Topic: Emerging Technologies

Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, the Washington DC-based trade association representing more than 80 of the industry’s leading companies. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.S.

She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune's 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk's 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph's  2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain.

Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy. She co-founded HODLpac and currently serves on the organization’s board of directors. Kristin is a Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web board member and an independent director for Skybridge Capital’s G and GII Funds.

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is a former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst who is a leading angel investor, philanthropist, and commentator focused on breakthrough efficacy in healthcare, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology, and space.

She has devoted her life to discovering the inevitable and promoting the possible. As an investor/commentator, she focuses on emerging technologies and business models (peer-to-peer, artificial intelligence, the Internet, wireless applications), emerging markets (Eastern Europe) and emerging companies (Cybiko, Sourceree, Trustworks, CV-Online, Brunswicks Direct*, Newspaper Direct, IBS, and others you will someday hear of).

In 1994, she was one of the first to explore the impact of the Net on intellectual property (among other things, why Bill Gates now plans to offer software as an online service). In 1997, she wrote a book on the impact of the Net on individuals' lives, "Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age".

Dyson is the chairman of EDventure Holdings which publishes the influential monthly computer-industry newsletter, Release 1.0, and sponsors two of the industry's premier annual conferences, PC (Platforms for Communications) Forum in the US and EDventure's High-Tech Forum in Europe. In addition, she donates time and money as a trustee to emerging organizations (the Santa Fe Institute, the Eurasia Foundation and bridges.org). In November 2001, she finished a two-year-term as founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet's core infrastructure (technical standards and the Domain Name System) independent of government control.

After graduating from Harvard in economics, Dyson began her serious career in 1974 as a fact-checker for Forbes and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977, she joined New Court Securities as "the research department", following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen, and renamed it EDventure Holdings.

The daughter of an English physicist and a Swiss mathematician, Dyson started traveling in Eastern Europe in 1989 and eventually helped to fill the small but vital vacuum at the intersection of Eastern Europe, high-tech and venture capital.