10th Annual

Silicon Valley Briefing

May 7, 2024, 9:00 AM - 1:30 PM | STANFORD FACULTY CLUB

Followed by an optional tour of the Computing and AI work at Stanford from 1:30-2:30 pm


The International Business and Civic Association is pleased to host the 10th Annual Silicon Valley Briefing on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at the Stanford Faculty Club. 

The annual Silicon Valley Briefing offers international diplomats posted throughout California with unique opportunities for deepening understanding of Silicon Valley’s ecosystem as well interacting with Silicon Valley insiders, including tech executives, venture investors, Stanford faculty, regional leaders, and more.

This 2024 program will open with an brief exploration of Stanford’s role in Silicon Valley, followed by a deep dive into current trends in the Silicon Valley economy and society and their implications. Then five experts will share insights on innovations in Valley tech titans and start-ups, including AI applications in finance, health, and other sectors. The Briefing will offer opportunities for Q&A as well as individual interaction with the speakers and members of the the Stanford community. Lunch and networking will be followed by an optional tour/demo of computing/AI innovation at Stanford.

Stanford Faculty Club, 439 Lagunita Dr, Stanford, CA 94305

 

Event Overview and Speakers

9:00 - 9:30 am Registration, Continental Breakfast and Networking


Welcome and Introductions of Consuls, Stanford’s Role in Silicon Valley

  • Marguerite Gong Hancock is a political economist and non-profit executive, passionate about advancing innovation and entrepreneurship around the world to benefit humanity.

    Until December 2023, at CHM she led innovation and strategic initiatives across programming, education, diversity and inclusion. She also founded CHM’s Exponential Center, the first museum institution devoted to tech entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and beyond. Previously at Stanford for 20 years, Marguerite led several programs focused on global innovation and entrepreneurship.

    Across the US, Europe, and Asia, Marguerite has advised founders and policymakers, spoken at conferences and universities, and partnered with business, education and media/content leaders. She holds a BA from Brigham Young University, an MA from Harvard, and she trained as a political economist at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is author and editor of three books published by Stanford University Press.


State of the Valley 2024: Promise and Perils

  • Russell Hancock is President and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the leading forum for collaborative regional thought, analysis and action among Silicon Valley’s leaders from both the public and private sectors. Joint Venture has served as a model in regions across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

    Russell is a civic leader, community convener, institution builder, social scientist, and social entrepreneur. He also serves as President of the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies, a think tank housed at Joint Venture, providing data and analysis about the world’s most dynamic economy.

    Considered one of the Valley’s leading expositors, he provides interviews regularly for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, and The Financial Times. Educated as an undergraduate at Harvard, Russell received a PhD in political science from Stanford University where he currently teaches in the Public Policy Program.


11:00 - 12:30pm: Panel Discussion on Insider Insights, What’s New and Next? 

  • Angela Winegar is the Head of Growth at Carta, a late-stage private company building the operating system for private markets. Used by more than 40,000 companies in 160 countries, Carta manages cap tables for startups and fund operations and administration for private equity and venture capital firms.

    Prior to Carta, Angela worked as an investor at Floodgate Fund, Summit Partners, and Norwest Venture Partners. Prior to her career as an investor, she ran marketing for Freshly Picked, an e-commerce company.

    She started her career as a consultant at Bain & Company and holds her BS in Economics from Brigham Young University, and her MBA and Master of Public Policy from Harvard.

    Angela is an active angel, startup advisor, and fund investor.

  • Ethan Choi is a Partner at Khosla Ventures with a focus on growth-stage companies. Prior to Khosla Ventures, Ethan was a partner at Accel where he focused on growth investments across AI, enterprise software, e-commerce, and fintech infrastructure companies, including Klaviyo (NYSE: KVYO), Pismo (Visa), 1Password, Nuvemshop, and commercetools, among others.

    Before Accel, Ethan was at Spectrum Equity where he made investments in Lynda.com (LinkedIn), ExamSoft (Turnitin), PicMonkey (Shutterstock), Headspace, and Lucid Software.

    Ethan studied information systems and economics at the University of Sydney before serving a two-year mission for his church, after which he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Brigham Young University.

  • David Kimball is Chief Executive Office of Prosper Marketplace, the first peer-to-peer lending platform in the United States. Prosper has helped over 1.7 million consumers advance their financial well-being with more than $27 billion in loans. As CEO, David oversees the company’s vision, overall operations, and performance. Bringing more than 20 years of financial management experience, David was named CEO in 2016.

    Prior to joining Prosper Marketplace, David served as Senior Financial Officer of USAA’s Chief Operating Office. He also served as USAA’s corporate treasurer and as its bank CFO. Prior to USAA, David spent ten years at Ford Motor Company and Ford Motor Credit Company in both the US and UK. David holds an MBA and BA from Brigham Young University.

  • Justin Larkin, MD, is an investing partner on the Bio + Health team, where he focuses on healthtech, spanning both verticalized care delivery and horizontal infrastructure approaches.

    Before joining a16z, Justin led Strategy and Ops at Verily (the healthcare/life sciences arm of Alphabet), working across care delivery, software analytics, and connected devices products. Prior to that, Justin was a cofounder and product/clinical lead at Wellsheet, a healthtech company focused on using ML to enable digital workflows for physicians.

    Justin holds an MD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a founding member of PennHealthX, an endowed program for cross-disciplinary training in clinical medicine and health technology/entrepreneurship. Justin also holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, as well as a BS/BA from BYU in developmental biology and Portuguese, respectively.

  • Chris Perry is the product lead for Google Colab, a programming environment that allows anybody to write and execute Python code in the browser. It’s used by millions of students around the world to learn to program, and used inside Google and in other AI industry giants to develop cutting edge AI.

    Chris has been a Google product manager for 10 years working on integrating ML in consumer products, including the Assistant and Google Photos where he led the launch of face grouping, object recognition, and features like rediscover this day.

    He has a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in Actuarial Science, a master’s degree from Stanford in Management Science and Engineering, and spent many years as a data scientist prior to Google.


12:30 - 1:30pm: Lunch and Networking

1:30 - 2:30pm: Optional Stanford Tour/Demo on Computing/AI

  • Griffin Holt is a Master's student in the Electrical Engineering program at Stanford University, specializing in Machine Learning and Optimization. Griffin is passionate about using emerging technologies to lift the quality of people's lives. He received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Brigham Young University.

    While at BYU, Griffin led a research project to utilize AI to decode honeybee communication. After graduating from Stanford this upcoming June, Griffin will work as a Machine Learning Engineer for Gridspace, a startup that has created realistic and trustworthy conversational AI. Griffin also served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Bulgaria.