KEYNOTE SPEAKER, Teddy Pahagbia
Teddy is a visionary thinker, a bold entrepreneur and a tech geek. Formerly a Management Consultant having worked for mid to large size companies across various industries and government agencies in Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, Teddy has been recognized in 2021 as one of the top 30 most influential people in the Metaverse.
https://readwrite.com/2021/08/23/the-top-30-most-influential-people-in-the-metaverse
As the Metaverse Industry continues to evolve, he is a leading voice, daringly paving the way through his efforts to evangelize, educate, advise, develop and create the successor to today’s mobile internet. For more information about Teddy, visit his website www.BLVCKPIXEL.com
Stephanie Humphrey
Stephanie is a former engineer who is now a technology contributor for ABC News on the nationally syndicated daytime talk shows Good Morning America and GMA3: What You Need to Know. Before that, she spent two years as the technology contributor to daytime talk show The Harry Show, hosted by Harry Connick, Jr. and she is a regular on-air tech contributor to Fox 29’s Good Day Philadelphia (WTXF) where she has delivered tech news since 2012.
Stephanie spent three years as the technology writer for EBONY.com, a contributor to EBONY magazine, and was the originator of the popular Tech2Go column on TheRoot.com. She is now the tech writer for The Philadelphia Sunday Sun. Stephanie also spent two years as the spokesperson for HP, Inc. on the QVC shopping channel, and you can currently catch her regular radio segments on WDAS-FM and WURD-AM in Philadelphia. Stephanie is a content creator who uses social media to help thousands of people understand tech basics with her weekly 60-Second Tech Break on Instagram & Twitter (@TechLifeSteph).
Stephanie is also a professional speaker and her signature seminar, ‘Til Death Do You Tweet, helps people understand the potential negative consequences of online behavior - especially through social media - and gives helpful advice on how they can maintain a positive reputation in cyberspace. Her book, “Don’t Let Your Digital Footprint Kick You in the Butt!” expands on these concepts and helps the reader build their personal brand on the internet. The book is available on Amazon. Stephanie’s expertise is built upon more than a decade as a Senior Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin and engineering degrees from Florida A&M University and the University of Pennsylvania. Stephanie is a Technology and Lifestyle Expert on a mission in life is to show people how technology can make their lives easier.
For more info on Stephanie visit her linktree website
Derek Jones
Derek Jones is the founder and CEO of UnitedCoin Inc., a cryptocurrency bank and exchange. He is also the CEO of My Tax Solutions, an online tax preparation and accounting firm for individuals and corporations. Philanthropically, he maintains the position of Treasurer, Program Director, Presenter and Grant writer for My Perfect Image, Inc. a 501(c)(3) organization assisting students in business and social etiquette, life skills, and empowering businesses and community organizations to fulfill their financial goals and objectives.
As an active community member and businessman, Mr. Jones has been instrumental in sharing his knowledge of finances, technology and life skills with students and individuals throughout the world. He has spoken at events in New York, Guadalajara, Los Angeles,
Casablanca, and Athens. On September 14th, 2019, Derek was recognized by Legacy Magazine as one of South Florida’s 40 Under 40 Leaders of Today and Tomorrow. Derek is a graduate of the University of Miami, in Miami Florida
with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance. Mr. Jones speaks English and Spanish.
For more info on Derek visit his linkedin page
Yvette Schmitter
A tech evangelist, Yvette Schmitter helps enterprises harness next generation technologies to extend innovation from micro scale to building scale. An expert in people, culture and enterprise transformations, and sought after strategic partner, she leads enterprises through complex transformations to accelerate innovation and build business agility on cloud platforms through digitalization.
For more info on Yvette visit her linkedin page
Jamiel Sheikh
Jamiel is a founder & CEO, author, professor, global speaker and educator, community builder, crypto trader and investor. He is Founder of Instamint, an NFT-as-a-service startup, Chainhaus a blockchain advisory and the CBDC Think Tank which advises central banks on their digital currency strategy. Jamiel runs Blockchain101.com a digital education portal on blockchain, DeFi, NFTs and Metaverse and runs Blockchain NYC, the largest Meetup blockchain community in NYC with over 30k local members, doing over and 150+ events in the past 4 years including major conferences like DEFICON. Jamiel wrote a bestselling book called Mastering Corda and is currently writing a business reader for Columbia Press entitled The DeFi Phenomenon.
He has over 25 years ofexperience in the fintech and banking space working for companies like Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. He is Innovation Fellow at Columbia Business School's Lang Center for Entrepreneurship and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, NYU and CUNY, where he teaches business and technical courses on
blockchain and web 3.0 and board member of the Society of Women Coders, a non-profit that helps young girls in the most adverse environments gain basic digital literacy and coding skills to be more independent. Jamiel holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and is working on his second Masters in AI from Georgia Institute of Technology. For more info on Jamiel visit his linkedin page https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiel
Krista Kim
Krista Kim is a contemporary artist and founder of the Techism movement (2014), whose work explores the concept of the digital consciousness. Her interest in digital technology and its revolutionary effects on human perception, media, social structures, and communication had led her to work in both digital and physical realms. Having developed her signature language of shifting gradients using digital software since 2012, her works on glass and plexi hypnotize its viewers into a trance of tranquility while her video works provide meditative experiences of color and light.
In 2020, Kim continued to explore the creative potential to utilize screens as digital instruments of well-being by creating 'Mars House': a completely virtual environment using her digital zen philosophy as the first “Metaverse home”. The piece received global acclaim and in March 2021 was the highest-grossing sale on an NFT on SuperRare. Krista was chosen by Louis Vuitton as a #Louis200 visionary in celebration of Louis’ 200th birthday, she is a contributing Metaverse Editor for Singapore Vogue, one of the Top 30 Most Influential People of the Metaverse by Read and Write Magazine, part of the Architectural Digest AD100, and in the NFTy50 by Fortune Magazine. Krista Kim’s “Continuum” will be featured during the month of February 2022 in Times Square. Every night at midnight for 3 minutes, her meditative gradients will wash Times Square in serenity.
For more info on Krista visit her website
Imari Oliver
Imari Oliver is the Founder and CEO, of Bond & Play, a holding company for a portfolio of innovative business platforms and models, designed to capitalize on opportunities in the evolving digital economy across several industries. With 20+ years of experience in strategy, planning, production and sales in both business and consumer-focused roles, Imari is an internationally recognized thought leader and strategist. He has spent his career unlocking market-shifting trends and creating high-value growth opportunities through his deep understanding of culture, technology, innovation and human behavior. Imari’s domain expertise is in the FinTech, Esports & Gaming and Media industries. He operates with a bias towards action and understands the importance of innovating at the edges of culture. He launched FinTech BLK https://fintechblk.com, a conference and festival designed to ensure historically excluded communities of color are not left out of this industry. Before launching Bond & Play, Imari established his reputation as a creative, strategic and cognitive thinker and producer at companies including:
• Endeavor (formerly WME | IMG) – Sales and Global Partnerships for Esports
• Sparks & Honey – Creative, Foresight and Cultural Strategy
• Dentsu mcgarrybowen – Agency Innovation & Product
Development
• GREY, BBDO, AKQA – Digital Production and Delivery
Fun Fact: Imari attended Samurai day school in Kyoto Japan. For more info on Imari visit his linkedin page https://www.linkedin.com/in/imariolive
Iris Nevins
Iris Nevins is the co-founder and CEO of Umba Daima, a creative NFT Studio that is building a multi-cultural collaborative web3 community. Umba Daima builds out brands and programs to support its mission with Black NFT Art being its most popular project. Iris sees NFTs as a revolutionary tool for empowering under-resourced communities to generate wealth through ownership of IP and digital assets.
Iris is a former teacher and community activist who eventually became a software engineer. She left her engineering management role at Vox Media to become the full time CEO of her own company.
For more info on Iris visit her linkedin page https://www.linkedin.com/in/iris-nevins