About the Speakers

Rahul leads the Studio Engineering team at Netflix. He is responsible for the development of SaaS solutions that power the content creation pipeline for Netflix. Prior to this role, Rahul led various initiatives for customer acquisition and marketing technologies at Netflix. He has 25 years of experience in software development across a wide variety of domains.

Abhijit Kakhandiki is SVP Products & Engineering at Automation Anywhere, a leader in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) space, where he leads product vision, strategy & design by combining enterprise grade software, cutting edge cloud architecture and artificial intelligence. RPA allows enterprises to gain quantum leaps in efficiency through the automation of business processes.

A seasoned executive with a proven track record in new product development, go-to-market, and improved product P&L performance, his rich array of experience includes leading Autodesk’s transformation to the cloud, directing the team for Oracle’s next generation Innovation Management Initiative, and steering product management and strategy for Product Lifecycle Management and Analytics applications at Agile Software, delivering rapid product and customer experience improvement. Abhijit’s entrepreneurial endeavors include a successful exit for his own startup, ATMA software, which is now part of Oracle. Abhijit holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and in his spare time, mentors startups at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Curtis McKee is an Investment Manager at Intel Capital with over 18 years of combined operating, corporate development and venture capital experience. Curtis has led investments and strategic transactions for Intel’s Cloud, AI, Telco/Networking and Drone business segments. In 2018, he co-led Intel Capital’s Series A investment in Paperspace, and their Series B investment in Nyansa the previous year.

Prior to Intel Capital, Curtis was the Technical Assistant/Chief of Staff for the Datacenter Group’s Datacenter Software Division and joined Intel in 2011 via the Fulcrum Microsystems acquisition where he led Business Development for hyperscale Cloud providers and tier one Networking customers. Curtis also has engineering experience at notable public companies like Broadcom, Marvell and LSI Logic, holds a BSEE from Purdue University, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in Finance.

Shahab Salemy is General Manager of Connected Products at Nike. He leads the team driving the strategy and implementation of digitally enabling Nike products to serve the athlete*. During Shahab’s tenure at Nike, he has held several roles within innovation.

Prior to joining Nike, Shahab held various senior strategy and business development roles within the healthcare industry at Medtronic, McKesson and J.P. Morgan. Shahab holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA from Columbia University..

Professor Siggelkow has been the recipient of multiple MBA and Undergraduate Excellence in Teaching Awards, including the Class of 1984 Award presented to the faculty member with the highest teaching rating in the MBA classroom, the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award, the Wharton Award, and the Wharton Graduate Association Student Choice Award. His research has been published in the leading management journals. In 2008, he received the Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Contribution Award for the most significant paper published in ASQ five years earlier. Nicolaj is a member of the Editorial Review Boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization, and Academy of Management Perspectives.

Christian Terwiesch is a Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also is a Senior Fellow at Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. His research on Operations Management and on R&D and Innovation Management appears in many of the leading academic journals. Professor Terwiesch has researched with and consulted for various organizations, including a project on concurrent engineering for BMW, supply chain management for Intel and Medtronic, and product customization for Dell. Most of his current work relates to healthcare and innovation management. In the innovation space, recent projects include the management of the clinical development portfolio at Merck, the development of open innovation systems, and the design of patient centered care processes in the VA hospital system. Professor Terwiesch is the co-author of Matching Supply with Demand, a widely used text-book in Operations Management. His Innovation Tournaments features a novel, process-based approach to innovation that has led to innovation tournaments in organizations around the world.

Ricky finds every subject wildly interesting. Prior to Valve, he spent years as an engineer and designer in games before joining Netflix to lead the team that created the UI used on game consoles and TVs. Now he works on Steam platform growth, contracts, licensing, and helping developers craft awesome things for gamers. Ricky has an MBA from Wharton and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia. When not at work, he’s probably in the ocean or getting tackled by his Border Collies.

Mr Vinaya Varma is Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of mjunction services limited, and has been a core member of the founding team since inception in 2001. At mjunction, he has been instrumental in conceptualisation, launch and ramp-up of some of its largest businesses.

He is a B. Tech from IIT Kanpur and has completed his Advanced Management Program from IIM Calcutta, India.

Prior to joining mjunction, Mr Varma was at Tata Steel, where he worked in several functional areas encompassing Production, Planning, Sales and Marketing. He was also part of several big transformational projects at Tata Steel such as Business Process Reengineering, SAP R/3 and launch of Tata Steel’s eCommerce portal.

Mr Varma is a passionate believer in the power of e-commerce, technology and innovation in building effective, efficient and transparent supply chains to power B2B e-commerce.

mjunction is today India’s largest B2B e-commerce company and has service offerings spanning the entire B2B e-commerce spectrum and covers e-sales, e-sourcing, e-procurement, e-finance and loyalty solutions, and more than 200,000 entities transact on these platforms.

In 2012, Mr Varma was nominated for Tata Strategic Leadership Management Workshop (Harvard Business School), which is designed for select senior executives of Tata group and its subsidiary companies. He is a Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM) from Institute for Supply Management (ISM), USA. He is a practitioner of Theory of Constraints and has attended several sessions of ToC at Goldratt House, Tel Aviv.

In 2016, he won the “Special Recognition Award” in the services category in “The Bengal Entrepreneurship Recognition” conferred by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
He has been re-elected Member of the CII Eastern Regional Council and CII West Bengal State Council for 2019-20. He has been elected Chairman of Startup & Innovation Task Force for CII Eastern Region for 2019-20.

He is also an elected Member of NASSCOM’s Internet, Mobile & e-Commerce Council.

Mr Varma takes special interest in ejunction, the CSR initiative of mjunction, which imparts digital education to underprivileged and financially-challenged sections of the society, with the primary objective of making them employable and empowering them.

Timoni West is the Director of XR Research at Unity, where she leads a team of cross-disciplinary artists and engineers exploring new interfaces for human-computer interaction. Currently, her team focuses on spatial computing: how we will live, work, and create in a world where digital objects and the real world live side-by-side. One of her team’s first tools, EditorXR, a tool for editing Unity projects directly in virtual reality, won SF Design Week’s first-ever Virtual Tech award in 2018.

A longtime technologist, Timoni was formerly SVP at Alphaworks, co-founder of Recollect, and CEO of Department of Design, a digital agency. She’s worked for startups across the country, including Foursquare, Flickr, Causes, and Airtime.

Timoni serves on the OVA board and is an advisor to Tvori and Spatial Studios, among others. In 2017, Timoni was listed in Next Reality News’ Top 50 to Watch. Additionally, she serves on XRDC’s advisory board, is a Sequoia Scout, and was a jury member for ADC’s 2018 Awards in Experiential Design.