Speakers

Chandra Kapireddy

Chandra Kapireddy is joining our leadership team as the Head of Analytics, AI/ML, and Gen AI. Chandra brings over 27 years of experience building and leading world-class data, analytics, and artificial intelligence teams. Recognized for his expertise in change leadership, strategy and execution, team building, and delivering results, Chandra has an impressive track record of innovative solutions and driving substantial business growth within the financial services sector.

Chandra has held key leadership positions at some of the industry’s leading companies, including JP Morgan Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Oracle, and AWS. Most recently, he served as Managing Director and Head of AI/ML Products for JPMorgan Chase. Chandra was also a member of JP Morgan Chase’s AI executive council, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the strategy, products, controls, and governance across the company. His visionary leadership has driven innovations in cloud computing, data analytics, and AI/ML earning him numerous awards.

Chandra’s extensive experience and enthusiasm for cutting-edge technologies will provide powerful leadership in a critical area of our technology future.   Please join us in welcoming Chandra to the Enterprise Data & Analytics leadership team.

Donald Thompson

Donald is currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn, primarily overseeing the company's generative AI strategy, architecture, and technology. He has more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a technical architect and CTO, with an extensive background in designing and delivering innovative software and services on a large scale. In 2013, Donald co-founded Maana, which pioneered computational knowledge graphs and visual no-code/low-code authoring environments to address complex AI-based digital transformation challenges in Fortune 50 companies. During his 15 years at Microsoft, Donald started the Knowledge and Reasoning group within Microsoft's Bing division, where he innovated "Satori", an internet-scale knowledge graph constructed automatically from the web crawl. He co-founded a semantic computing incubation funded directly by Bill Gates, portions of which shipped as the SQL Server Semantic Engine. Additionally, he created Microsoft's first internet display ad delivery system and led numerous AI/ML initiatives in Microsoft Research across embedded systems, robotics, wearable computing, and privacy-preserving personal data services.

Gayathri Radhakrishnan

Gayathri is currently Partner at Hitachi Ventures. Prior to that, she was with Micron Ventures, actively investing in startups that apply AI to solve critical problems in the areas of Manufacturing, Healthcare and Automotive. She brings over 20 years of multi-disciplinary experience across product management, product marketing, corporate strategy, M&A and venture investments in large Fortune 500 companies such as Dell and Corning and in startups. She has also worked as an early stage investor at Earlybird Venture Capital, a premier European venture capital fund based in Germany. She has a Masters in EE from The Ohio State University and MBA from INSEAD in France. She is also a Kauffman Fellow - Class 16.

Abhijeet Gulati

Abhijeet Gulati is the Head of AI & Senior Director of Engineering at Mitchell’s Auto Physical Damage (APD) business unit. Abhijeet is an accomplished technologist with over two decades of experience in the semiconductor, wireless, software & technology industry, focusing on AI, Machine Learning, NLP, Generative AI and SaaS solutions. He is a driven Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Analytics and business intelligence leader.

As the Head of AI at Mitchell International, Abhijeet has spent the past 5 years improving InsureTech inefficiencies, minimize decision biases, developed proprietary, differentiated enterprise scale AI products and an intelligent open platform that democratizes adoption of AI in enterprise business workflows. Abhijeet has extensive experience directing large-scale initiatives involving R&D, business & product strategy, operations, and advanced video, image and data analytics. Abhijeet has authored several patents on the application of AI in InsureTech industry. Abhijeet sits on the board of several AI standards, Ethical & Responsible AI committees.

Ahmed Menshawy

Ahmed Menshawy is the Vice President of AI Engineering at Mastercard. In this role, he leads the AI Engineering team, driving the development and commercialization of AI products that deliver business value across the organization. His work focuses on enabling Mastercard to harness the power of AI to solve complex problems, optimize operations, and enhance customer experiences. Ahmed collaborates with cross-functional teams to bring innovative AI solutions from concept to market, ensuring they align with Mastercard’s strategic objectives

An accomplished author and recognized contributor to the AI community, Ahmed has co-authored Deep Learning with TensorFlow and written Deep Learning by Example. His most recent book, Graph Learning for the Enterprise, published by O’Reilly, provides practical insights into efficiently training and deploying graph learning pipelines at scale

Rohith Vangalla

Dr. Rohith Vangalla is a Senior IEEE Member, AI Researcher, and Lead Software Engineer at Optum Technologies, specializing in AI-driven automation, cybersecurity, and enterprise AI infrastructure. With over ten years of experience, he has pioneered AI solutions in healthcare, digital marketing, and aviation, publishing impactful research that has transformed industry practices. At Optum, he has been instrumental in developing AI-driven chatbots, secure automation frameworks, and scalable AI solutions that enhance efficiency, compliance, and real-time decision-making. As a scholar, reviewer, and judge for major AI conferences, Dr. Vangalla continues to shape the future of AI infrastructure, privacy-first systems, and responsible AI development.

Karl Freund

Karl Freund is the founder and principal analyst of Cambrian AI Research. Prior to this, he was Moor Insights & Strategy’s consulting lead for HPC and Deep Learning. His recent experiences as the VP of Marketing at AMD and Calxeda, as well as his previous positions at Cray and IBM, positions him as a leading industry expert in these rapidly evolving industries. Karl works with investment and technology customers to help them understand the emerging Deep Learning opportunity in data centers, from competitive landscape to ecosystem to strategy.

Karl has worked directly with datacenter end users, OEMs, ODMs and the industry ecosystem, enabling him to help his clients define the appropriate business, product, and go-to-market strategies. He is also recognized expert on the subject of low-power servers and the emergence of ARM in the datacenter and has been a featured speaker at scores of investment and industry conferences on this topic.

Accomplishments during his career include:

• Led the revived HPC initiative at AMD, targeting APUs at deep learning and other HPC workloads
• Created an industry-wide thought leadership position for Calxeda in the ARM Server market
• Helped forge the early relationship between HP and Calxeda leading to the surprise announcement of HP Moonshot with Calxeda in 2011
• Built the IBM Power Server brand from 14% market share to over 50% share
• Integrated the Tivoli brand into the IBM company’s branding and marketing organization
• Co-Led the integration of HP and Apollo Marketing after the Boston-based desktop company’s acquisition

Karl’s background includes RISC and Mainframe servers, as well as HPC (Supercomputing). He has extensive experience as a global marketing executive at IBM where he was VP Marketing (2000-2010), Cray where he was VP Marketing (1995-1998), and HP where he was a Division Marketing Manager (1979-1995).