Community-driven. Entrepreneur-focused.
2024 SPEAKERS
Co-founder and General Partner | PSL Ventures
Managing Partner | Pioneer Square Labs
Julie Sandler is Co-founder and General Partner at PSL Ventures and Managing Director at Pioneer Square Labs, the largest venture studio in the Pacific Northwest. PSL Ventures provides early-stage investment in technology-driven, market-defining companies. In addition, Julie is an adjunct professor at the UW Foster School of Business where she teaches a popular MBA entrepreneurship course and is incoming chair for the Washington Roundtable, a non-profit organization comprised of senior executives of major private sector employers working together to support state economic vitality and fostering equitable opportunity.
Julie was previously a partner at Madrona Venture Group after her tenure leading product teams at Amazon Kindle, TeachStreet.com (acquired by Amazon) and Accenture. She has served on the boards of numerous privately held companies, industry associations, and advisory boards. In 2016, Julie was one of 60 Americans selected as a Presidential Leadership Scholar by the Presidential Centers of Clinton, Johnson, Bush and Bush. She has been voted GeekWire’s “Geek of the Year” and “Hire of the Year” and named to Puget Sound Business Journal's “Power 100” and "40 under 40". She is a frequent speaker and commentator across CNBC, Bloomberg, The Information, Forbes, TechCrunch, and Inc.
Julie holds Phi Beta Kappa bachelor's and master’s degrees in psychology from Stanford University, and an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School. She lives in Seattle with her husband Alejandro and their children.
Julie Sandler
Bobby Napiltonia
Founding Partner | The GTM Firm
Bobby Napiltonia is one of the founding partners of The GTM Firm and a grizzled tech-junkie veteran with nearly four decades of experience in building and delivering transformative technologies. From making computers produce sound for games (Creative Labs) and video (YouTube) to enabling text messages that help you catch an Uber (Twilio), Bobby has seen it all. He is an authority on go-to-market strategies and is passionate about cloud computing, APIs, generative AI, robotics, deep tech, open source, and building powerful ecosystems.
Many will recognize the AppExchange he built for Marc Benioff and Salesforce, which has become a foundation for many of today's cloud companies and grown into a trillion-dollar ecosystem. Above all, Bobby enjoys being a father and is dedicated to driving diversity, equity and inclusion into the tech industry through impactful programs. New to the Bend area, but not a newbie to Oregon, Bobby Napiltonia was married in Hood River 27 years ago and has spent many summers fishing the amazing waters of Central Oregon.
Rebecca Robinson
Associate Vice President for Economic Development and Industry Relations | Oregon State University
Rebecca Robinson serves as the newly appointed Associate Vice President for the Economic Development and Industry Relations Office at Oregon State University (OSU) and as Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives at OSU-Cascades. She brings extensive experience from Kansas State University, where she most recently served as President and CEO of K-State Innovation Partners, overseeing economic development, corporate engagement, technology commercialization, and strategic initiatives. During her 16-year tenure, she recruited 29 technology-based companies to the region and created over 1,700 high-wage jobs, resulting in a projected economic impact of over $1 billion.
Rebecca holds an MBA and is a doctoral candidate in Leadership Communication. At OSU, she joins the Division of Research and Innovation, contributing to the development of the innovation district at OSU-Cascades and fostering industry-university partnerships to drive economic growth and workforce development in Oregon.
Mark Drummond
Advisor and Investor, AI, Machine Learning and Mixed Reality | WorldStage
Dr. Mark Drummond is a successful entrepreneur, inventor and technical manager who has scaled and successfully exited numerous startups and was responsible for building a brand-new team at Apple focused on AI and machine learning tools for building characters in mixed reality. Mark was on the founding team for Siri and has managed machine learning projects with multi-million dollar operating budgets.
After working for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the leading center for robotic exploration of the solar system, and successfully exiting two startups, Mark was CEO at Wowd, the world's first peer-to-peer, real-time social search engine, which was acquired by Facebook. As part of the Facebook transaction, Mark also sold to Google the patent that describes the correct way to implement the famous "PageRank" algorithm. Mark has authored 29 publications in machine learning and AI, and has had 18 patents issued. While he understands technology, he views it primarily through the lens of user experience, which we can all relate to.
Corey Owens
CEO | Bonta Gelato
Corey Owens is the CEO of Bonta Gelato. Prior to a very tasty mid-life crisis, he spent the bulk of his career at the cutting edge of technology-driven innovation. Corey was the Chief Marketing Officer at Metropolis Technologies and Head of Global Public Policy at WeWork, roles that found him advocating for change in how communities and regulators think about the built environment. Previously he was the first Head of Global Public Policy at Uber Technologies and the Head of State Public Policy at Facebook (a role which gave Corey his first taste of the glory of Central Oregon when he worked on the Prineville data center project).
Corey began his career at the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Along the way, he has worked on state and national electoral campaigns in Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, and Virginia.
Pitch Moderators
Himalaya Rao-Potlapally
Managing Director | The BFM Fund
Himalaya Rao-Potlapally is the Managing Director and Solo GP of The BFM Fund, a seed-stage fund focused on highly scalable Black and diverse-led deal flow across industries, within the United States. Prior to becoming a GP, Himalaya got an MBA and specialized training in Venture Finance and worked in seven different firms as an Associate, Deal Lead, and eventually Fund Manager. She is also currently the co-Executive Director of Venture Partners, a non-profit aimed at training people at the intersection of race, class, and gender and helping them break into venture capital to facilitate more representative decision makers. This non-profit was launched in partnership with VertueLab and NVCA's Venture Forward/VC University with their most recent cohort going through a partnership with San Jose State University.
Through her work in creating equity within venture capital, she has been recognized as one of the Rising Stars in Venture Capital by the NVCA/Venture Forward, a Forty under 40 recipient by the Portland Business Journal, and a VCI Fellow. As a national leader in demographic-based investing, she was invited by Senator Wyden to present expert witness testimony in front of the United States Senate Finance Committee on her work with BIPOC founders.
Partner | White Summers
Joy Nair has been a dedicated legal advocate for entrepreneurs and emerging growth companies for 18 years. With a comprehensive approach, she supports businesses through every stage—from formation to securing investor funding, engaging with customers and vendors and ultimately navigating the complexities of an acquisition. Joy is passionate about guiding clients through the challenges of starting, maintaining and selling a business, leveraging her extensive experience in M&A transactions, international re-domestications and technology agreements.
Joy began her legal career in 2006 as part of the Corporate, M&A and Securities group at K&L Gates LLP in Portland, Oregon. She then transitioned to an in-house role at a solar energy startup, where she worked remotely across Africa and Asia. In 2011, Joy joined White Summers as a Senior Associate, and after a brief departure to work in-house for a client, she returned in 2017 and was elevated to partner in 2022. She currently practices from the firm's Portland office.
Joy Nair
Founder and CEO | Hubb
Allie Magyar, a serial entrepreneur, is known for her passion in connecting people to achieve more together. She has successfully scaled and exited multiple businesses while breaking down barriers in both technology and gender equity. In 2016, Allie won investment at Bend Venture Conference for Hubb, a technology company in the meetings and events industry. Allie has been recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year by the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network.
She currently chairs the Technology Association of Oregon, is a sought-after keynote speaker and actively volunteers with early stage startups in the Portland area while cherishing time with her family. She’s also known for celebrating the journey and throwing epic costume parties.
Allie Magyar
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