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Keynote Speakers
Luminary Keynote: NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino
Mike Massimino
Former NASA Astronaut, New York Times Bestselling Author, Columbia University Professor, Advisor at The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, and a television personality
Join Mike Massimino for a very special keynote as he describes his journey to become a NASA astronaut, and his adventures in space! Mike uses humor and his unique storytelling ability to inspire audiences to identify the passion in their work, to use teamwork and innovation to solve problems, provide leadership in the face of adversity and crisis, and to never give up when pursuing a goal.
Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut, is a professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University and the senior advisor for space programs at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Mike has made numerous television appearances and movie cameos, including a recurring role as himself on the CBS comedy, The Big Bang Theory. He has been featured in National Geographic Television's One Strange Rock and in the Netflix Series Worn Stories. He is a frequent guest on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and The Daily Show.
Massimino's Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe is a New York Times best-seller. His new book, Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut's Guide to Achieving the Impossible, distills stories and insight from NASA into an actionable guide to accomplish your biggest goals. “We all have our own personal “moon shots” we’d like to take in life, but as mission control will tell you, doing one big thing really means getting a thousand little things right along the way," says Mike.
After working as an engineer at IBM, NASA, and McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, along with academic appointments at Rice University and at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Mike was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1996, and is the veteran of two space flights, the fourth and fifth Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions in 2002 and 2009. Mike has a team record for the number of hours spacewalking in a single space shuttle mission, and he was also the first person to tweet from space. During his NASA career he received two NASA Space Flight Medals, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the American Astronautical Society’s Flight Achievement Award, and the Star of Italian Solidarity.
He received a BS from Columbia University, and MS degrees in mechanical engineering and in technology and policy, as well as a PhD in mechanical engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Microsoft Keynote
Communication & Collaboration in the Era of AI
Ilya Bukshteyn
Corporate VP for Microsoft Teams Calling, Devices and Premium Experiences
As the VP for Microsoft Teams Calling, Devices and Premium Experiences, Ilya Bukshteyn leads a team responsible for the strategy, product delivery, and multi-billion dollar annual revenue business results of Teams Phone, a fully featured, enterprise grade cloud PBX / calling system, Teams Devices, including Microsoft Teams Rooms, Teams Events, including Townhall and webinars, Mesh, and Teams Premium. Ilya has been at Microsoft for over 30 years, and in previous roles in the UC space led the creation and incubation of the product line which is known as Microsoft Teams Rooms today.
AWS Keynote
AI at the Right Time
Pasquale DeMaio
Vice President, Customer Experience Services
Pasquale is the Vice President of Customer Experience services at AWS, an organization he founded in 2015 to help companies of any size deliver superior customer outcomes at lower cost. Under his leadership, Amazon Connect is enabling businesses to transform the way they engage with their customers at every interaction. With this vision, Amazon Connect has become one of the fastest growing products in AWS history, and now enables tens of thousands of AWS customers to support more than 10 million daily customer interactions across sales, customer service, and engagement. Pasquale has 20 years of experience in delivering world-class B2B and B2C products. Prior to AWS, Pasquale lead products in machine learning, augmented reality, mobile, and maps. His specialties include operating SaaS at world-leading scale, delivering exceptional customer experiences, and driving UX and technology innovation.
Google Keynote
5 Ways AI Will Transform Customer Experience and Collaboration
Duncan Lennox
VP and GM of Applied AI
Duncan leads Google’s Applied AI organization, where he oversees the teams building AI-first applications and agents in areas like customer experience, healthcare, and financial services. Previously, Duncan led Ads Privacy & Safety, as well as Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) for Google products including Search and Maps. Before Google, Duncan was GM for Amazon Elastic File System, and CEO/CTO of two enterprise SaaS companies in the sales enablement and productivity space.
Cisco Keynote
Experiences Amplified – How AI Can Fuel Better Employee and Customer Experiences
Snorre Kjesbu
Senior Vice President & General Manager of Collaboration
Snorre Kjesbu is Senior Vice President & General Manager of Collaboration at Cisco. While Snorre resides in San Jose, he considers himself a global citizen– having hung his hat in several cities around the world. Snorre leads a global organization that innovates collaboration software and hardware solutions; solutions that enable customers to facilitate incredible and authentic employee experiences. With a keen eye and passion for design, Snorre has combined more than 20 years of engineering experience. In 2024, Snorre was awarded the Globee Gold Award for Innovative Leadership in Technology for promoting innovation and inclusivity while leading the devices business at Cisco.
In a former role, Snorre was Executive VP of Design, Creation and Fulfillment at BANG & OLUFSEN in Copenhagen. His résumé also includes SVP at Tandberg and R&D for wireless communication at ABB. He and his team at ABB were awarded the Wall Street Journal Innovation award for their work on wireless sensors in 2002.
Snorre holds a Master of Science from the University of Bristol and has been a guest lecturer at the Stanford Network Research Center in Stanford University. He has obtained more than 20 patents in the areas of communications and video conferencing and is on the board of directors for several IT companies. When not working, Snorre can likely be seen on a pair of skis – whether on snow or water.
RingCentral Keynote
The New Voice of Business: AI-Powered Communications and the Future of AI Agents
Kira Makagon
President and COO
An 11 year veteran of RingCentral, Kira Makagon serves as President and COO where she leads global product, user experience, engineering, cloud operations, security, and IT. She has been a critical driver in defining RingCentral’s product strategy and global reach that has put RingCentral at the forefront of the communications and collaboration market, leading to rapid year-over-year growth from pre-IPO to over $2 billion in annual recurring revenue.
From 2012 on, Makagon led a number of market-first product innovations at global scale, such as RingCentral's mobile-first cloud PBX with integrated video meetings capabilities. She launched RingCentral's open platform, allowing for customizable workflows through open APIs.
In 2015, Makagon led the acquisition of Glip, a team messaging solution, making RingCentral the first cloud communications provider to have a truly unified solution across messaging, video, and phone. Under her leadership, RingCentral brought omnichannel capabilities into its collaborative contact center solution with the acquisitions of ConnectFirst and Dimelo, enhancing the customer experience for businesses worldwide.
In 2020, Makagon spearheaded the launch of RingCentral Video®, the company's proprietary video meetings solution.
In 2021, she focused on launching RingCentral Ventures™, RingCentral's corporate ventures arm, which partners with exceptional founding teams and leading venture capitalists to reimagine the future of work through communications and collaboration. With RingCentral Ventures well on its way, Makagon expanded her responsibilities and resumed her leadership of the innovation organization.
Zoom Keynote
AI That Just Works: AI Agents on Communication, Collaboration, and Employee and Customer Experiences
Smita Hashim
Chief Product Officer
As Zoom’s Chief Product Officer, Smita is responsible for leading Zoom’s product management. She is an industry veteran with 20+ years of product management experience across Google and Microsoft. Her product experience spans leading delivery of television over IP networks at Microsoft, leading and scaling Google Meet, and more recently managing real-time communications platform and products at Microsoft Teams. Beyond video, Smita has led Google Voice (Phone), Google Calendar and Tasks, Google Adwords product suite for local advertisers, and Google Chromebooks device portfolio and ecosystems. Smita grew up in India where she received her B.Tech in Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. She received her masters from Princeton University in EECS and a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara focused on image and video compression. Smita is a recipient of IIT Kanpur distinguished alumni award and founder of IIT Kanpur women alumni network WIN.
