Dustin Lucien is the Chief Operating Officer of Betterment and has been with the company since 2013. Prior to becoming COO, Dustin served as Betterment's Chief Technology Officer, as well as the VP of Engineering. Dustin received his Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, as well as his Master’s degree in Biomedical Imaging & Computing.
There's never been a better period of opportunity for innovation in science and technology. Communications, and the technologies and services built around them, are advancing at an exponential rate. For the first time in our existence, this is allowing a global population to innovate, collaborate, and prosper. And while many female business leaders and entrepreneurs are making remarkable advances and contributions to this worldwide phenomenon, many more have yet to step aboard. There is way too much untapped potential out there to simply leave it on the table.
Come along to an evening devoted to discussing how we can go about leveraging that untapped potential. Our discussion topics for this event will include:
- What are the best business opportunities in science and technology for women today?
- In which types of management and leadership roles do women have a clear advantage or disadvantage?
- What's the best way to overcome barriers and maximize potential for women entrepreneurs?
- What laws, grants, and programs are available to help promote success for women?
Our expert panel for this event includes women in leadership roles in business, technology, education, and the law. Come listen to how they navigated obstacles such as gender inequality, stereotyping, diminished opportunities for advancement, and disproportionate risk taking, all to become the fearless leaders they are today.
Alexandra is a seasoned private funds lawyer, a leader in financial inclusion and workplace rights for women, LGBTQ+, and other diverse voices, a wine educator, and a natural technophobe bravely facing tech issues on behalf of asset management clients for over 25 years. Technology dislodges and disrupts industry practices on the reg, and Sandra has helped investment advisers capture opportunities and cope with the challenges of technology in product development, mergers and acquisitions, post-merger integration, intellectual property rights, operations, and regulatory compliance. Sandra first joined a legal blockchain tech task force in approximately 2013 to consider what impact it would have on asset managers.
She has also led many tech-focused projects addressing securing industry IP rights, investing in IP, algorithmic and systematic trading, recordkeeping practices, data protection, innovation and incubation, fund formation for crypto investment, venture capital, the massification and private labeling of managed accounts programs through technology, cross border risk management, and, yes, even the ridiculous Y2K drama. Her primary practice involves assisting sponsors and investors with venture and private equity fund formation, seeding, and structuring projects. Sandra also has considerable in-house experience in general counsel and CLO roles, advising boards and C-suite officers on matters of consequence, including government investigations, investor litigation, fiduciary duty, and auditor independence issues. She is a co-Founder and Chair Emeritus of High Water Women Foundation and chaired the HWW Symposium: Investing for Impact, in 2013 and 2014.
Tongtong Gong is Co-founder and COO at Amberdata, a Blockchain and Digital Asset Data company. Ms. Gong has an extensive background in building and managing distributed systems at scale for enterprises and has led advanced development teams focusing on incubating new businesses for major software players. Her teams have successfully built high-performance computing platforms and marketing analytics software for both offline and digital markets. Prior to co-founding Amberdata, Ms. Gong served as VP of Engineering at Unified. She led the build-out of the company’s core business intelligence SaaS offering in cross-platform data attribution, analytics and reporting for social advertising with more than $1 billion under management. Prior to Unified, Ms. Gong held a variety of engineering and leadership roles at Acxiom, including established a Global Service Center in China. Ms. Gong most recently was named CloudNow 2018 Top Women Entrepreneurs and has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, and Nasdaq.
Born in Bombay India and educated in Silicon Valley, Susan Jeffers has over 15 years of experience in technology, marketing and working with brands. She is passionate about getting the right people, businesses and great ideas together while bridging the gap between technology and business. Susan is a serial entrepreneur, working on her third company. She was part of the founding team and responsible for digital marketing and business development at iStorez, a venture-backed company that was acquired by theFind. She also works with, invests and advises several start-ups in both the Consumer Retail and Enterprise software space, most notably, Toovia, Omnitrol and GigSky. She and her teams have been responsible for multiple successful large-scale enterprise technology roll-outs for Fortune companies like MGM, Las Vegas Sands, AT&T, Bombardier, Union Pacific and Delta Airlines. Prior to the startup life, she started her career at Plug and Play Technology Center and worked extensively with, and managed the relationships with over 50 startups and their founders. Susan has always had a passion for creating innovative scalable products with a focus on user experience that dramatically impacts the lives of business users and improves their customer’s experience and hopes to continue developing disruptive technology innovations in the future.
Shaheen has spent the last 2 decades working with the fixed income industry, initially as a banker and now an entrepreneur. She has worked as a leveraged finance banker on over 500 private equity, large corporate and middle market debt financings. She has built two startups and is currently CEO of firstAI, a machine learning platform for asset managers and investment banks. She has a graduate degree from MIT’s school of engineering and an undergraduate Chemical Engineering degree from University of Mumbai.
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The MIT Enterprise Forum of New York City has for forty years supported entrepreneurs in their efforts to start and run technology-driven business ventures.
We do this by delivering world-class business learning events along with opportunities to build relationships with business people who share an interest in innovation and entrepreneurship related to technology, with focus on digital media, information technology, cleantech and bioscience/healthcare.
Topics for these events included monetizing digital offerings, raising capital, cleantech, success stories of founders whose companies now generate $100 million or more, biotech, web advertising, business plan writing and pitching, wireless broadband, intellectual property and hyperlocal news.