Afternoon Keynote
Peipei leads the North America Global Client Solutions Managers Team at Facebook, helping Facebook’s top clients maximize their business potential on world’s largest advertising platform. Prior to Facebook, Peipei led customer business development for various distribution partners at Procter & Gamble. Peipei received a BA in Management Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin on a full scholarship. She was born in Shanghai, China and is fluent in both Mandarin and Shanghainese. Outside of work, Peipei is passionate about making this world a better place and mentors immigrant students. She is also an avid dancer, photographer and writer, whose works can be found in NYTimes and on NPR. Peipei currently lives in New York City.
Morning Keynote
Ita Ekpoudom is the Founder & CEO of Tigress Ventures, an advisory and consulting firm with a mission to engage, educate, and elevate the next generation of successful female business leaders and investors. Previously, Ita held product management roles at TravelClick and American Express. Ita began her career at Goldman Sachs as an Analyst in Credit Capital Markets and a Trader of Preferred Stock. Ita holds an AB, cum laude, in Psychology, with a certificate in Finance, from Princeton University, and an MBA, with concentrations in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Management, from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Ita is very active within several university communities. She is Chair of the Women Entrepreneur Council at St. Francis College Center for Entrepreneurship. At Princeton, she has held positions of Treasurer and Reunions Co-Chair of her alumni class and she currently sits on the Princeton University Alumni Council Executive Committee where she serves as Vice Chair of the Committee on Reunions and is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Alumnae Initiatives. Ita is Co-President of the Graduate Alumnae Board of the Princeton University Tigressions. At Wharton, Ita serves as a Class Ambassador and was a member of the MBA Reunion Committee. She is President of the Alumnae Association of W.O.M.E.N. in America, a professional development group aimed at advancing promising professional women.
NYC State of Tech Joint Address
Vishal Gaur
Associate Dean for MBA Programs
Professor Gaur’s research interests lie in retail operations and supply chain management, including topics such as inventory management, product variety, demand forecasting, store execution, and linking operations to financial performance. His research uses different types of data sets and models, such as aggregate publicly available firm-level or industry-level data, proprietary transaction-level data from firms, and online consumer browsing data to assess performance, improve demand forecasting, and optimize decision-making.
Doug Stayman
Associate Dean – Cornell Tech
Doug Stayman’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of advertising and consumer decision making.
His research has focused on the study of emotional responses to advertising and the role of affect in decision making. His work has involved methodological and measurement issues in studying emotions. He is also interested in theoretical accounts of the effects of emotions on people’s preferences. Prior to coming to Cornell, he taught at the University of Texas at Austin.
Networking Reception Speaker
Julieta Ross is a Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the M&T Bank’s Technology Organization. Julieta came to M&T from Citi, where she spent 13 years in multiple Regional and Global positions, most recently as Chief Technology Officer for Latin America and Mexico. Prior to Citi, Julieta worked at Motorola Research where she was involved in projects instrumental to the development of smartphones; she also became a key author of the Bluetooth technology and patents. Aside from her work at Motorola, she became an important player in developing one of the first internet search engines (pre-google) with Arpro Technologies. Julieta obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1992, and her Masters and PhD Degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Miami in 1997. She is the author of multiple books, publications and patents and was recently nominated a “Woman to Watch” by the WITI – Women in Technology International organization.
Julieta Ross
Senior Vice President, Technology
M&T Bank
