Joint Project Manager for the Mandela Statue Fund in London; and working in marketing, communications and fundraising for the Canon Collins Educational Trust and Defence and Aid. He was also a speech writer for Nelson Mandela. His commercial sector experience includes serving as Senior Partner for Jonga Consulting, a charity sector executive search firm; heading research at Odgers Ray & Berndtson, and being a researcher at Saxton Bampfylde. He received a BA Hons in Social Science from Manchester Met; an MA in International Relations from York University and was in the Business & Economics Programme at Oxford University.

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