Rick Friedman is the CEO and Founder of NovusGC, a recently launched law firm which focuses on providing business-oriented General Counsel services at an affordable price to startups, innovators and early-stage investors. In the role of General Counsel, NovusGC directly handles the most common types of legal work required by emerging growth companies – including corporate formation, seed and Series A financing, employment and consulting matters, IP licenses and other commercial agreements – and taps into its network of service providers to help clients meet other related needs.

Rick’s prior experience includes serving in senior roles in large law firms (DLA Piper in Los Angeles and Heller Ehrman in Palo Alto), heading up the technology transfer licensing teams at USC and UT Austin, and serving in general counsel roles with public and venture-backed technology companies. Rick has been teaching Technology Transactions at the USC Gould School of Law as an Adjunct Professor since 2015.

Dr. Ross Mead is the Founder and CEO of Semio. Ross received his PhD and MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2015, and his BS in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2007. Ross’s dissertation work focused on socially assistive robots, specifically, on the principled design and computational modeling of fundamental social behaviors (such as speech, gestures, eye gaze, social spacing, etc.) that serve as building blocks for automated recognition and control in face-to-face human-robot interactions. His research provides the foundations upon which Semio software is being built.

Beyond Semio, Ross serves on the Board of Directors for two organizations:

• AI LA to promote artificial intelligence in the Los Angeles community

• The KISS Institute for Practical Robotics to promote robotics and STEM in K-12 education around the globe, with a focus on underrepresented populations.

In 2018, he co-founded the Social Robot Community Slack team to spark an international community around robotics and natural language technologies. Previously, Ross also served as a technical and scientific advisor to Disney, Intel, and National Geographic, among others.

Allie K. Miller is the Head of AI Growth for Startups and Venture Capital at Amazon, advancing the greatest AI companies in the world. Allie was recently named Forbes "AI Innovator of the Year", LinkedIn Top Voice for Technology, and serves as National Ambassador for AAAS and Advancing Women in Product. Previously, Allie was the youngest-ever woman to build an AI product at IBM—spearheading product development across computer vision, conversation, data, and regulation.

Outside of work, Allie has spoken about AI and field diversity around the world, addressed the European Commission, drafted national AI strategies, and created eight guidebooks to educate businesses on how to build successful AI projects. Allie is based in San Francisco and holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA in Cognitive Science (Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Philosophy) from Dartmouth College.

Steve works on Amazon’s early stage startup team, where he works with Y Combinator companies as an advisor and mentor. He is also a Venture Partner at F-Prime Capital focusing on investments in financial services and technology companies. Previously he served as COO of Check, a mobile payments service, where he led product, strategic partnerships, and merchant go-to-market from its inception through its acquisition by Intuit. Check was one of the fastest growing mobile financial services, acquiring over 10M consumers and processing over $1B in payment volume. Steve began his FinTech career with Yahoo! Finance, the leading destination for financial market news and data, where he held general management and senior product line roles. He began his career in software as a product manager at Epiphany, a pioneering enterprise marketing analytics platform. He holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BA in Economics from UC Davis.

Yin joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in January 2020 to support early-stage healthcare and life sciences investors and startups. Prior to AWS, she was an early employee at a biotech startup, Strateos (formerly Transcriptic), where she wore many hats spanning operations, science, and commercial, including the Head of Scientific Technologies. During her 6+ years of tenure there, she helped build a robotic cloud lab platform to enable remote experimentation for early stage drug discovery and synthetic biology with a credit card. Yin received her BS in Biology from the University of Virginia and her PhD in Molecular Biology and Genomics from Cornell University, where she led a number of scientific investigations, resulting in 11 publications on protein folding regulation relating to metabolic disorders.

Yin joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in January 2020 to support early-stage healthcare and life sciences investors and startups. Prior to AWS, she was an early employee at a biotech startup, Strateos (formerly Transcriptic), where she wore many hats spanning operations, science, and commercial, including the Head of Scientific Technologies. During her 6+ years of tenure there, she helped build a robotic cloud lab platform to enable remote experimentation for early stage drug discovery and synthetic biology with a credit card. Yin received her BS in Biology from the University of Virginia and her PhD in Molecular Biology and Genomics from Cornell University, where she led a number of scientific investigations, resulting in 11 publications on protein folding regulation relating to metabolic disorders.