
Tech + Society Conference 2021
October 28 – 29
We live in fascinating times - tech-based innovation offers the promise of disruptive technologies which can lower cost and improve outcomes in critical areas of societal focus. These innovations and the businesses that drive them, however, are often subject to a rapidly emerging "techlash" with a growing set of concerns about potential monopolistic behavior of large tech companies, concerns about data privacy, systemic bias embedded in algorithmic decision making, a growing digital and income divide and uncertainty about the future of work. At the core of this, a discussion around effective leadership is emerging.
- Where can technology-based innovation serve society the best?
- What are the potential unintended consequences of technology in society and how can these be mitigated?
- And ultimately, what does success look like for leaders managing technology-based innovation in society?

Tech + Society Conference Keynote with Juan Enriquez
Innovation is driving change in our thoughts on right and wrong

Welcome & Keynote: Steven Hatfield, Global Future of Work Leader, Deloitte Consulting
Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare
Closing Highlights
2021 Speakers


Mareme comes to 500 with extensive experience and passion in supporting emerging ecosystems and corporate development.
Prior to 500, Mareme was the head of international partnerships and relations at Draper University and a member of Draper University Ventures. She had a 3 year experience working previously as a program manager for Draper University, an intensive entrepreneurship program in Silicon Valley before endorsing her current position. She also sits on the board of Trustees of Bennington College, and is involved in the decision making body of the College. She has also worked as the Hackathon Manager at Schoolab, an innovation studio based in Paris that offered consultancy in innovation to top European corporates.
Mareme has created content for innovation workshops and been an active content developer for innovation and entrepreneurship programs. She has spoken at numerous conferences such as the Blockchain Summit, the AI Summit, Afric’Up Summit etc. Mareme has worked for research centers in Paris (CNRS) and Senegal (ISM). After having lived and worked in Senegal, South Africa, France and the United States, she devoted her work to human development and structuring systems that maximize individuals’ potential. She has worked with several educational organizations such as ISM Senegal and the Global Scholar Programs in Johannesburg, and has developed with them different educational models in order to promote entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation within the African education system. She has worked with the Global Startup Ecosystem on the programmation of the Ghana Tech Summit and the Haiti Tech Summit which both took place in 2018. She has also worked with the Lumina Foundation based in Indianapolis through a research project with Bennington College on investigating work integrated learning and the ways we prepare college students for the workforce.

Juan Enriquez is a leading authority on the economic impact of life sciences and brain research on business and society as well as a respected business leader and entrepreneur. Author and co-author of multiple bestsellers including As the Future Catches You: How Genomics Will Change Your Life, Work, Health, and Wealth (Random House,1999), The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing and Our Future (Random House, 2005), Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning Humanity One Gene at a Time (Penguin, 2015), and RIGHT/WRONG: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics (MIT, 2020). As a business leader, advisor, and renowned speaker, Juan works directly with the CEOs of a number of Fortune 50 companies, as well as various heads of state, on how to adapt to a world where the dominant language is shifting from the digital towards the language of life. He is a TED All-Star with ten TED talks on a variety of subjects, as well as dozens of TEDx talks. He was the founding Director of the Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and is a research affiliate at MIT’s synthetic neurobiology lab. After HBS, Juan became an active angel investor, founding Biotechonomy Ventures. He then co-founded Excel Venture Management. Mr. Enriquez serves on multiple for-profit boards as well as a variety of non-profits including The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, WGBH, The Boston Science Museum, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center. He sailed around the world on an expedition that increased the number of know genes a hundredfold and was part of the peace commission that negotiated the cease fire with the Zapatistas. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. and an M.B.A., both with honors.

Dr. John E. Kelly III has more than four decades of experience innovating and leading in the Information Technology (IT) industry.
During this time, he has played numerous significant technical and business roles driving IBM's leadership in technologies ranging from semiconductors to supercomputers to Artificial Intelligence (AI) cognitive systems. As a champion of IBM's technical community, he has kept IBM as the leader in U.S. patents for the last 28 consecutive years.
Before retiring, Dr. Kelly was responsible for helping to guide IBM's global technical and business success, focused on overseeing IBM's enterprise-wide Intellectual Property, Security and Privacy, academic, industrial, and government partnerships, as well as its technical community.
Previously, Dr. Kelly served as senior vice president, Cognitive Solutions and IBM Research, where he oversaw IBM's (AI) Watson platform, portfolio and investments. Under his leadership, IBM expanded the specialization of IBM Watson into various industries and domains including health, security, analytics, Internet of Things (IOT), and financial services. He was also responsible for IBM Research and the company’s Intellectual Property.
Prior to this, beginning in July 2007, Dr. Kelly served as senior vice president and director of IBM Research - only the tenth person to hold that position over the past seven decades. Under Dr. Kelly, IBM Research expanded its global footprint by adding four new labs (including IBM’s first in Africa, South America and Australia), creating a network of approximately 3,000 scientists and technical employees across 12 laboratories in 10 countries.
Most notably, Dr. Kelly and his team were responsible for advancing the science of AI and cognitive computing through his support for Watson, the groundbreaking system that defeated two standing Jeopardy! world champions in 2011. This demonstration awoke the world to the potential of AI.
Dr. Kelly joined IBM in 1980. Between 1980 and 2007, he held numerous management and technical positions related to the development and manufacturing of IBM’s advanced semiconductor technologies. In 1990, he was named director of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center.
Between 1994 and 2000, Dr. Kelly held several VP and GM positions across IBM’s businesses.
In 2000, Dr. Kelly was named senior vice president and group executive for IBM’s Technology Group, where he was responsible for developing, manufacturing and marketing IBM’s microelectronics and storage technologies, products and services. He later assumed the position of senior vice president of Technology and Intellectual Property, responsible for IBM’s technical and innovation strategies.
Dr. Kelly received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Union College in 1976. He received a Master of Science degree in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1978 and his Doctorate in materials engineering from RPI in 1980. He has also received three honorary Doctoral degrees.
Dr. Kelly is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and a member of the Board and former Chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association. He also is a member of the Boards of Trustees for Union College and RPI.
Dr. Kelly has received numerous technical and business leadership awards, including the Semiconductor Industry’s highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award. He has been recognized with the IEEE’s top award for R&D management, the Frederik Philips Award, as well as the IEEE’s own Robert N. Noyce Award.
In October 2013, he received the National Academy of Engineering’s Arthur M. Bueche Award for his leadership in driving U.S. semiconductor technology excellence through broad government, university, and corporate collaboration. Most recently, he received RPI's Lifetime Achievement Award.
He has published numerous technical papers and the book Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing.

Zenia Tata is an innovation designer working on moonshots in energy, water, food, human and climate health. She spent the last 8 years at XPRIZE as their Chief Impact Officer, where she designed and delivered large-scele innovation prizes to solve some of humanity’s largest problems.
Prior to joining XPRIZE, Ms. Tata was a serial entrepreneur and has worked across 40 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America leading cutting-edge international organizations in a variety of sectors including; economic development, water and sanitation, food security, land rights, health, education, and child welfare. In addition to consulting for a variety of prominent public and private organizations, Ms. Tata was also the Executive Director of International Development Enterprises (iDE) USA. iDE pioneered market-based approaches to increase income for impoverished farm families in Asia and Africa, which doubled the incomes of 20 million people living in poverty.
Originally from Mumbai, India, Ms. Tata is passionate about her work with economically disadvantaged populations, believes in the innate entrepreneurial qualities of the poor, and is constantly searching for innovative solutions to global problems. She is bold, brimming with optimism, and determined to change the world. Ms. Tata is also an avid lover of the outdoors, a scuba diver and a pilot.

Kameale is the co-founder and CEO of ChargerHelp!, an app that enables on demand repair of electric vehicle charging stations. This year Kameale developed the first of its kind EV Network Technician Training Curriculum, focused on troubleshooting software issues of public networked electric vehicle charging stations. Her curriculum was adopted into the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator APC Fellowship – Cohort 2 and was facilitated by veteran EVSE manufacturer and network provider KIGT.
As the former Director of Programs and Government Contracts at EV Connect, an EVSE network provider, Kameale led a team of four to execute over ten multi-million dollar private and government contracts for electric vehicle infrastructure in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Prior to this role Kameale created, hired, and oversaw the Customer Experience Department at EV Connect, by partnering with the Southbay Workforce Investment Board to employ candidates from the local community.

Dr. Michael E. Webber is the Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources at the University of Texas at Austin and CTO of Energy Impact Partners, a $1.5 billion cleantech venture fund. From September 2018 to August 2021, Webber was based in Paris, France where he served as the Chief Science and Technology Officer at ENGIE, a global energy & infrastructure services company. Webber’s expertise spans research and education at the convergence of engineering, policy, and commercialization on topics related to innovation, energy, and the environment. His latest book Power Trip: the Story of Energy was published in 2019 by Basic Books with an award-winning 6-part companion series that aired on PBS, Amazon Prime and iTunes starting Earth Day 2020. His first book, Thirst for Power: Energy, Water and Human Survival, which addresses the connection between earth’s most valuable resources and offers a hopeful approach toward a sustainable future, was published in 2016 by Yale Press and was converted into an hourlong documentary. He was selected as a Fellow of ASME (the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and as a member of the 4th class of the Presidential Leadership Scholars, which is a leadership training program organized by Presidents George W. Bush and William J. Clinton. Webber has authored more than 400 publications, holds 6 patents, and serves on the advisory board for Scientific American. A successful entrepreneur, Webber was one of three founders in 2015 for an educational technology startup, DISCO Learning Media, which was acquired in 2018. Webber holds a B.S. and B.A. from UT Austin, and M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He was honored as an American Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow on four separate occasions by the University of Texas for exceptional teaching.

UCLA Anderson
Heather Caruso joined UCLA Anderson in 2018 as assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. A scholar and researcher of organizational behavior, she teaches in the Management and Organizations and Behavioral Decision Making areas.
Caruso’s passion for facilitating collaborative success runs deep in her life and work. “My formal interests in organizational and social psychology developed when I was an undergraduate at Stanford doing cross-cultural negotiation research with Jared Curhan and Lee Ross,” she says. These interests deepened during her years as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup. “I was fascinated with the real-world experiences stemming from differences in cultural identity. Interpersonal problems could derail even the most talented individual performers, and effective collaboration skills could not only prevent such problems, but raise individual contributions to new heights.”
Layering rigorous academic training on top of practical experience, Caruso grounds her interests in the areas of: effective collaboration (especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams); skilled improvisation in leadership; management of identity, power and influence; and strategies for optimal choice, judgment and decision making. She focused on these topics in over a decade of teaching, research administration and scholarship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and has moved to UCLA Anderson to enrich and expand her work.
“Propelled by our outstanding research in these areas, we are connecting to pioneers and pathbreakers, building bridges between research and practice to best accelerate innovation in the digital age.”
Caruso stays connected to the everyday priorities and challenges of the workplace by consulting for private- and public-sector organization leaders across the globe, as well as by teaching classes in leadership, team dynamics and power and influence. In addition, Caruso partnered with Chicago’s Second City to co-found the Second Science Project, which offers skill-building leadership workshops at the intersection of robust behavioral research and professional improvisational practice.
Caruso is a strong proponent of lifelong learning for management excellence, and encourages students to make the most of their professors’ knowledge, not only while they are pursuing their degrees, but also throughout their careers. “As a preeminent public university, UCLA has a a distinctive opportunity to advance equity, diversity and inclusion,” she says. “It is an honor to help UCLA Anderson seize that opportunity by creating the kind of challenging and rewarding educational climate that can benefit leaders from every walk of life.”

UCLA
Dr. Cassie Rauser is the Executive Director of UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge where she leads and coordinates efforts to transform Los Angeles into the most sustainable mega-city by 2050. In this position, Cassie uses her demonstrated ability to build relationships and forge collaborations among diverse groups inside and outside of the university to identify challenges specific to the L.A. region, and implement solutions with the goal of creating a more equitable and livable world. She was part of the consultant team that led the development of the first-ever sustainability plan for L.A. County – OurCounty – which was unanimously approved in 2019, and serves on the City of L.A.’s biodiversity expert council. She also has experience coordinating and developing major interdisciplinary grant proposals, and has contributed to the funding of multiple campus research centers, capital projects, graduate and undergraduate degree programs, and numerous individual faculty grants. Previously she worked abroad building partnerships among private companies, local and national government and the community to create a public-private nature preserve in the tropics. She received her B.S. in biology from Arizona State University and her Ph.D. in ecology & evolutionary biology from University of California, Irvine.

Management Center;
Adjunct Professor of DOTM
UCLA Anderson
A graduate of UCLA (B.A., '82) and Harvard Business School, Terry Kramer has extensive technology and leadership expertise in the domestic and international telecommunications industry. Since beginning his career at Harris Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton, Kramer has held executive roles in AirTouch, PacTel and Vodafone globally. At Vodafone, he was the group strategy officer, group HR officer and chief of staff. He was also regional president of Vodafone Americas, with responsibilities for oversight of Vodafone's 45% interest in Verizon Wireless and Vodafone's venture capital activities. He also served on the Executive Committee at Vodafone Group Plc.
During his tenure at Vodafone, he and his family moved no fewer than eight times to locations that included London, The Hague, Dallas, Phoenix and San Francisco. The benefit: "Living in so many different places, working in so many fundamentally different environments gave me a new appreciation of contextual leadership - how leaders must be adept at assessing the different context of each leadership role to ensure a dynamic nature to their style, achieving success for that unique environment."
While serving as an entrepreneur in residence at the Harvard Business School between 2011 and 2013, Kramer was appointed by President Obama to serve as Ambassador, Head of U.S. Delegation for the World Conference on International Telecommunications in June 2012. This delegation formulated and communicated the U.S. policy regarding the criticality of a free and open internet as well as an inclusive, multistakeholder governance, the need to proactively address cybersecurity threats and the need for liberalized, open markets that encourage global accelerated broadband access. The conference was covered by CNBC, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
No stranger to the field of academia (his parents were teachers), Kramer jumped at the opportunity to work at UCLA Anderson, as it provided "a chance to engage with the next generation of leaders." An adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson since 2013, Kramer is a full-time faculty member, teaching the foundational technology management course, covering the impact of disruptive innovation on products, services, markets and competition, and another course on the evolution and innovation in the mobile communications industry and promising areas of innovation. He is also a faculty advisor in the Global Access Program and Strategic Management Research program. Kramer serves on the boards of TeleSign and TangoCard and on the advisory boards of RapidSOS and Textpert, as well as the Harvard Business School California Research Center, UCLA Economics Department board of visitors and Larkin Street Youth Services.
Originally from San Carlos, California, Kramer and his wife, Suzan, currently reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, from which he commutes to Los Angeles regularly. Together they have developed a family foundation focused on education, health and human services, which "reflects our views about the impact of youth and education on our collective future."

UCLA Anderson
Olav Sorenson joined the UCLA Anderson faculty in 2020. His primary stream of research pertains to economic geography, focusing on how entrepreneurship influences the growth and competitiveness of regions within countries, and on why some regions appear more supportive to entrepreneurs than others. “I was in graduate school in the mid-1990s at Stanford, in Silicon Valley, and it seemed like everybody and their brother was getting involved in a startup,” Sorenson says. “That’s really what got me interested in entrepreneurship and interested in ‘Why Silicon Valley?’ What was different about Silicon Valley than other places?”
He has called attention to unexpected consequences of the fact that social capital plays an important role in entrepreneurial success. Largely in recognition of this research, Sorenson received the 2018 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research.
His secondary streams of research have addressed the relationships between basic science and innovation and how organizations can better learn from their interactions with customers and from their manufacturing experience.
In total, he has delivered nearly 400 research presentations and has had more than 90 papers published on these subjects, in journals such as Science, the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal and Research Policy. Sorenson serves as a department editor for Management Science and as a deputy editor at the American Sociological Review. He has also served in editorial positions at more than a dozen other journals.
Sorenson’s Venture Capital Strategy course is a version of one he’s taught since 2005. “My goal with that course is to do something that’s a little different from the typical venture capital course, which is usually about valuation and contract terms,” says Sorenson. “This course comes more from the perspective of someone who would be an active venture capital or angel investor, and some of the types of strategic decisions that are involved with that.” He’ll also be teaching Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, an introductory entrepreneurship course.
In addition to his research and teaching responsibilities, Sorenson joins the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation as faculty research director. In that role, he plans to build on the curricular offerings of the Price Center and create a research arm dedicated to entrepreneurial studies. Sorenson also plans to mentor student entrepreneurial teams within the Anderson Venture Accelerator and those participating in the school’s Business Creation Option field study.
From 1999 to 2005, Sorenson taught strategy courses at UCLA Anderson. Prior to returning to Anderson, he held the Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professorship at the Yale School of Management and, before that, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto. He has also served on the faculties of London Business School and the University of Chicago, and has held visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, SDA Bocconi, Universidad Carlos III, Melbourne Business School, Singapore Management University, the National University of Singapore, BI Norwegian Business School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and INSEAD.
Sorenson received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University.
Thursday, October 28 (Remote)
5:00 - 5:10 p.m. | Welcome |
Terry Kramer (UCLA '82), Faculty Director, Easton Technology Management Center; Adjunct Professor in DOTM, UCLA Anderson | |
5:10 - 6:00 p.m. | Fireside Chat: How Technology Innovation Transforms Society and Our Ethics |
Juan Enriquez, Author, Right/Wrong: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics; Managing Director, Excel Venture Management Terry Kramer (UCLA '82), Faculty Director, Easton Technology Management Center; Adjunct Professor in DOTM, UCLA Anderson |
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6:00 - 7:00 p.m. | Virtual Networking |
Friday, October 29 (Hybrid)
9:00 - 9:10 a.m. | Welcome |
Terry Kramer (UCLA '82), Faculty Director, Easton Technology Management Center; Adjunct Professor in DOTM, UCLA Anderson | |
9:10 - 10:00 a.m. | Fireside Chat: AI for Good |
John Kelly III, Executive Vice President Cognitive Solutions & IBM Research, IBM (Retired) Heather Caruso, Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Adjunct Assistant Professor in Management & Organizations, UCLA Anderson |
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10:00 - 11:00 a.m. | Panel 1: Global Tech Innovation |
Zenia Tata, Chief Impact Officer, X Prize Mareme Dieng, Lead, Global Innovation Strategy, 500 Startups Moderator: Olav Sorensen, Joseph Jacobs Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies; Professor of Strategy; Faculty Research Director, Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, UCLA Anderson |
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11:00 - 11:10 a.m. | Break |
11:10 - 12:00 p.m. | Panel 2: GreenTech |
Laura Beane, President, Vestas Kameale Terry, Co-Founder & CEO, ChargerHelp! Michael Webber, Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources, University of Texas at Austin; CTO, Energy Impact Partners Moderator: Cassie Rauser, Executive Director, Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, UCLA |
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12:00 - 12:10 p.m. | Closing |
12:10 - 1:00 p.m. | Lunch & Virtual Networking |