Philly Tech Week 2020

Due Quach (pronounced ‘Zway Kwok’) is an inspiring social entrepreneur and the author of Calm Clarity: How to Use Science to Rewire Your Brain for Greater Wisdom, Fulfillment and Joy, one of Fast Company’s best business books of 2018. Through Calm Clarity, she uses neuroscience and mindfulness to guide organizations and individuals to address unconscious bias, lead with authenticity, foster genuine inclusion, and heal trauma. After her autobiographical essay, “Poor and Traumatized at Harvard,” became a viral sensation, she collaborated with student leaders to start a grassroots organization, the Collective Success Network, to mentor, support, and empower low-income, first-generation college students to successfully navigate college and enter professional careers.

Due has a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from the Wharton School and started her career in management consulting at the Monitor Group (now part of Deloitte). She then worked in growth capital and infrastructure investments in Southeast Asia and in social impact investments in Asia and Africa. Due also serves on the board of the Power of Professional Women, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of women leaders in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Lauren is the Director of the Community Lending Circles program through the Global Atlanta Innovation Hub at CARE USA. Driven to alleviate global poverty, Lauren has helped thousands of refugees, marginalized communities and entrepreneurs gain access to capital through her leadership in US micro finance, economic empowerment and HR/training consulting services at various NGOs including CARE, Friends of Refugees and Habitat for Humanity Int'l. Lauren is a West Indian immigrant from the UK and grew up in Northeast Atlanta. She studied Int'l Economics and Sociology at Emory University, is partially accredited by the Department of Justice as an Accredited Representative for Immigrants and holds a Senior Professional in Human Resources Certification.

Archna Sahay is a Sr Consultant with J Nowak Strategy, a strategic advisory firm based in Philadelphia. Archna's primary areas of focus include urban innovation and public-private partnerships. Prior to this role, Archna was the director of entrepreneurial investment for the City of Philadelphia. As Director, Archna was responsible for the economic and business development of the tech sector for the City. She launched various programs to help connect entrepreneurs to resources needed as they built their businesses in Philadelphia. Archna also managed StartupPHL, the City's platform for supporting entrepreneurship and startup activity in Philadelphia which also included management of an early stage venture fund and a grant program. She helped guide the growth of the platform from providing sources of funding to startups to also incorporating thought leadership, open innovation concepts and equitable and inclusive ecosystem development. Archna began her career in finance working for over 10 years at leading investment management firms working closely with high net worth clients.

Archna served as an Advisor for the 2018 SXSW Cities Summit and is currently on the boards of Philadelphia Community Corp, a non profit salvage organization combining workforce development and sustainable building and deconstruction practices as well as Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, a non profit whose mission is to provide a soft landing for new immigrants through education, training, employment and entrepreneurship.

Lisa is Seer’s Data Strategy Lead based in Philadelphia. She harnessed a passion for data and her tenure within digital marketing and business operations to focus on pushing Seer forward in utilizing data-driven strategies. Her favorite thing to do is dig deep into data to help clients solve complex business questions. Her second favorite thing to do is convince Wil of the virtues of bridge tables & ngrams.

Before Seer, Lisa worked in roles across the board in digital marketing and software with positions at TIG Global, MICROS Systems, and Oracle. Recently hitting ten years in the industry, Lisa started her career in PPC before branching into SEO, product management, program management, R&D, and finally Data Strategy. She has experience with clients at all levels and across most major industries. In her role as Data Strategy Lead, Lisa gets to touch a ton of Seer’s clients in one way or another, which is one reason she loves what she does.

Lisa is a graduate of the University of Delaware. In her free time, she enjoys eating at every new restaurant in the city and doing all things outdoors with her husband Bernard, kids George and Annie, and their too-energetic pup Deacon.

Lisha is a venture builder and investor, startup advisor, and business strategist and operator who has served on all sides of the business table. She is the founder of Arable Ventures LLC., a boutique innovation consulting and advisory practice helping organizations develop full scale operating models to deliver innovative solutions. Prior to launching Arable Ventures, Lisha was the founder and head of Vanguard’s Innovation Studio, where she led the vision for enterprise innovation and owned the ongoing delivery of a venture portfolio focused on addressing white spaces with the potential to transform businesses and disrupt the financial services industry.

Throughout her work, alongside crafting effective strategy and operations enabled through technology and data wherever possible, Lisha has always placed high emphasis on growing the best functioning teams and company culture. She is an active investor with 37Angels, an early growth stage women's syndicate focused on increasing representation of diverse founders and funders, and serves as mentor and advisor to startups across the consumer, enterprise, and fintech sectors. She is also an adjunct professor @ Temple's Fox School of Business, teaching on open innovation & strategic partnerships. Lisha currently lives in Brooklyn and travels often in pursuit of new adventures.

Alex Campbell is a full-stack software engineer at AWeber, working on everything from legacy PHP sites to automated Slack bots in Python. After getting his undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science with a focus on artificial intelligence at Vassar College, he self-taught programming and was awarded the Developer Scholarship from Google to study Android app development at Udacity. Never a moment not in thought, you can find him pondering self-describing function names during the day, and pondering counters to mind-bending swing manipulations in the slasher game Mordhau at night.

A past columnist for both The New York Times and The Washington Post, Gene now writes regularly for The Hill, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Guardian.

Gene has written 5 books on business management, specifically geared towards small and medium sized companies. His most recent is In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash.

Nationally, Gene appears regularly on MSNBC and Fox News as well as The John Batchelor Show and SiriusXM's Wharton Business Channel where he talks about the financial, economic and technology issues that affect business leaders today.

Through his keynotes and breakout sessions, Gene helps business owners, executives and managers understand the political, economic and technological trends that will affect their companies and—most importantly—the actions they can take to continue to grow and profit.

Gene owns and operates the Marks Group PC, a highly successful ten-person firm that provides technology and consulting services to small and medium sized businesses.

Prior to starting the Marks Group PC Gene, a Certified Public Accountant, spent nine years in the entrepreneurial services arm of the international consulting firm KPMG in Philadelphia where he was a Senior Manager.

Christina is a Site Reliability Engineer in Vanguard's Chief Technology Office. She has worked at the company's Malvern, PA headquarters since graduating from Villanova University in 2015 with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Throughout her career, she has developed an expansive skill set in front- and back-end web development, as well as cloud infrastructure and automation. She has earned three Amazon Web Services certifications: Solutions Architect - Associate, Developer - Associate, and SysOps Admin - Associate. Christina has also worked closely with the Women's Initiative for Leadership Success at Vanguard, both internally at the company and externally in the local community, to further the career advancement if women and girls - in particular within the tech industry. In her spare time, Christina is passionate about traveling; she has visited over 20 different countries and 25 U.S. states so far!