Peter Thiel was an active venture capitalist in his personal capacity, funding companies like FACEBOOK, where he was that company’s first outside investor and director. His contributions to technology, finance, and entrepreneurship have been widely recognized, including by the World Economic Forum, which honored him as a Young Global Leader. He was also named for the 25 most influential people on the Web by Business Week.

As PayPal’s Senior Vice President of Asia, Rohan Mahadevan provides strategic direction for one of the company’s fastest-growing regions covering many of the largest commerce markets in the world, including Greater China, Japan, India and Southeast Asia. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for increasing the company’s presence and local payment capabilities to capitalize on the explosive growth of e-commerce and m-commerce across all Asian markets. Rohan has been with PayPal since 2004 in various leadership roles. Prior to his current position, he held the dual roles of Vice President of Global Cross Border Trade and Vice President of Latin America.
His passion to work and understand the challenges of growing businesses is not new; his career started with his own start-up where he was founder and CEO of Aftermind Inc., a software company in the aftermarket protection industry.
Before he started his own company, Rohan was a post-doctoral scientist at Cambridge University, England. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD from Harvard University in the field of astrophysics.

Eli Broverman is a co-founder of Betterment, LLC and serves as its Chief Operating Officer. An expert in securities and financial institutions law, he also serves as Betterment's General Counsel. He has designed a wide range of structuring and compliance initiatives for broker-dealers and investment advisors. Prior to forming Betterment, he practiced law at the international law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, where he advised Fortune 500 companies and their senior management on securities, tax, and compensation matters. He is a graduate of Brown University and New York University School of Law.

Michael Laven is the CEO of Currency Cloud, a rapidly-growing FinTech company that is transforming how businesses move money around the world. Currency Cloud is well positioned to bring long-awaited change to the international payments landscape, by exchanging and transferring money as a cloud-based service. Joining in 2012, Mike is the driving force behind the firm, growing it to $10bn in international payments.
An accomplished entrepreneur, Mike is highly skilled at building and leading venture-backed FinTech companies towards profitable growth. Over the past two decades, he has held leadership roles with a number of FinTech firms in London and Silicon Valley, including Infinity Financial Technology, Cohera and Coronet, FRS Global and Traiana.
Behind Mike’s easy-going personality lies one of the sharpest minds in the financial technology industry. Mike has a BA from Wesleyan University and advanced degrees from Harvard and the School for International Training.

David Milligan has an extensive background in innovation management within banking, as well as strategy consulting. In his banking career, he headed a number of new business units for over 10 years, as well as heading up strategy development in both commercial and private banking divisions of a major bank. During this time he led teams responsible for the successful launch of new-to-market banking technology and new revenue lines within banking. Prior to that, he was a strategy consultant for Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte). He is passionate about "bringing new ideas to the discipline of the market" - which he sees as true innovation. He holds an MBA from the University of Cape Town, and has spoken on innovation at banking conferences around the world.

Yukio Noguchi is an expert in Finance Theory and Japanese Economic Theory. He graduated from The University of Tokyo, Faculty of Engineering, and joined the Ministry of Finance in 1964. In 1972, he received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. He served as a Professor at Hitotsubashi University, Director of the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo, Visiting Associate Professor of Stanford University, as well as Professor of the Graduate School of Finance, Accounting and Law at Waseda University. He has a deep interest in BitCoin and published “Innovation of Virtual Currency” Diamond, Inc. (2014).
His major publications in Japanese include “Japanese Economy collapsed by Monetary Easing Policy” DIAMOND, Inc. (2013), “Fictional Abenomics” DIAMOND, Inc. (2013) and others.

Shigenobu Kobayashi is the manager of the Rakuten SmartPay business. In 2010, he joined Rakuten, and worked abroad to expand the Rakuten Ichiba business overseas. In 2012, he returned to Japan and established the “Rakuten SmartPay” service, a mobile payment service for merchants.

Waichi Sekiguchi graduated from Hitotsubashi University in 1982 and joined Nikkei Inc. In 1988, he entered into the Institute of International Affairs of Harvard University to study abroad as a Fulbright Researcher. From 2000, he served as an editorial writer in the fields of information and communication and also served as a Part-time Professor of Waseda University and Meiji University. His major publications in Japanese include “Flag-Bearers of the Personnel Computer Revolution” Nikkei inc. (2000), “Information Seeking Method” Nikkei Inc. (2006). He co-authored “REIMAGINING JAPAN” KINOKUNIYA COMPANY, LTD. (2011), “Information and Communications Policy to Create the Future” NTT Publishing Co. Ltd, (2010) and others.

From the historic collapse of Enron to the 2008 global financial meltdown, Steve Lewis has covered some of the most important business news stories of the past 15 years. As Coordinating Producer in CNBC’s Washington Bureau, Steve spent nearly three years chasing politics and policy stories across multiple beats including corporate governance, healthcare and energy. He returned to the network's Global Headquarters in 2005 and helped relaunch CNBC’s signature morning show “Squawk Box.” In 2006, Steve was named Assistant Managing Editor. Today, Steve leads the Strategic Content and News Partnerships group. This innovative cross-platform editorial team is responsible for developing and scaling some of CNBC’s most influential franchises including “Americas Top States for Business” and “Disruptor 50.” Additionally, Steve and his team seek out new content and technology partnerships that enhance audience experience. Steve lives in Bloomfield, NJ with his wife Marlene, 8 year old son Sam, and Pug puppy – Cece. He loves yoga, biking and watching the NFL.