Kirthiga Reddy brings over twenty years of experience leading technology-driven transformations to her role as Co-founder & CEO, Virtualness. She is Founding Investment Partner of F7 seed fund. She serves on the Board of Directors for WeWork and Pear. Previously, she was the first female Investing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA), manager of the $100B+ SoftBank Vision Fund. At SBIA, Kirthiga focused on frontier, enterprise and health tech investments and managed a portfolio of $5B+. She served on the Board of Directors for Collective Health and Fungible. She also served on the Investment Committee for Emerge, global accelerator for brilliant companies led by underrepresented founders. Prior to SBIA, she was Managing Director, Facebook India and South Asia for over six years, starting as their first employee in India. Her subsequent experiences at Facebook focused on emerging and high-growth markets including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and the Middle East. She has also served as Chair, Stanford Business School Management Board. Kirthiga holds an MBA from Stanford University, where she graduated with highest honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a B.E. in Computer Science from Marathwada University, India. She has been recognized as Fortune India’s “Most Powerful Women” and as Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” among other recognitions.

David Higley, Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co.: Dave Higley is a Managing Director in the Interactive Media & Technology group. Dave provides a broad range of advisory services, including M&A, capital raising and strategic advisory for public and private digital media and interactive entertainment companies. His clients have included large cap companies such as Activision and The Walt Disney Company, as well as emerging companies such as Bungie (in its pending acquisition by Sony), inXile (acquired by Microsoft), OneTwoSee (acquired by Comcast), Miximo (acquired by Adobe) and multiple transactions for Unity Software. Prior to joining Lazard, Dave was the founder and managing partner at Bond Lane Partners, a boutique investment bank focused on digital media and interactive entertainment. Before that he was a managing director and global head of digital media at UBS Investment Bank, where he helped form and scale its global technology group and established its digital media coverage effort. Over his career, has completed over 150 M&A and financing transactions for digital media and interactive entertainment companies. Dave received a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Southern California and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehigley

Tara Tan is founder and Managing Partner of Strange Ventures, an early stage VC fund that seeks to be the first creative partners to bold technology founders. She spent the last 7 years investing at global design and strategy firm IDEO, achieving a top-quartile track record across two institutional funds. Prior to investing, Tara was an operator and founder. She led design at an early-stage deep tech unicorn and founded an interactive media company that created the world’s first location-based game in 2012. She is a frequent speaker on the power of design in venture, and has been invited to speak at SXSW, SF Design Week, and more. She holds a Masters in Design and Technology from Harvard, where she was co-Chair of Women in Design and a fellow at the Harvard Graduate Leadership Program.

Joanna Popper was the Chief Metaverse Officer at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Based in Los Angeles, Popper led emerging technology and metaverse initiatives for the agency and its clients. Popper joined CAA in 2022 from HP, where she led its XR initiatives for Go-To-Market, overseeing the launch of award-winning technology, such as the HP Reverb G2 VR headset (winner of Red Dot Design Award, CES Innovation Award, IF Design Award) and HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition (winner of VR Hardware of the Year, Entertainment Technology Lumiere Award, Red Dot Best of the Best, CES Innovation Award, IF Design Award). While leading HP’s VR go-to-market, the business grew 10x to a multi-million dollar business. Previously, she was Executive Vice President of Media & Marketing at Singularity University, a NASA-based, Google-backed organization founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis to train leaders on the future of technology including artificial intelligence, VR/AR, robotics, blockchain, and digital biology. She was also the Vice President of Marketing at NBCUniversal, where she worked across properties, including television, film, digital, and parks, and launched top-rated hits in primetime, music award shows, sports, news, daytime, and more for Telemundo. She started her career as an investment banker in New York and Brazil and then a consultant at McKinsey & Company. She served as Executive Producer on BREONNA’S GARDEN, FINDING PANDORA X, and FIGHT BACK, the award-winning immersive content, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and SXSW. FINDING PANDORA X won Venice’s Golden Lion for Best Immersive Experience and SXSW’s best Virtual Cinema Award. BREONNA’s GARDEN received awards and recognition for social impact from PGA Innovation, Unity, Auggie, Filmgate, and Aurea. FIGHT BACK won an audience award at Venice. She was selected as “50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment,” ”25 Pioneers in the Metaverse,” “Top 50 Original Thinkers in VR,” “Top Women in Media: Game Changers,” “Top Women in Media: Industry Leaders,” “Digital It List,” and “101 Women Leading the VR Industry.” She has sat on numerous boards and in advisory roles including as Metaphysic Board Observer, the Coalition for the Women in XR Fund, Unity Charitable Fund Advisory Board, Vidcon Industry Advisory Board, AIXR Steering Committee and CES Consumer Technology Association AR/VR Working Committee. Popper graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s degree, and The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with an MBA.