Tech Summer Institute

Over the past decade, Robinne Burrell has been at the forefront of technology and emerging media, having worked with brands spanning digital, interactive, mobile and social experiences. Robinne led product development and strategy at Amazon/IMDb, Match.com/Tinder and myspace at its peak. Through her company Redflight Innovation - an interactive development company located in Los Angeles and Johannesburg, she has built digital products for NBC’s The Voice, Comedy Central and Steven Spielberg’s The VR Company, to name a few.

In addition to her work as an innovator and leader, Robinne was named in the top spot as "5 People Pushing Technology You Want to Work With Now" in Forbes Magazine and "Code Breaker of the Year" by Google and the Digital Diversity Network for her groundbreaking work in tech and media. Standard and Poor’s identified her as part of the “Society of Industry Leaders” and Hollywood Reporter named her “The Next Generation of Industry Execs”. She has been featured on CNN and NBC and is on the board of the Interactive Peer Group for the Television Academy (The Emmys), the most influential board of influencers determining excellence in digital media.

Prior to her leadership positions at top tech and media companies, Robinne also held management positions at Universal Music Group, Sony Electronics, and was an early member of Jimmy Iovine’s start-up Inside Sessions, a digital curriculum designed to introduce young musicians on how to break into the business of music. Robinne would later go on to be an Ambassador of Goodwill and Peace in Mexico, where she launched a non-profit program for kids to learn arts and humanities. In 2016, Robinne authored the virtual reality user experience for "Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop" for Oculus, which would lead her to become the first African-American woman to be up for an Emmy in VR.

Robinne is also the creator of Access to Innovation workshops, part of Redflight's social enterprise efforts around the world to bring emerging technology to underrepresented communities through an immersive curricula in coding, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality and entrepreneurship. She recently partnered with the Mandela Family and Africa Rising to implement the program in Nelson Mandela's hometown of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Robinne holds a B.A in Cinema/Television from USC and completed the Leadership Strategy Program at MITs Sloan School of Business.

She is the co-creator of "In Your Shoes" a broadcast and virtual reality series that allows historically untold stories to be brought to life by 360-degree video. In 2016 she was awarded First Place in the National Association of Broadcasters Innovation Pilot for her "outstanding commitment to furthering the future of broadcasting" for her work on the project. She is currently working closely with the Mandela Family and Africa Rising, A Kweku and Ndaba Mandela organization - the most prolific of the heirs to the Nelson Mandela legacy, as Founder of the Mandela Cultural Fellowship and in 2019 was awarded the honor of being a patent owner of Match.com/Tinder for authoring a location-based dating algorithm and specifications.

Alex Nascimento, MA, MBA is an author and faculty member and Co-founder of the UCLA Blockchain Lab & Blockchain at UCLA where he lectures on Blockchain Business Applications and Security Tokens in addition to his role of Managing Director of 7CC - Blockchain Investments, a company focused on supporting & fostering the Blockchain industry.  Recently, Mr. Nascimento published the book The STO Financial Revolution, demystifying securities issuance and investments on the blockchain for business leaders and entrepreneurs. Alex got his MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and has developed training, marketing & blockchain strategies for companies in the United States, Latin America,  and Asia.  Alex can be found lecturing at UCLA and speaking at main Global Blockchain conferences and Corporate events about the future of Blockchain Technology & Security Tokens.

Farnoosh Forouzandeh has been working in Information Technology for over 14 Years as an IT manager, software engineer, web developer, and BI developer. She is currently working at Woodbury University leading technical initiatives related to business intelligence, system integration, data modeling, and system architecture design. She has extensive data management and architecture experiences utilizing leading databases platforms such as MS-SQL, MySQL and Oracle.  In addition to all of her business and technical experiences, Farnoosh has previously taught university-level database and SQL courses that lead to Bachelor of Science degree in IT engineering​.

Farnoosh holds a master degree in Advanced Computer Science and Information Technologies Management from The University of Manchester and bachelor's degree in IT Engineering.