David Crane

President
Govern for California

David Crane is a lecturer in Public Policy at Stanford University and president of Govern for California. From 2004-2010 he served as a special advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and from 1979-2003 he was a partner at Babcock & Brown, a financial services company. Crane also serves as a director of Building America’s Future and formerly served on the University of California Board of Regents and as a director of the California State Teachers Retirement System, California High Speed Rail Authority, California Economic Development Commission, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Environmental Defense Fund, Legal Services for Children, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Society of Actuaries Blue Ribbon Panel on the Causes of Public Pension Underfunding, and Volcker-Ravitch Task Force on the State Budget Crisis.

Nancy Davis

Managing Partner & CIO
Quadratic Capital Management, LLC

Ms. Davis founded Quadratic Capital Management. She began her career at Goldman Sachs where she spent ten years, the last seven at the proprietary trading group where she became Head of Credit, Derivatives and OTC Trading. Prior to starting Quadratic, she served as a portfolio manager at Highbridge where she managed $500 million of capital in a derivatives-only portfolio. She later served in a senior executive role at AllianceBernstein.

Ms. Davis writes and speaks frequently about financial topics and world markets. She has been published in Financial News, Absolute Return and Institutional Investor and has contributed papers to two books. She has been interviewed by The Economist, Financial Times, New York Magazine and Le Figaro. Ms. Davis is a board member of the International Partners Committee and was a keynote speaker in China at the Asset Management Association’s annual conference. Ms. Davis has appeared on CNBC, Reuters, Sina, Bloomberg and MSNBC. In 2014, Nancy was selected by Institutional Investor as a Rising Star of Hedge Funds and recognized by The Hedge Fund Journal as one of “Tomorrow’s Titans.” Ms. Davis holds a B.A. magna cum laude in Economics from George Washington University where she was a recipient of the Presidential Academic Scholarship.

Marcelo Desio

Founder
Lucha Capital Management

Marcelo Desio has over 20 years of long/ short investing, both as a fund manager and analyst, specializing in short selling and long investing in TMT and business services. He founded Lucha Capital Management L.P in July 2016 and launched their fund in September of 2016. Marcelo, along with partners Bill Dauphinais and Cody Shevitz manages a market neutral equity strategy focusing on technology and tech enabled business services. The firm currently has $200mm in AUM and is a fundamental bottoms up based manager with a factor based risk management overlay.

Prior to founding Lucha Capital, Marcelo spent almost 5 years at Crosslink Capital; Prior to that Marcelo ran a fund called Triatto Capital; June 2004 – April 2009. Marcelo spent 4 years at Willow Creek Capital until 2004 and and 5 years at RNC Capital as both an analyst and PM.

Carl Kawaja

Equity Portfolio Manager
Capital Group

Carl M. Kawaja is an equity portfolio manager at Capital Group. Carl has 30 years of investment experience and has been with Capital Group for 25 years. Earlier in his career, as an equity investment analyst at Capital, he covered global household products and U.S. personal care companies, along with Canadian companies. Before joining Capital, Carl was a security analyst for Gabelli & Company in New York, as well as an equity analyst for Lévesque Beaubien in Montreal. He holds an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in history from Brown University graduating magna cum laude. Carl is based in San Francisco.

Christopher Lord

Co-Founder & Portfolio Manager
Criterion Capital Management

Mr. Lord is Co-Founder and Portfolio Manager of Criterion Capital Management, LLC, an institutional investment management firm that specializes in technology, media and telecommunications companies.

Prior to founding Criterion, Mr. Lord was Director of Research for Pivotal Asset Management, a technology fund focused on late-stage private and post-IPO investing. Previous to Pivotal, Mr. Lord was a Senior Analyst at Amerindo Investment Advisors and a Portfolio Manager at Scudder, Stevens & Clark. Mr. Lord received a BA in Religious Studies from Dartmouth College and a MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Mr. Lord is a member of the Investment Committee for the Dartmouth College Endowment, and currently serves as a Trustee at Lick-Wilmerding High School, The Glide Foundation, and The Posse Foundation.

Jon McAuliffe, Ph.D.

Chief Investment Officer
Voleon

Jon McAuliffe is co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Voleon, heading the firm’s investment-strategy research and development. Jon is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on theory and methodology for large-scale data analysis.

Dr. McAuliffe has a substantial track record of successful innovation in applying statistical methods to real-life prediction problems, particularly in the financial markets. He was formerly a Vice President at D. E. Shaw & Co., where he researched, developed, and managed statistical arbitrage trading strategies. Prior to joining Voleon, Dr. McAuliffe built recommender systems at Amazon.com, real-time click prediction rules at search-keyword portfolio manager Efficient Frontier, and genotype-calling algorithms at microarray maker Affymetrix.

Dr. McAuliffe held a University of California Regents Fellowship from 2000 to 2004, and won the Berkeley Statistics Department’s Erich Lehmann award for the outstanding dissertation in theoretical statistics. He is widely published and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Machine Learning Research. He has served on the senior program committee for NIPS and ICML, the flagship annual machine learning conferences.

Dr. McAuliffe earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an A.B. in Computer Science, with honors, and an S.M. in Applied Mathematics, both from Harvard University.

Mick McGuire

Founder & Managing Partner
Marcato Capital Management

Mick McGuire is the Founder and Managing Partner of Marcato Capital Management. Based in San Francisco, Marcato manages a select number of passive and activist investments across all industries with a primary focus on opportunities in middlemarket public equities. Mick has spent his entire career in private and public equity investing and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Princeton University. Mick also serves on the board of Tipping Point Community, the Bay Area’s leading poverty-fighting organization.

Dan Morehead

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Pantera, Bitcoin

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G. Mason Morfit

President
ValueAct Capital

G. Mason Morfit is President of ValueAct Capital,a governance-oriented investment fund with approximately $16 billion in assets under management. ValueAct Capital invests in a concentrated portfolio of public companies and works actively with their executives and boards of directors on issues of strategy, capital structure, M&A and talent management. The partners at ValueAct Capital have served on the Boards of Directors of 38 public companies. The firm also has the flexibility to execute going-private transactions for 100% control in select circumstances.

Mr. Morfit joined the board of directors of Microsoft Corporation (NASDQ: MSFT) in March 2014. He is a former director of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (NYSE: VRX, TSX: VRX), CR Bard, Inc. (NYSE: BCR), Immucor, Inc. (NASDQ: BLUD), Advanced Medical Optics (NYSE: EYE), Solexa, Inc. (NASDQ: SLXA) and MSD Performance, Inc.

Prior to ValueAct Capital, Mr. Morfit worked in equity research for Credit Suisse First Boston’s health care group covering the managed care industry. He has an AB from Princeton University. He has spoken on issues of corporate governance and executive compensation at Stanford Law School’s Director’s College, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Oleg Nodelman

Founder & Managing Director
EcoR1 Capital Fund

Oleg Nodelman is the Founder and Managing Director of EcoR1 Capital Fund, a leading biotech focused investment fund. With 16 years of experience in investing and consulting, Mr. Nodelman has expertise in all aspects of investment management and deep roots in the biotech and scientific communities. Before founding EcoR1, Mr. Nodelman was a Portfolio Manager at BVF Partners, one of biotech’s first dedicated hedge funds. During his 11 years with BVF, Mr. Nodelman’s responsibilities spanned the entire investment process, from opportunity generation and due diligence to portfolio management and trading. Mr. Nodelman began his career in strategic consulting and organizational management at Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman), where he worked with senior management from companies in a variety of industries to develop and implement long-term strategy and build shareholder value. Mr. Nodelman has a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service with a concentration in Science and Technology from Georgetown University.

Mark Okada

Co-Founder & Co-CIO
Highland Capital Management

Mark Okada is Co-founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Highland Capital Management, a Dallas-based alternative investment firm with approximately $15 billion in assets under management. In his role, Mr. Okada oversees Highland’s broad investment activities for both the institutional and retail investment platforms, which include hedge funds, separate accounts, special situation private equity, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), mutual funds, and ETFs. He also remains portfolio manager of the Highland Floating Rate Opportunities Fund. With more than 30 years of experience in credit markets, Mr. Okada is widely regarded as an industry innovator in alternative credit investing; he is responsible for structuring one of the industry’s first non-bank CLOs and is a pioneer in the development of the bank loan market. Mr. Okada is on the board of directors at NexBank Capital, Inc., a Dallas-based financial services company. He received a B.A. in both economics and psychology, cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles and has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Mr. Okada is a regular guest on Bloomberg Television and CNBC, and is frequently quoted in the financial and business press. He is also devoted to a number of philanthropic and civic causes with a particular focus on education, faith-based service, and Japanese-American relations. He is chairman of the board of directors of Education Is Freedom, a Dallas-based nonprofit that provides college preparatory services for underserved students. Mr. Okada is also chairman of the board for Common Grace Ministries, Inc. and is a board member of the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society. Additionally, he serves on the executive board of Dedman College Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University and is a council leader at the U.S.-Japan Council.

Glen Kacher

President & Portfolio Manager
Light Street Capital

Glen Kacher formed Light Street in 2010. Prior to forming Light Street, Glen was with Integral Capital Partners, where he joined as a Principal in 1998 and became a Managing Director in 2000. Integral typically invested 70% of each of its funds in public companies, with the remainder in private companies. At Integral, Glen developed portfolio strategy, researched companies, and executed trades. Areas of investment included software, Internet, media, eCommerce, mobile hardware, PC hardware, security software, and networking. Glen led or co-led many of Integral’s venture investments during his tenure, including Agile Software (IPO, acquired by Oracle), Arcsight (IPO, acquired by HP), BlueNile (IPO), Epiphany (IPO, acquired by SSA), Extensity (IPO, acquired by Geac), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), Interwoven (IPO, acquired by Autonomy), LogMeIn (IPO), OpenTable (IPO), and Overture/Goto.com (IPO, acquired by Yahoo). Prior to joining Integral, Glen was with Tiger Management from 1993 to 1996 as a full-time research analyst and from 1996 to 1997 as a part-time consultant. At Tiger, Glen focused on investments in the software, hardware, and networking industries. Glen holds an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, 1998, and a B.S. in Commerce with Distinction from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, 1993.

Jeff Shen

Managing Director, Co-CIO of Active Equity & Co-Head of Scientific Active Equity
BlackRock

Jeff Shen, PhD, Managing Director, is Co-CIO of Active Equity and Co-Head of Scientific Active Equity (SAE). He is responsible for Asia Pacific and Emerging Market Active Equity Strategies. He is the firm’s Head of Emerging Market and a member of the Global Operating Committee.

Dr. Shen’s service with the firm dates back to 2004, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. At BGI, he was the Head of Investment for Asia Pacific and Emerging Market active equities. Prior to joining BGI, he began his career in 1997 with JP Morgan where he held numerous positions in global macro investment and asset allocation research in both New York and London. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at NYU teaching a MBA class on international investment.

Dr. Shen earned a BA degree in Economics from Hobart College, a MA degree in Economics from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a PhD degree in Finance from New York University.

Dan Morehead

Chief Executive Officer
Pantera Capital

Chairman
Bitstamp

Dan founded Pantera Capital Management LP in 2003. He also co-founded and was CEO of Atriax, an electronic foreign exchange platform. Prior to that, he was head of macro trading and CFO at Tiger Management, global head of FX options at Deutsche Bank in London, and managed a global macro fund and derivatives trading units in North America and Japan at Bankers Trust. Dan began his career at Goldman Sachs as a mortgage-backed securities trader. Dan graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and received the Carmichael Prize.

Pantera Capital is an institutional investment firm focused exclusively on Bitcoin, other digital currencies and companies in the space. As CEO of Pantera Capital, Dan is actively involved in providing investors exposure to Bitcoin in addition to digital currency startups. Bitcoin represents a quantum shift in the global financial landscape and will fundamentally transform the way finance and commerce is conducted around the world.