Philly Tech Week 2018

Erica is CTO & Founder at IOpipe where she is building tools to help developers of serverless applications iterate faster and support their applications in production. She is a former maintainer of Docker and OpenStack and has been building cloud, ops, and infrastructure tooling for over 15 years.

An energetic and experienced international executive, Chris is committed to making fundamental change through the ubiquitous development of social impact organizations like Communally. He joined the company in 2007 as Chief Operating Officer bringing a track record of designing and delivering high quality, high impact programs in Fortune 100 companies, entrepreneurial ventures, international consortia and voluntary organizations in Eastern & Western Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S.

Immediately before joining Communally, he was the founder and principal of a strategic marketing and business development company that specialized in moving innovative ideas to sustainable revenue. Before establishing his own business, Chris spent 15 years with Sperry Univac/Unisys rising to Vice President, Corporate Product Strategy, and Integration.

Chris is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia. This organization reflects his active involvement with moves to ensure that "sustainability" encompasses the economic needs of low-income urban and rural communities, the equitable capital requirements of social impact companies and the recognition that workers must balance effort with replenishment to avoid burnout.

Chris is a successful author and speaker with a recognized ability to render complex issues understandable to a broad range of audiences. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Wolverhampton (U.K.).

Morgan is a Principal with Genacast Ventures where his responsibilities include evaluating investment opportunities, sourcing new deals, and managing the growth of existing portfolio companies.

Prior to joining Genacast, Morgan worked at Bloomberg Beta, the venture firm backed by Bloomberg. He also spent time as a software engineer at Tapad and Market-Based Management instructor at the Charles Koch Institute. Morgan earned his BS from Northeastern University.

Dr. Sophia B Liu is an Innovation Specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Science and Decisions Center focused on participatory science and innovation. Dr. Liu is also the Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) as well as the CCS Coordinator for USGS and the Department of Interior (DOI). She was recently mission assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be one of the first FEMA Crowdsourcing Coordinators in response to the 2017 hurricanes. As a USGS Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Liu previously worked at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado on the Tweet Earthquake Dispatch project, the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal Marine Science Center in Florida on the iCoast – Did the Coast Change? project, and the USGS National Center in Virginia with the Minerals program organizing GeoHackJams. Dr. Liu was also awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship in 2006 conducting research on social media use in disasters. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, Boulder in an interdisciplinary program called Technology, Media, and Society. She received a B.A. at University of California, Irvine in Social Science with a minor in Information & Computer Science and in Digital Arts.

Scott Vinkle is a Canadian front end developer and accessibility advocate living in Canada. He spends his days assessing, consulting, and fixing accessibility issues on all the things at Shopify. Find out what else Scott is up to at svinkle.me.

In her role on the Innovation Management team, Eliza oversees a portfolio of initiatives that increase the City’s internal capacity for innovation, creative problem solving, and cross-sector engagement. Her core work involves managing the Innovation Lab, Innovation Academy and Innovation Fund; and leading Innovation Consulting, a program that leverages specially trained City employees to provide internal consulting services for internal and external stakeholders seeking to address challenges in new ways. Prior to joining the City, Eliza worked at Project HOME; she attended the University of Virginia, where she studied history and religious studies, and pursued a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. When she’s not innovating, Eliza can be found exploring new restaurants in Philly with her husband and rescue pit bull, Brew.

Allison Hossack is Principal of Research and Strategy at Think Company. In her role, she ensures the successful execution of research to discover insights about user needs that inspire creative and effective solutions to enhance user experience. As a hands-on leader and problem solver, she savors big challenges and opportunities. Her user research has supported strategic initiatives, digital roadmaps, and product prioritization for companies spanning finance, energy, media, and healthcare including Johnson & Johnson, Transamerica, and Wharton University.