2018 Speakers

Reilly Brennan

Reilly P. Brennan is a founding general partner at Trucks, a seed-stage venture capital fund for entrepreneurs changing the future of transportation. His investments include Nauto, nuTonomy, Starsky Robotics, May Mobility, SEEVA, and Roadster. He serves as a board director for May Mobility and SEEVA.

Reilly holds a teaching appointment at Stanford University, where he teaches twice per year in the School of Engineering and the d.school.

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Alex Roy

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large for The Drive, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver, has set numerous endurance driving records in Europe & the USA in the internal combustion, EV, 3-wheeler & Semi-Autonomous Classes, including the infamous Cannonball Run record.

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Senator Jeff Brandes

Senator Jeff Brandes is a highly respected and accomplished leader who served in the Florida Legislature from 2010 to 2022. He represented District 24, which covered a majority of Pinellas County, and was known for his innovative and independent policy-making. Throughout his tenure, he consistently advocated for solutions to address Florida’s most challenging issues. Brandes […]

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Joe Waggoner CEO

Joe Waggoner
CEO/Executive Director Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority

Joe Waggoner is the Executive Director for the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority (THEA). Under Joe’s leadership, THEA’s maintenance, operation and financial positions have significantly improved. Conversion of THEA’s Lee Roy Selmon Expressway to all-electronic tolling in 2010 made it Florida’s first expressway to be completely electronic. In 2014, THEA became a member of the Affiliated […]

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Itay Michaeli

Itay Michaeli
Director at Citi Research

Itay Michaeli is a Director at Citi Research covering the U.S. Autos & Auto Parts sector, having joined the firm in 2001. Itay also heads the Global Auto Pod for Citi Research. In recent years Itay has ranked Runner-up in the Institutional Investor All-America Research Survey. In 2012, Business Insider named Itay as one of […]

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Olaf Sakkers

Olaf joined Maniv Mobility in 2014, playing an instrumental role in shaping its investment strategy and growing the first fund to $45M AUM and its portfolio to 18 of the leading global mobility startups. Olaf is regarded as one of the leading researchers of autonomous vehicles, writing about topics such as, business model disruption in the automotive industry and appearing at numerous conferences and summits worldwide to speak about the impact of autonomous vehicles and related technologies.

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Stephen Smyth

Stephen Smyth
CEO and co-founder of Coord

Stephen Smyth is CEO and co-founder of Coord, the data platform for the mobility market. An engineer by training, Stephen began his career in transportation, developing virtual reality and robotics simulation software for BMW in Munich. Subsequently, he worked in both product management and cross-functional leadership roles in digital media, education technology and, most recently, […]

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Dawn Gunter

Dawn Gunter
Principal, Co-Managing Director, Gensler Tampa Office

 As a Principal and Co-Managing Director of Gensler’s Tampa Office, Dawn’s leadership builds client relationships to create transformative design with innovative solutions. With more than 25 years of experience, she works across many industries and has expertise in both high design and specialized technical spaces. As a champion of research, Dawn leverages Gensler’s thought leadership […]

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Horace Dediu

Horace Dediu
Asymco

A visionary, Dediu is one of the world’s most respected business analysts and renowned experts on complex data analysis. He is the founder and author of the market intelligence site Asymco.com, and also works as an independent analyst and advisor to incumbents and entrants on platform strategy. Declared “King of Apple Analysts” by Fortune magazine, […]

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Grayson Brulte

As founder & CEO of The Road to Autonomy, Grayson Brulte is an expert on what happens next. His vision and insight have established him as one of the world’s leading authorities on the emerging universe of autonomous vehicles and trucks. Grayson has leveraged his understanding of this dynamic and disruptive market to create a […]

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Neil Pederson

Neil Pederson
Executive Director, Transportation Research Board (TRB)

Neil Pedersen has been Executive Director of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) since 2015. In that role he provides executive direction and leadership to TRB’s technical activities, including its annual meeting of over 13,000 transportation professionals, its more than 200 technical committees, its conferences, and its publications; its peer-reviewed policy consensus studies; and its multimodal […]

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David Welch

David Welch
Bureau Chief Bloomberg’s Detroit

David Welch is Bloomberg’s Detroit bureau chief and has covered the auto industry for nearly 20 years. Before being promoted to bureau chief, Welch was deputy team leader for Bloomberg’s auto team. He also covered merger and acquisitions for Bloomberg in New York. Before joining Bloomberg in 2009, he was BusinessWeek magazine’s Detroit bureau chief […]

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Stefan Seltz-Axmacher
CEO, Starsky Robotics

CEO and Founder of Starsky Robotics, a driverless truck startup launched in August 2016 which aims to make roads safer and allow truck drivers to work closer to home. Starsky Robotics began moving freight on the highway in February 2017, and in February 2018 drove a truck fully unmanned for seven miles on the highway. Starsky raised a $16.5 million Series A round led by Shasta Ventures, with substantial contributions from previous investors like Y Combinator, Trucks.vc, 50 Years, 9Point Ventures, and many others.

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Oliver Cameron

Oliver is a co-founder and CEO of Voyage, a startup deploying self-driving taxis into communities around the world.

At Voyage, we’re building an extremely affordable autonomous taxi service. We believe that dependable, point-to-point, self-driving transportation will change a lot about how the world works for the better, and not just for Silicon Valley. We’ve been working on this problem for nearly a year now, and Team Voyage is today comprised of 10 amazing and mission-oriented engineers.

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Marcus Welz

Marcus Welz
CEO of Siemens Intelligent Traffic Systems, North America and CEO of Bytemark, Inc.

Marcus Welz leads the Siemens Intelligent Traffic Systems business in the U.S. The company offers advanced software and systems to modernize and improve urban and interurban traffic. In this role, Welz manages all functions including sales, R&D, product management, customer service and drives strategic business direction. On November, 2018, Welz was also named as CEO […]

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Jason Eichenholz

Jason Eichenholz
Luminar Technologies

Jason Eichenholz is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in laser, optics and photonics product development and commercialization. Before joining Luminar as CTO and co-founder, Eichenholz was the CEO and founder of Open Photonics, an open innovation company dedicated to the commercialization of optics and photonics technologies. Eichenholz is a fellow of SPIE, the international society […]

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Brian Wolf

Brian Wolf
Technology General Manager, Ford Motor Corporation: AV/EV efforts and the SMART City Challenge

Brian Wolf is the Head of Ford’s Autonomous Vehicles Business Team and is responsible for the strategy, partnerships, and go-to-market approach for Ford’s self-driving business. Brian has undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Carnegie Mellon University, a Masters in Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business school.

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