Nadia Fawaz
Mike Vildibill
Christopher Aberger
Christopher Aberger is a senior director of software engineering at SambaNova Systems where he directs the machine learning team. Christopher works on efficient training algorithms for new and emerging hardware architectures. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University where he studied the intersection of graph, database, and machine learning systems; this work received a Best Of award at VLDB in 2016 and an invited TODS article in 2017.
Corey Bronstein
Matt Withington
Matt Withington is the Marketing Director of Samuel Adams, responsible for brand strategy, communications, and portfolio development. Matt began his career at the Boston Beer Company in 2017, leading the Angry Orchard Hard Cider brand, and has spent more than 15 years in food and beverage as both a marketer and an operator. He and his wife Kayleigh live in Newburyport, MA and are avid travelers.
Milan Martin
Milan is a creative business executive with a history of driving growth and success in both large enterprise and entrepreneurial environments. For the past decade, Milan has held executive-level positions across three continents, leading both Fortune 50 and growth brands.
In 2020, Milan founded The Free Spirits Company and is currently the CEO of the organization. Working with a talented team of multi-disciplinary professionals, Milan is dedicated to changing drinking culture by offering people better “no and low alcohol” options when ‘drinking’. Free Spirits is one of the leading brands in a quickly growing category and is poised to continue to innovate and expand rapidly across markets.
Prior to Free Spirits, Milan led Grey Advertising through a significant turn-around and to the most successful time in its history. Under Milan’s leadership, Grey San Francisco was recognized as one of the fastest growing, most creatively awarded agencies on the West Coast. Taking home top honors at festivals including Effies, Cannes, OneShows and D&AD, in addition to the business results achieved for Grey’s clients were all factors in the Agency being named as Global Agency of the Year three years running.
Earlier in his career, Milan spent over a decade at Ogilvy & Mather in both London and New York City, later joining a digital agency as Chief Strategist where he also orchestrated the sale of the company to a publicly traded organization.
A native of the East Coast, Milan now lives with his family in Mill Valley, California where he plays drums (serviceably) in a neighborhood dad band called “The Sofa Kings”.
Ioana Tanasa
Ioana Tanasa (pronouns she/her) is currently Senior Marketing Director in the Global Non-Alcoholic Beverage Unit (NABev), part of the ABInbev. In her role she is leading and supporting marketing and innovation efforts across multiple beverage brands distributed across the Americas, Africa, China, and the United Kingdom. Prior to this role she was the Senior Innovation Director in the global team driving the Global Innovation agenda for the ABI Global Beer Brands (Budweiser, Corona & Stella Artois). She started her career in P&G and spent almost a decade working on several categories, as well as building a strong brand marketing & commercial background. Originally from Romania, she holds a B.A in Marketing (Bucharest) as well as an Ashridge Business School Leadership/Management certification. In her free time, she likes to paint, travel, bake, and spend time with family.