Jillian Anderson

Jillian Anderson is the visionary founder of HERide, a female-friendly rideshare company based in Atlanta, GA. With a background in computer science and entrepreneurship, Jillian has a passion for creating safe, reliable, and inclusive transportation solutions. HERide, under her leadership, has grown to serve thousands, focusing on the unique needs of women and families. Jillian’s innovative approach and dedication have not only established HERide as a trusted service but also earned her recognition in the tech and gig economy sectors. Beyond ridesharing, Jillian is an advocate for small business owners and freelancers, developing The Gig Network TV to showcase their stories. She is also a certified swim instructor, former collegiate athlete, and a dedicated mentor. Jillian’s commitment to community, safety, and empowerment drives her continuous efforts to enhance the lives of those around her through technology and entrepreneurship.

Shannon Chapman

Shannon Chapman started her IT journey pursuing an Associate’s degree with a class in introduction to programming. This skill came naturally to her and led her to major in Information Technology and minor in Secure Computing and Networks. After she earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida, she started as a Network Operations Center (NOC) engineer and quickly progressed into roles in IT Service Management. She earned extensive certifications in ITIL, including ITIL Expert (Managing Professional) and became a practitioner in roles ranging from a technical Change Manager to the Service Portfolio Manager.

While earning her MBA at Nova Southeastern University, she learned how to streamline processes, implement agile development, manage different application platforms, such as, ServiceNow, Apptio, and Moveworks, manage vendor relationships and perform contract negotiation, all while she built and led diverse as well as globally-dispersed teams.

Katie McMahon

Katie McMahon is an early pioneer in sound and conversational AI technologies. She is credited with bringing the iconic music recognition app Shazam to market, resulting in over 1 billion installs and its acquisition by Apple and for commercializing Voice AI products at SoundHound AI.

Katie is a member of BIML (Berryville Institute of Machine Learning), which reviews the systematic risk invoked by adopting ML in a haphazard fashion and aims to provide guidance for safe, secure and ethical development of AI technologies.

A global keynote speaker, she serves as an advisor and board observer to multiple early-stage companies and is the lead inventor on several patents in Automatic Speech Recognition, Natural Language Understanding, and Sensory Augmentation.

She is co-founder of Noosphere.app, a platform for professional journalists to reach GenZ directly (launching Oct 2024).

McMahon has lived and worked in Tokyo, London and Silicon Valley and is now based outside of Washington, D.C