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.

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.