Speakers

Ajay Agrawal is a professor at the University of Toronto and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. He conducts research on the economics of science and innovation and recently co-authored the best-selling book "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence." He is the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and co-founder of Next AI, both programs focused on transforming AI projects into scalable businesses. He co-founded Kindred, a company that builds machines with human-like intelligence and that was named to The MIT Technology Review's 50 Smartest Companies of 2017 as well as CB Insights’ AI 100 (2018). In 2017, The Globe & Mail listed Professor Agrawal as one of the 50 Most Powerful People in Canadian Business.

Venkat Varadachary is the Executive Vice-President for Global Information Management and Chief Data Officer for American Express. In his current role, Venkat leads global teams across platforms, analytics, governance, data science and privacy to enable American Express's rich data assets to drive value for our partners and customers. Venkat's responsibilities also include AXP Big Data Labs and the AXP Privacy Office. As AXP Chief Data Officer, Venkat also leads American Express’ data strategy and governance, from monitoring the quality and quantity of data flowing through our systems to creating the next generation of data insights and how we create economic value through our data.

Prior to this role, Venkat held various leadership roles in marketing analytics and risk management spanning the consumer, commercial and rewards loyalty space. As head of the Membership Rewards Analytics team, Venkat led the development of the first rewards decision infrastructure and analytics in the industry.

Venkat has Bachelor’s degrees in Genetics and Economics and a Master’s degree in Quantitative Methods all from the University of Rochester. Venkat is a Trustee of Harvey Mudd College, co-leads diversity for RIM. He is the executive sponsor for the Asian network at Amex and is on the company’s diversity council.

Mark Hookey is the Founder & CEO of DemystData, a software company that helps financial institutions harness the explosive growth of data to serve more customers. With a career focus on data technology product development, Mark is an expert in scalable data access and analytics for financial institutions.

Prior to founding DemystData, Mark was a Managing Director with LexisNexis in New York. Previously, Mark was a partner at Optimal Decisions Group (later acquired by LexisNexis), where he grew the US practice with cutting edge insurance price optimization technology and change management consulting. Mark has an MBA from Columbia University, and degrees in Engineering and Commerce (Honors) from the University of Melbourne.

Amir is the CCO at SparkBeyond. SparkBeyond has built an automated research engine, capable of asking questions and discovering complex patterns in data. The technology is designed to leverage masses of data that exist on the web, intelligently augment the data and discover complex patterns. These patterns then become powerful tools for explaining, predicting and optimizing outcomes. SparkBeyond empowers Fortune 500 customers and partners to accelerate breakthroughs and surface discoveries across numerous verticals and practices, doing it deeper and faster while continuously re-writing its own code.

Prior to joining SparkBeyond Amir was the COO of Adallom (acquired by Microsoft) and a SVP at Amobee (acquired by SingTel). In addition Amir served on the Advisory board of Onavo (acquired by Facebook) and currently mentor several disruptive StartUps

In his fellowship role, Peter Johnson’s primary mission is to investigate new and emerging technologies with the potential to transform core MetLife businesses. Opportunities created by Artificial Intelligence and advanced Data Science are of particular interest. Pete has been an AI practitioner for over 35 years, having applied machine learning and natural language technologies to create banking and capital markets solutions going back to 1981. He sits on several advisory boards, ranging from IBM’s Deep Computing Institute to the NLP Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. At MetLife, Pete has created several shared services, including data science services, Big Data solutions, and various intelligent workflow platforms.

Peter Johnson joined MetLife in 2012. Prior to that, Peter had been Chief Technology Officer at BNY Mellon for most of his career. As the lead executive behind the company’s enterprise architecture practice, Pete played a critical role in BNY’s senior management team, always with an eye toward driving innovation. During his tenure, he introduced several new technologies including Pervasive Wireless Computing, Social Computing, Data Warehousing, Data Mining, Client/Server Middleware, and various Internet architectures.

Pete’s technical expertise includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, AI/object-oriented software engineering, data warehousing, and data mining. He is frequently asked to speak at major conferences throughout the U.S. and Europe as a recognized industry expert in data science. Pete’s publications range from academic journals in cognitive science to “how to” guides on data discovery in databases.
On a personal note, Pete is an accomplished long-distance dog musher, having successfully completed the 1,150- mile Iditarod sled dog race across Alaska.