Rob Beard is the chief legal and global affairs officer at Mastercard. In this role, he oversees the company’s public policy, regulatory affairs and litigation teams around the world, in addition to serving on the company’s management committee.

He brings more than 20 years of international experience to the role from across senior levels of the business and legal worlds. Beard joined Mastercard in 2023 following a nearly decade-long tenure at Micron Technology, where he was the general counsel and corporate secretary.

Beard originally joined Micron in 2014 as the company’s primary M&A lawyer and for several years partnered closely with the company’s corporate development team on a wide range of strategic opportunities, including significant transactions in Japan, Taiwan, Europe, China and Singapore. He played a key role in promoting the U.S. CHIPS & Science Act and in negotiating an incentive package from the state of New York for Micron’s announced $100 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility to be built in the Syracuse area.

Prior to Micron, Beard was an associate at Weil Gotshal & Manges in London, New York and Silicon Valley, focusing on M&A and capital markets transactions, and at Shearman & Sterling in London, where he focused on debt capital markets transactions. He has also taught at the University of Illinois College of Law and the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.

Jeff McMillan serves as head of firmwide artificial intelligence. In this role, McMillan works across the firm to help install and ensure appropriate AI strategy and governance, partnering with the various business and infrastructure areas to identify and prioritize AI opportunities.

Previous to this role, McMillan served as head of analytics, data, and innovation for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, where he played a key role in driving the technological evolution of the business. McMillan has held a variety of leadership roles at Morgan Stanley, as well as other financial services firms in the areas of investment products, research, operations, digital strategy and technology.

Luciano Floridi is the founding director of the digital ethics center and professor in the cognitive science program at Yale University. He is world-renowned as one of the most authoritative voices of contemporary philosophy, the founder of the philosophy of information and one of the major interpreters of the digital revolution. Floridi’s more than 300 works about the philosophy of information, digital ethics, the ethics of AI and the philosophy of technology have been translated into many languages. In 2022 he was made Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his foundational work in philosophy.

Mae Cheng is the executive vice president and general manager of events and luxury products and services at Dow Jones. She oversees Dow Jones’s award-winning events business and is responsible for the financial performance of the company’s luxury portfolio, comprised of WSJ. Magazine, Penta and Mansion Global.

Cheng has been at Dow Jones for more than 10 years in a number of senior leadership roles. Most recently, she managed the company's leadership and C-suite products and services, as well as the luxury and events business. Previously, she managed the P&L of a portfolio that included a number of the Dow Jones consumer brands, including Barron’s, MarketWatch and Financial News. In that role, Cheng spearheaded efforts that drove record revenue and subscription growth for the publications.

 
She also was previously the publisher and editor at Mansion Global, the premiere news site for luxury residential properties around the world, and Barron’s Penta, a wealth management and luxury publication. 

Cheng has been at the forefront of digital strategy efforts in newsrooms and has led a number of start-up initiatives. In a prior role as special projects editor for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, Cheng worked on the launch of a suite of professional services content verticals and was key to the development of the editorially driven events portion of The Wall Street Journal’s subscriber benefits program.

Danny Tobey is a medical doctor, successful software founder, and chair of DLA Piper's AI & Data Analytics practice. Tobey was named Financial Times' Innovative Practitioner in 2023 and led Insider's 2022 list of the top attorneys helping companies adopt AI. A noted thought leader and expert on the safe and effective deployment of AI systems, Tobey sat on Pfizer’s Digital Health Scientific Advisory Board and the UN's Executive Committee of the AI for Good Law Track. He sits on the World Economic Forum's AI Governance Alliance, and he is a founding member of the Health AI Partnership with the Mayo Clinic, Duke, and others, which now includes the American Medical Association and HHS's Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as a federal observer. Tobey’s AI clients include leading generative AI innovators, Fortune 500 and 100 companies, and breakthrough startups like IDx, the first FDA-approved fully autonomous AI, with whom he co-authored the peer-reviewed Lessons Learned About Autonomous AI: Finding a Safe, Efficacious, and Ethical Path Through the Development Process. Tobey was an invited speaker at the AAAI's inaugural AI, Ethics, and Society conference sponsored by Google, IBM, and others, Stanford Law School's CODEX FutureLaw Conference, and the Swiss Embassy on AI innovation in the U.S. Tobey advised the American Medical Association on its AI policy and has been recognized by the U.S. Library of Congress for his work on liability and AI. Tobey’s writing on technology and law has been published by the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, the National Law Journal, the Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the American Health Law Association, and the Association of Corporate Counsel, among others. Tobey has hosted the principal deputy commissioner of the FDA in a fireside chat on AI and moderated the closed-door Ministerial Roundtable in Morocco on Improving Health Outcomes in Africa through Innovative Solutions and the fireside chat in Washington D.C. with the president of Malawi and Pfizer, Improving Health Security in Africa through Strategic Partnerships, during the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Tobey led a successful software company from inception to acquisition. His original medical research appears in Pediatric Blood & Cancer and the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.

Kay Firth-Butterfield is executive director of the Centre for Trustworthy Technology, a World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She is the former head of artificial intelligence and member of the executive committee at the World Economic Forum and is one of the foremost experts in the world on the governance of AI. She is a barrister, former judge and professor, technologist and entrepreneur who has an abiding interest in how humanity can equitably benefit from new technologies, especially AI. Firth-Butterfield is an associate barrister (Doughty Street Chambers), master of the Inner Temple, London and served on the Lord Chief Justice’s Advisory Panel on AI and Law. She co-founded the Responsible AI Institute and was the world’s first chief AI ethics officer in 2014. Firth-Butterfield is vice-chair of The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems and was part of the group which met at Asilomar to create the Asilomar AI Ethical Principles. She sits on the Polaris Council for the Government Accountability Office (USA), the Advisory Board for UNESCO International Research Centre on AI, the Advisory Board for international company ADI, EarthSpecies and AI4All. Firth-Butterfield has advanced degrees in Law and International Relations and regularly speaks to international audiences addressing many aspects of the beneficial and challenging technical, economic and social changes arising from the use of AI.

Beth Essig is the executive vice president and general counsel of the Mount Sinai Health System. Essig served as executive vice president and general counsel for Continuum Health Partners, Inc., from 2011 to 2013 and deputy general counsel for The Mount Sinai Medical Center from 1979 to 2006. She was a partner in the law firm of Epstein Becker & Green from 2006 to 2011.

Essig has published articles and, in conjunction with Michael Macdonald and Kathryn Meyer, wrote Health Care Law: A Practical Guide, published by Matthew Bender.

In addition, Essig chaired the New York State Bar Association’s 2010 annual meeting on health care reform, has presented at meetings of the New York City and County Bar Associations and the Association of American Health Lawyers, and has been recognized as a leading health care law practitioner by New York Super Lawyers and The Chambers Magazine.

As chief legal officer and corporate secretary, Shannon Thyme Klinger leads Moderna’s legal, governance and corporate compliance efforts, as well as being responsible for the company’s ESG strategy. Klinger is also president of the Moderna Charitable Foundation.

Klinger joined Moderna from Novartis, where she served as chief legal officer and a member of the Novartis Executive Committee since 2018. Previously, she served as chief ethics, risk & compliance officer. During her ten-year tenure at Novartis, she held other roles of increasing responsibility, including general counsel and global head of legal at Sandoz, a Novartis division.

Across her career, Klinger’s work has focused on driving long-term business performance and building trust with society, including ensuring access to medicine, protecting innovation with intellectual property, championing the responsible use of data, and enabling excellence in product launches. She is also a committed advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Steve Gunby joined FTI Consulting as president and CEO in 2014. Since then, FTI Consulting’s annual revenues have grown over 80% and the company’s equity market capitalization has quadrupled.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Gunby enjoyed a 30-year career at The Boston Consulting Group, Inc., overseeing global transformation and large-scale change practice, leading and generating some of the firm’s most significant client relationships. Prior to that, Mr. Gunby served as the chairman of North and South America, where he helped triple the region's revenues, increased recruiting and fostered people development initiatives.

Throughout his career, Mr. Gunby has helped clients drive change in performance in their organizations via fundamental shifts in strategy, operations, processes, structure and culture.

Mr. Gunby is a graduate of the Yale Law School where he was an editor of the Law Review, as well as the Yale School of Management and Cornell University.

As General Manager of Factiva, Traci Mabrey has commercial oversight of the brand. In addition, she leads the strategic reimagination of Factiva as a premium business search engine. Traci brings deep expertise in financial technology operations and wealth management. 

Previously, she was the Head of Wealth Solutions, Global Technology and Operations for Broadridge Financial Solutions, where she oversaw product management operations and marketing and governed a suite of top-tier wealth management solutions. She also works with nonprofits committed to advancing skill-building opportunities for young women and setting them up for future financial success.

Nicholas Elliott is head of communities at Dow Jones Risk & Research, which combines Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Factiva. Previously he had a long career at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones as a journalist, moderator, editorial leader and content innovator. Throughout his career he has focused on serving the information needs of professional audiences, both in the corporate and financial markets. In his most recent position at the Journal he was head of professional products innovation & strategy, a role in which he founded WSJ Pro’s cybersecurity newsletter, its cybersecurity and sustainability events and managed research teams producing premium analysis and proprietary data. Previously he was the founding editor of WSJ Risk & Compliance, which became a must-read in that market, and launched the Journal’s long-running series of risk & compliance events. He held previous roles as managing editor of Dow Jones Private Markets, managing editor of commodities and futures at Dow Jones Newswires, European capital markets editor and as a reporter covering European bonds and monetary policy. He holds a degree in economics from the University of York, U.K.