Special Guests

Nolan Bushnell

Technology Pioneer, Entrepreneur, Scientist, and Engineer.

  • One of Newsweek’s “50 Men That Changed America”.  Nolan Bushnell is the quintessential technology pioneer, entrepreneur, scientist, and engineer.  Often cited as the Father of the Video Game Industry, he is best known as the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre. Today his design credo—that games should be “easy to learn and difficult to master”—is inspiring a new generation of developers. Nolan was the first and only person to hire Steve Jobs, (at Atari) which he details in his 2013 bestseller, Finding the Next Steve Jobs, published by Simon and Schuster.

    Over the past four decades, it’s staggering what Nolan has created as a prolific entrepreneur, founding more than 20 companies, including:  Atari; Chuck E. Cheese’s; Catalyst

    Technologies – the first tech incubator in Silicon Valley;  Etak – the first car navigation system whose mapping is still the basis for car navigation systems today;  Androbot – a personal robotics company;  ByVideo – the first online ordering system, which allowed customers to order and pay for product from kiosks; uWink – the first touch screen ordering and entertainment system at restaurant tables;  X2 – a new game company focusing on powerful new tech for games for Microsoft’s Alexa, and Modal VR – an end-to-end virtual reality platform that delivers large-scale and fully wireless immersion for multiple users at once.

    Today he oversees and/or sits on the boards of several companies that use Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and Augmented Reality, as well as other advanced tech.  In 2019, Nolan released his latest offering, a multi-media murder mystery game called St. Noire, made for Amazon’s Echo powered by Alexa.  At the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show, St. Noir won the “Best Innovation” award.  He is currently working on a dozen more similar games, and they will soon become playable interactively online as well as in person.

    In the process, he pioneered many of the workplace innovations that have made Silicon Valley a long-standing magnet for creative talent. Additionally, he has consulted for numerous corporations, including IBM, Cisco Systems and US Digital Communications.  He has been featured by major media worldwide including Fast Company, Wired, Huffington Post, CNET, The Guardian, BBC, and as a guest on countless business news shows. 

    Nolan has won several awards around the world and has been featured in many documentaries about Silicon Valley and Video Games, including recently in CNN’s “The Eighties” produced by Tom Hanks, and will soon be seen in 2019 in another major documentary called “Game On” on The History Channel about the video game industry.  Nolan was even given a cameo in the 2013 film “Jobs” starring Ashton Kutcher, a tip of the hat to Nolan for his role in hiring Steve Jobs for his first job ever at Atari.  A biopic about Nolan, tentatively titled “Atari”, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company is also in the works.

Guadalupe Laiz

International Artist. Photographer. Explorer.

  • Guadalupe Laiz was born and raised in Argentina, and when she was twenty years old she moved to the United States aspiring to build a photography career. Driven by the belief that art and beauty transform how people think about conservation and nature, she focuses on the environment and animals that are pure and gentle by their very nature. For more than a decade, Guadalupe amassed an extensive body of work capturing the beauty and uniqueness of the indigenous horses of Iceland, a country that has touched her deeply and which she returns to time and time again. Guadalupe’s stunning photography showcased in Horses of Iceland, her first book (published in 2019), has been exhibited all over the world.

Thom Singer, CSP

Engaging Speaker

  • Thom Singer is the CEO of the Austin Technology Council and is an active keynote speaker for business meetings who values the power of the human side of business. He is the expert who brings the message of relationships, trust, and accountability to your next meeting.

    He has had a long career promoting “Community, Collaboration, and Conversations”. After a successful career in sales and marketing, he became a growth leadership speaker in 2009. A more than a later he has brought his high energy presentations and action-oriented content to over 1000 audiences. Thom knows that as the speaker he has a responsibility to set the tone for a strong conference attendee experience.

    Thom earned his Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) in 2014 and is committed to the business of meetings. He is the author of 12 books, a two time TEDx Speaker, and is the host of the “Austin Tech Connect” podcast, as well as the; “Making Waves at C-Level” podcast. On these shows he has interviewed over 1000 business leaders and others with a focus on discovering how the most successful people get farther across the gap between potential and results.

Moderator

Nevin Adams

Thought Leader & Speaker

Speakers

Joseph Smolen 
SVP Core & Institutional
Markets, Empower

Jeff Cullen

Chief Executive Officer, Strategic Retirement Partners (SRP)

Scott Colangelo

Chairman, Managing Partner, Prime Capital Investment Advisors

Kevin Murphy

Senior VP, Head of Workplace Retirement Distribution, Franklin Templeton

Amy Keiser
VP – Retirement Product & Solutions, Principal

Jason Crane

Head of Retirement Distribution, Ascensus

Steve McCoy
Chief Executive Officer,
iJoin

Barbara Redstone

VP, Divisional Sales Manager, (West) Retirement Plan Sales, Ameritas

Yaqub Ahmed

Head of Investment-Only Division-U.S., U.S. Retirement|U.S. Insurance & Subadvisory|529, Franklin Templeton

Thank You Sponsors

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Thank You Sponsors •