Julie Averill is an executive technologist who transforms organizations by building aligned teams and creating innovative technologies. She is a strategic thinker and leader who drives consumer experiences and scales organizations. She has a global technology background where she has developed leading edge omni-channel strategies while managing privacy and risk.

Averill joined lululemon in 2017 and has played a critical role in leveraging advanced technology to transform lululemon’s retail business and enhance guest experiences. Prior to joining lululemon, Averill served as REI’s VP of IT (2014-2015) and first Chief Information Officer (2015-2017) and spent a decade at Nordstrom (2003-2014) where she held several key positions on the company’s IT leadership team. She has also been recognized for her leadership in retail as CTO of the year in 2019 by Dive Awards. Averill earned her MBA from the University of Washington, and a BA in computer science from Seattle Pacific University.

An industry-recognized IT leader in the design and delivery of cost-effective, high-performance technology solutions, Bradd Busick is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at MultiCare Health System. He has been featured in CIO Magazine, TED, recognized by Constellation Research as one of the top 150 innovative CXO’s in the country and is a two-time nominee as the top CIO in Washington state by CIO Insider. He was selected as the CIO of the year in 2023.

Busick delivers value to the enterprise by proactively offering broad, cutting-edge approaches for growing business and creating innovation across organizations such as Boeing, Ralph Lauren, Ford and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Busick has a Bachelor of Science and MBA from Pacific Lutheran University, with an emphasis in Technology and Innovation Management and is currently enrolled in the master’s program at Brown University. He is a certified Change Management practitioner, a board member of the PNW Chapter of Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), recognized by the Business Examiner as one of South Sound’s 40 under 40 and is an adjunct faculty member in the Morken School of Business at Pacific Lutheran University.

Kristie Duffin is the Chief Technology Officer for Cascade Asset Management Company, a 100+ billion-dollar investment management firm responsible for managing the assets of Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Duffin joined Cascade in 2016 to drive the strategy for Cascade’s cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and data and application platforms.

Previously Duffin was Managing Director and Head of Global CRM at BlackRock based in Seattle and London. Duffin has held several technology leadership positions with financial companies managing software development, product and program management, and technology infrastructure.

Duffin is on the Advisory Board for the University of Washington Bothell School of Business and is a graduate of the University of Washington Seattle Foster School of Business with both a BA and a Technology MBA.

Kari Escobedo is a technology executive with 20+ years of leadership experience serving global Fortune 500 companies in the technology, healthcare, telecom, retail and sports entertainment industries. She is a change leader specializing in company technology transformations, including digital experience, data, product development, and M&A. 

Most recently, Escobedo was with the Seattle Mariners Baseball Club leading the team’s transformation to a data driven, technology enabled organization. During her time with the Mariners, she was recognized as CIO of the Year by Inspire CIO for Seattle in the Corporate category. Previously, Escobedo served as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Bartell Drugs where, she transformed the company into a modern retail pharmacy leveraging data and technology.  Prior to Bartell Drugs, Kari lead the Ent & Digital Services teams for Kaiser Permanente of WA focusing on developing a product mindset to transform not only the enterprise systems but to focus on areas that include digital and mobile customer experiences. Formerly Vice President, Ent Sys Dev for T-Mobile, Kari led the technology team responsible for the development and delivery of solutions for the Customer Retail & Enterprise Systems that supported the T-Mobile business transformation.  Earlier in her career, Escobedo also held leadership roles at Starbucks and Microsoft, leading many of their technology teams. 

Escobedo is also very active in her communities and passions as a member of the Board of Advisors (College of Business & Economics) at Western Washington University, an advisor for the University of Washington Master of Science of Information Systems where she mentors MIS students, and is the governance board chair of WeCOACH, which is dedicated to the recruitment, advancement and retention of women coaches of all sports and levels.

Troy Johnson is a co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Slalom. He has been with the company since 1994 and is responsible for leading Slalom’s initiatives and efforts to expand reach by opening new markets within the U.S. and internationally. Johnson also oversees Slalom’s Global Sales and Talent Acquisition teams. Johnson’s previous positions included roles with First Interstate Bank and the Colorado Rockies. Johnson received a B.A. from the University of Iowa with a double major in Economics and Communications.

Jeff Jones is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Milliman, Inc., an actuarial consulting and solutions firm headquartered in Seattle with revenues exceeding $1 billion. Jones was a CISO finalist at the 2023 Seattle Orbie Awards and continues to network with other CISOs and CIOs in the Seattle area.

Jones joined Milliman in 2016 and has demonstrated innovative skills advising practices internally, managing cybersecurity and incident response, and representing Milliman’s information security interests with major clients, auditors, and vendors. He came to Milliman following a consulting engagement with Nordstrom.  Prior to Nordstrom, Jones was the Senior Information Security Manager at Black Knight Financial Services, where he managed the internal risk management team and developed security policies.  

Early in his career, Jones served honorably in the United States Air Force. Jones brings over 30 years of information technology and information security experience to the CISO role, including tenures at IBM, AT&T, ADP, and First American CoreLogic.

Among his four degrees, Jones earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of California, Davis, and a Master of Science in Information Technology from Golden Gate University. Jones has a passion for serving in his community, and is a former VP of the 100 Black Men of Sacramento, a non-profit that mentors young men in underserved communities.

Eric Larsen currently serves as the vice chairperson of the Alliance of Angels and as an advisor to Hamamatsu Venture Capital. An experienced entrepreneur, Larsen works with emerging Northwest companies seeking to scale by leveraging his broad experience in engineering, technology, finance and business operations. He advises several companies and has led multiple fundraising rounds.

Previously, Larsen held several senior leadership positions at Quellos and BlackRock. He initially joined Quellos in 1998, a leading alternative investment manager (fund of hedge funds and private equity funds). During his tenure at Quellos he led the technology team, building the proprietary, world-class research, operations and customer management system Quasar that became a key strategic advantage for Quellos. Larsen developed processes and technology to scale the business from 17 employees with $324 million in assets, to 350 employees with $25 billion in assets. He concurrently was the head of Financial Risk Management through 2003, analyzing portfolios and conducting research on quantitative hedge fund strategies. For the Quellos Financial Ventures program he advised emerging hedge funds on risk management, operations and technology

Ed Lazowska is a professor, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair emeritus, in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

Lazowska's research and teaching concern the design, implementation, and analysis of computing and communication systems, and, more recently, the techniques and technologies of data-intensive discovery. He also has been active on public policy issues, ranging from STEM education to Federal strategies for research and innovation.

Lazowska is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He serves as aboard member or technical advisor for a number of high-tech companies, venture firms, and technology-oriented civic organizations. A long-time advocate for increasing participation in the field, he served until recently on the National Academies Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine, and served on the National Academies study committee on the impact of sexual harassment in academia.

Lazowska was a member of the UW committee that established the iSchool, of the search committee that recruited Mike Eisenberg to lead it, and of the junta that forced the Provost to fulfill the commitments he had made as part of that process. He has served on the Founding Board since that time.

Brian Lent is an AI pioneer who has been at the forefront of data science, machine learning, and leading-edge AI technology companies for over three decades.  He is now at Auger, leading its Analytics and Data platforms to build the leading AI-driven platform for supply chains around the world.

As the co-founder and CEO of Plunk, Lent embarked on a mission to build “the Bloomberg of residential real estate” — starting with the launch of Plunk as the first generative AI-driven home analytics platform. With a world-class team of data scientists and engineers, Lent brought advanced LLMs, computer vision, AI, and ML algorithms to the world’s largest asset class — residential real estate.

Prior to Plunk, Lent founded the mobile cloud analytics company Medio Systems, supporting 440+ million consumers in over 100+ countries. In 2014, Medio Systems was acquired by Nokia (HERE Technologies), after which Lent was promoted to Chief Technology Officer. For the next four years, Lent lead a worldwide technology and R&D organization, and spearheaded the company’s primary technology roadmap and strategic direction, including product innovation, research, and multi-tiered mixed public cloud analytics technology. Previous to HERE, Lent spent most of his career leading groundbreaking technology work for companies including IBM and Junglee, which was acquired by Amazon. 

While earning his master's and Ph.D. candidacy at Stanford University in Computer Science, he co-founded Mining Data at Stanford (MiDAS), the research lab which incubated the Google crawler and search engine in 1994. As a recipient of both the prestigious National Science Foundation and Department of Defense Office of Naval Research Graduate Fellowships, Lent is a key industry thought leader and author of numerous professional publications and patents.

Mark Mader serves as president and CEO of Smartsheet, a high-growth software company transforming the way organizations plan, track, automate, and report on work at scale. Based in Seattle, Mark leads a high-performing team of over 800 employees bringing to market a SaaS platform used by millions of people at over 74,000 customers, including more than half of the Fortune 500.

Mark is a recognized leader in the technology community, having been named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology for the Pacific Northwest, and GeekWire’s CEO of the Year. Under his leadership, Smartsheet was named Washington’s Best Workplace by the Puget Sound Business Journal, and Seattle’s Next Tech Titan by GeekWire. 

Passionate about entrepreneurship and tech innovation, Mark is a contributor to media outlets like CNBC and Entrepreneur, and has been a featured speaker at many events, including Startup Grind, YPO Innovation Week, and the NYSE Tech Leadership Summit. Prior to Smartsheet, Mark served as senior vice president of global services for Onyx Software, leading the consulting and customer-facing teams in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. A dual-citizen of Germany and the United States, he has spent considerable time working and living abroad and applies that global perspective to the products and services that Smartsheet delivers. Mark graduated with a B.A. in Geography from Dartmouth College.

Twitter - @MarkMader
LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/markmader/

Chris Miller guides the development of technical infrastructure and applications architecture for Avanade. He also works closely with Microsoft to ensure Avanade's position as an aggressive early adopter of Microsoft enterprise technologies.

Miller joined Avanade after 16 years at Accenture, where he served as a senior director for Accenture's Collaboration 2.0 program. In this role, Miller oversaw a multi-year, award-winning initiative to enable 180,000 global employees with next-generation collaboration capabilities.

Miller's prior experience spans a wide range of technology and consulting functions, focused on leveraging Microsoft technology on a true enterprise scale for Accenture and its clients. Miller has held various positions in the IT organization with responsibility for providing the IT products, services and support for many of Accenture's internal business practices, including HR, marketing, facilities, and legal. Miller also spent 10 years with Accenture's consulting practice, directing large solution-oriented projects at global retail and pharmaceutical clients.

Miller has a bachelor's of science degree in finance, with minors in mathematics and history, from Indiana University.

Rajesh Naidu is a technology executive with extensive experience in leading global cross-functional teams and enterprise programs to develop leading edge innovative solutions at scale. Naidu has been with Starbucks for more than nine years and is responsible for Architecture, Emerging Technology and Data & Analytics Technology Platforms. Naidu is a valuable member of the Starbucks Technology leadership team and as Chief Architect has purview over Enterprise and Information Architecture in a global capacity. In his capacity as the leader of the Emerging Technology team, Rajesh is helping accelerate innovation and foster new technology partnerships. By having responsibility for Business Intelligence, Master Data Systems, Analytics & Data platforms, Naidu, in partnership with Starbucks business teams, is helping deliver cutting edge analytics solutions and breakthrough capabilities in AI/ML to solve complex business problems at scale. 

Prior to Starbucks, Naidu held leadership roles at SAP and Hewlett Packard. Naidu has a master’s in civil engineering from Texas Tech University.

Florin Rotar is Avanade’s CTO and is responsible for the strategic technology direction for the company. He is leading Avanade's Emerging Technology Group, Portfolio Management & Incubation Teams, Global Innovation Team and Market Research function.

Curious by nature and a technologist by trade ever since he typed LOAD “*”, 8,1 on his Commodore 64 in 1983, Rotar is an optimistic believer in the power of technology to make a genuine human impact. With a background as an entrepreneur, a practitioner and a technology leader, and spending the last 20 years between the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, he uses his experience to guide teams and clients through the journey of realizing the potential and promise of the Microsoft platform. Rotar is a published co-author of the book "We the People: Human Purpose in a Digital Age: A Guide to Digital Ethics for Individuals, Organizations and Robots of All Kinds."

In late 2023, Geevy Thomas accepted the role of President and CEO of CarToys Inc. 

Prior to this role, Thomas had served as chief innovation officer of Nordstrom. He supported the company’s forward-thinking efforts to evolve stores and better serve customers for the future.

Thomas joined Nordstrom in 1983 as a salesperson in men’s furnishings and worked his way through college. After graduating from the University of Washington, he went on to hold numerous positions throughout the company including store, regional and buying management. After working as regional manager for Los Angeles, Thomas served as vice president from 1998-2000, and then executive vice president and general merchandising manager for full-line stores from 2000-2002. In 2002, he was promoted to executive vice president, south regional manager for full-line stores where he served from 2002-2009 before assuming the role as president of Nordstrom Rack.

Wendy Turner-Williams is the founder and CEO of Culstrata-ai and theassociation.ai. Turner-Williams has 25+ years of experience in the AI, Data and Trust space at companies like Accenture, Microsoft and Salesforce. Following her recent stint as the chief data & analytics officer for Tableau, Turner-Williams has embraced her entrepreneurial spirit and is now focused on bringing proven chief data & AI fractional and best-in-class talent acquisition services to market. She is using her change agent and culture building experience to form and foster an AI, data, ethics, privacy and security professionals’ community with the intention of breaking silos, improving networking, and the identification and publication of technology self-regulation opportunities that ensures ethical AI and data handling.

Turner-Williams is an award-winning chief data & analytics officer, author, speaker and thought-leader. She serves on the advisory boards at Kensu and Women in Tech World Series (North America). She also supports the development of the next generation of AI, data and ML leaders as an adjunct professor for Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College CdataO certification program.

Pawan Uppuluri is a seasoned technology executive with 25+ years of experience building consumer products at internet scale. She has a track record of building products from early stage concept through launch; and building and managing large scale systems serving multi-billion dollar businesses. Most recently, she served as the Chief Technology Officer at Thrasio, a next generation consumer goods company. Prior to this, she was the Chief Technology Officer at Glossier and Director of Product & Engineering at Amazon. Uppuluri was named in Forbes “Next CIO 2021 - 50 innovative technology leaders transforming business for a radically different world” and Girl Geek “60 Female CTOs to watch in 2023.”

At Thrasio, Uppuluri oversaw product and technology building a machine learning driven merchandising and distribution platform across multiple e-commerce channels enabling demand optimization through pricing & marketing as well as supply chain optimization. At Glossier, a digital-first beauty company, she oversaw product and engineering for e-commerce & retail and helped transform the technology team and systems to deliver a best-in-class omnichannel platform. Previously, as the Director of Software Development in Alexa, Uppuluri led product and engineering for News, Voice of the Customer and Alexa Orchestration Engine which was the backbone workflow for Alexa.

Nick Whiting is the co-founder of kumikai, a new company focused on applying video game technology to industries outside of games.

Previously, Whiting worked at Epic Games as the Senior Director of Frameworks, Simulation, and Research Engineering, as well as Studio Head of the company's Bellevue studio. His work focused on various aspects of the Unreal Engine, which powers a wide range of applications from gaming to film to the enterprise space. His technical work also focused on programming and scripting languages, and virtual and augmented reality applications.  Over his 13 years at Epic, in addition to his work on the core technologies of the engine, he also shipped several award-winning game titles, such as "Fortnite," "Robo Recall" and "Gears of War 3."

Previously, he also served as the first chair of the OpenXR working group, which works to create an open standard for virtual and augmented reality applications and hardware. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Japanese, and with a certificate in Biomedical Engineering.

Yi Zhou is a globally acclaimed AI thought leader and executive, renowned for his pioneering work in AI-powered business transformation. As an accomplished CTO and CIO, he has a distinguished track record of leadership at the intersection of technology and health care, with transformative roles at GE Healthcare and Quest Diagnostics. Notably, he was instrumental in setting industry standards through his participation in the MITA AI Committee, his trailblazing work in developing the GE Healthcare AI Standard & Playbook, and his leadership in launching the world's first FDA-approved AI-powered X-ray and MRI devices. 

Featured in the American Healthcare Leader magazine, Zhou has been honored with multiple industry awards, including two “CIO of the Year” Seattle ORBIE Awards (2023 and 2024 finalist), two CEO awards, and three DNA awards. He has authored numerous influential publications including Generative AI books, AI standards and articles, software architecture book, and life sciences papers.