Marc Scribner, Senior Transportation Policy Analyst, Reason Foundation

Scribner’s work focuses on a variety of public policy issues related to transportation, land use, and urban growth, including infrastructure investment and operations, transportation safety and security, risk and regulation, privatization and public finance, urban redevelopment and property rights, and emerging transportation technologies such as automated road vehicles and unmanned aircraft systems. He frequently advises policymakers on these matters at the federal, state, and local levels. 

Scribner has testified before Congress at the invitation of both Democrats and Republicans on issues including highway revenue collection, traffic congestion management, and airport financing. 

He has appeared on television and radio programs in outlets such as Fox Business Network, National Public Radio, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and has also written for numerous publications, including USA Today, The Washington Post, Wired, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Forbes, and National Review. And his work has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Congressional Quarterly, Washington Monthly, POLITICO, CNN, Bloomberg, BBC, C-SPAN, and other print, television, and radio outlets.

Matthew Lipka, Head of Policy, Nuro

Matthew Lipka is Head of Policy at Nuro, a robotics company building and deploying fully autonomous, on-road vehicles in a last-mile delivery service. In this role, Matthew works with regulators, policymakers, advocates, and Nuro colleagues to shape policies and products that accelerate the benefits of robotics for everyday life. Prior to joining Nuro, Matthew worked as a transportation consultant and at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Dan Chu

Dan Chu is the Chief Product Officer at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going. In his role, Dan leads all product management, technical program management, user experience research and design, and product data analytics for Waymo. 

Prior to Waymo, Dan worked at Google, where he led the Google Maps platform product team, which reaches more than a billion active users every month and launched its enterprise app, Maps Coordinate. Dan also worked on Google Hangouts building a developer platform to enable team collaboration within the application. 

Before Google and Waymo, Dan was a part of several startups that were at the forefront of SaaS including Icarian (Kleiner Perkins), Catapulse (Benchmark), and Open Harbor (Menlo Ventures, NEA).

Dan is keenly interested in the intersection of technology and social impact, having worked across a number of different nonprofits using technology to create solutions in areas such as human rights violation reporting, energy consumption, and economic development. 

He holds a B.S. in Computer Science/AB in Economics from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MPA in Technology Policy and Energy/Natural Resources from the Harvard Kennedy School

Adam Jonas

Adam Jonas is a Managing Director and leader of Morgan Stanley’s Global Auto & Shared Mobility research team. Adam joined the firm’s investment banking division in Chicago in 1996, specializing in corporate finance and M&A in the automotive industry. In 1999, Adam moved to Equity Research and joined the Firm’s European Autos team, based in London, serving as the lead European auto analyst from 2003 to 2010. In 2010, Adam returned to the US to lead the Global Autos & Shared Mobility teams, collaborating with his research colleagues to tell the story of the future of transportation and Auto 2.0. Adam earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration (with distinction) from the University of Michigan. Register today!

Edward Niedermeyer, Communications Director for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education

Edward is the Communications Director for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education, a coalition of more than 60 companies and organizations helping prepare society for the autonomous revolution. Prior to joining PAVE he reported and commented on automotive and mobility topics for more than a decade, and his work has been featured in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Opinion, and numerous other outlets. He has been reporting on Tesla since 2014, and his coverage culminated in the 2019 release of his book “Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.” Based in Portland, OR, Niedermeyer is the co-host of The Autonocast, a leading podcast on autonomous drive technology and the future of mobility.

He can be found on Twitter @Tweetermeyer.  

Ali Vahabzadeh, CEO and Founder, curbFlow

Ali founded Chariot in 2014 to provide the world’s first app-based microtransit service to daily commuters. Following its sale to Ford in 2016, his team scaled the service to 6 cities and extended the service to enterprise and municipal customers. Their greatest operational challenge – shared by others in ridesharing, on-demand delivery, and commercial fleets – was accessing the curb for pickups and drop-offs. So, Ali founded curbFlow in 2018 to enable commercial and on-demand drivers to make real-time reservations through the first-ever digital curb marketplace. Now, the company partners with merchants and infrastructure destinations to use its computer vision technology to solve the safety, congestion, and access issues operators have struggled with since the onset of on-demand services.

Jason Shaffer

Jason Shaffer serves as Vice President of Customer Product focusing on In-Store Fulfillment and Automation. He leads teams responsible for the deployment of pickup and delivery, business processes, and automation of Walmart’s store fulfillment businesses in addition to autonomous vehicle development.

Jason came to Walmart in 2009 from Sterling Jewelers where he spent three years as VP of Supply Chain. In this role, he was responsible for supply chain innovations and delivering solutions that lowered operating costs and reduced inventory. Prior to Sterling, Jason worked for the business consulting firm Accenture and was deployed to Accenture’s Retail practice. With Accenture, he provided consultation to various retailers on flow optimization, constrained capacity management, and supplier relationship management. Before joining Accenture, Jason worked for FedEx Logistics, O-Cedar Brands, and Kroger.

Jason has a BA from the University of Cincinnati and relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas from Cleveland, Ohio in 2009.