The Bald Futurist, and CEO of Possibility & Purpose
Steve Brown is an accomplished speaker, author, strategist, and executive coach. He is the former Futurist and Chief Evangelist at Intel Corporation, with over 30 years of experience in high tech that spans research, planning, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and management.
Steve helps organizations to understand the major technologies that will shape the future five, ten, or fifteen years from now, and then to determine the strategies they will need to follow to take best advantage of the next phase of digital transformation. Steve inspires his audiences to think beyond the current status quo, and to imagine ways that they can optimize operations, create new value, and delight customers in new ways, all by taking full advantage of emerging new technology platforms.
Steve speaks and writes in plain language about the continued advances in computing and how they will intersect business, cultural and human trends to create both new opportunities and new challenges. His new book, Hacking Reality, will be published in 2018. Steve has been featured on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, ABC News, CBS, and in Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets.
Steve works with a wide spectrum of organizations spanning transportation, retail, hospitality, government, education, agriculture, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, media and entertainment. He offers a rich menu of services including speaking, consulting, and Futurecasting workshops. These custom, one- or two-day Futurecasting workshops help organizations to project how trends will affect the future of their business and then build strategies to shape that future and thrive within it.
You can learn more about Steve at Baldfuturist.com where you can read his latest blog posts and review samples of his work, including his popular TED talk. You can also follow Steve on Twitter (@baldfuturist) and Facebook (www.fb.com/baldfuturist).
Steve holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Micro-Electronic Systems Engineering from Manchester University. He was born in the U.K. and became a U.S. citizen in 2008. He sits on the board of the Brian Grant Foundation, a non-profit devoted to helping people with Parkinson’s Disease to live the best life possible. He lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon.
Spencer J. Cox
Lieutenant Governor, State of Utah
Spencer J. Cox, Utah’s 8th Lieutenant Governor, is from Fairview, Utah where he currently resides with his wife, Abby and their four children. He is a graduate of Snow College, Utah State University and Washington and Lee Law School. He formerly practiced law with Fabian & Clendenin and was Vice President and General Counsel of CentraCom. He has served as a councilman and mayor of Fairview, as a Sanpete County Commissioner and in the Utah House of Representatives.
Lt. Governor Cox is by statute the chief election officer of the state and the liaison between the governor and legislature. He travels extensively throughout the state supporting economic development and local government solutions. He is committed to strengthening families, transforming education, increasing voter participation, utilizing modern technologies, promoting healthy living and empowering the homeless and impoverished.
He and his family enjoy spending time in Utah’s amazing backcountry. He also plays the bass guitar with his brother in a local rock band.
Kobus Van der Merwe
Jay Lepreau Professor, University of Utah
Kobus Van der Merwe is the Jay Lepreau Professor in the School of Computing and Director of the Flux Research Group at the University of Utah. He joined the University of Utah in 2012 after fourteen years at AT&T Labs - Research. He does networking systems research in a broad range of areas including network management, control and operation, mobile networking, network evolution, network security and cloud computing. He is the PI and Director of the POWDER project (Platform for Open Wireless Data-driven Experimental Research), one of the newly selected NSF PAWR platforms.