With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, 35+ peer reviewed research publications, and the outstanding PhD thesis award from UIUC for his PhD thesis in Machine Learning, it’s fair to say that Ashu is one of the world’s experts in machine-learning. After his time managing Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research, Ashu founded Bloomreach, a Visionary vendor on Gartner’s magic quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms. Now, he is applying his experience to the problem he is most truly passionate about – helping the world’s talent find their most meaningful and fulfilling work.

Laura I Gómez is the CEO and Founder of Atipica, a venture-backed startup building the world's first Inclusive AI for the talent life cycle. She is also a founding member of Project Include whose mission is to give everyone a fair chance to succeed in tech.Gómez has been featured in hundreds of  publications around the world, including Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes México, GQ, Harper's Bazaar and Huffington post. She has recently named as one of the Frederick Douglass 200 is a project to honor the impact of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass across those areas where he had such an impact - abolitionist, politician, writer, feminist, educator, entrepreneur and diplomat - alongside Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

KELLY PALMER is on a mission to change the way the world learns. A well-known thought leader on learning, business, and career development, she is currently on the executive team of Degreed and was formerly the chief learning officer of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Kelly was vice president of learning at Yahoo! and held executive positions in learning, M&A, and product development at Sun Microsystems. She speaks regularly at companies and business conferences around the world, has been featured in the Financial Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., Chief Learning Officer (CLO), and on Bloomberg radio. Kelly has a Bachelor of Arts in English/communications and a Master of Science in adult learning and education technology. She is the co-author of the book The Expertise Economy: How the smartest companies use learning to engage, compete, and succeed. Kelly lives in San Francisco.

Erik Kostelnik is the co-founder and CEO of TextRecruit, a candidate and employee engagement platform that leverages text, chat, and artificial intelligence to help companies hire better people, faster. Prior to TextRecruit, Erik served as the Head of Sales at Wrike from 2014 to 2016 helping it reach #116 in 2015 Deloitte Fastest 500 and ran sales as VP at Identified through its acquisition by Workday in 2014. He also acts as an advisor to startups including Eatify.com and Outreach.io, was named an Upstart 50 Inventor by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Jared Bazzell currently serves as the Manager, Talent Acquisition at CDW, a leading Fortune 200 multi-brand technology solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare organizations in the US, Canada and UK. In this role, Bazzell is responsible for overseeing all university recruiting and company internship programs, and is also responsible for the management and development of an international team, including acquisition, onboarding and training efforts. Bazzell is also passionate about diversity and inclusion efforts at CDW, and launched a program series to foster and promote the advancement of aspiring female professionals.