Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a product cloud that helps digital product teams and application owners deliver software experiences that users love. Todd is building one of North Carolina's fastest-growing software companies, now with 375 employees and six offices around the world. Pendo has raised $106 million in venture capital over four rounds and counts more than 1,200 customers, ranging from B2B SaaS startups to some of the world's largest technology companies, insurance providers, banks and retailers. Earlier this year, the company made its second acquisition in two years, purchasing Sheffield, U.K.-based startup Receptive, and announced plans to lease the top five floors of downtown Raleigh's newest skyscraper when it's complete in 2021. Outside of work, Todd enjoys mentoring local entrepreneurs through the MetLife - TechStars Digital Accelerator and spending time with his wife and five children, aged 0 to 22.

Todd Pope has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of TransEnterix (NYSE: TRXC) since joining the company in 2008. Under his leadership, TransEnterix is a rapidly growing medical device company that is digitizing the interface between the surgeon and the patient to give surgeons improved control, comfort, and clinical intelligence to improve the patient experience and usher in a new era of minimally invasive robotic surgery. 

In 2018, the company tripled the number of systems sold and recognized nearly 240% growth in revenue compared to the prior year; was named to Deloitte’s 2018 Technology Fast 500, an annual ranking of the fastest growing North American companies in the technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech sectors; and received the 2018 MedTech Breakthrough Award–Best New Surgical Platform. Todd was named one of TIME magazine’s 50 Most Influential People in Health Care 2018 and the Triangle Business Journal’s 2019 Life Sciences Awards–CEO of the Year. 

Todd has nearly 30 years of leadership experience within the medical device industry. Prior to joining TransEnterix, Todd was Worldwide President at Cordis, a multibillion-dollar division of Johnson & Johnson. Todd earned a bachelor’s degree from UNC at Chapel Hill and serves on the University’s Kenan-Flagler Board of Visitors and the Educational Foundation Executive Board as Chairman. Todd is also part of an UNC-alumni group advocating for more support and tools to help female athletes transition from college to the workforce through a new initiative at UNC called ForevHER Tarheels, which Todd believes will have a huge and long-term impact on UNC Athletics and will help shape the future workforce. 

Todd shared, “Having grown up in Raleigh and attended UNC, this area is my home and I wanted to bring meaningful jobs and technology here. We have great hospitals, great schools, great talent.”

Derek Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Stratifyd, Inc., a recognized innovator and global force in the customer analytics industry. 

After receiving his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Derek—along with the company’s two other co-founders—began conducting government-funded research on the ways AI could be used to ingest, analyze, and visualize unstructured data. During this period, Derek found strong use cases while working with Bank of America, Microsoft, and Motorola Solutions. This post-doctorate work was the foundation on which Stratifyd was built. 

Since the company’s founding in 2015, more than 20 Fortune 1500 companies have used the Stratifyd platform. The company specializes in key verticals, including financial services, pharma, and consumer packaged goods, and has attracted more than $50 million in investments. Stratifyd is deepening its AI capabilities in the areas of unsupervised machine learning and natural language processing, expanding and strengthening its product offerings to focus on key verticals, and growing its global footprint. 

Derek is also the Associate Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center at UNC Charlotte, a highly interdisciplinary center that applies interactive visualization and visual analytics to a variety of large scale and complex problems in science, engineering, medicine, business, design, and the arts. 

Derek remains focused on realizing Stratifyd’s vision to take data and AI democratization to next level, defining the market with unique capabilities that can understand people better than they understand themselves.

Bob Youakim co-founded Passport in 2010 to help public and private agencies drive efficiencies and transform the way they manage their mobility operations. His 15+ years of experience in business development, finance and operations has helped him guide Passport through a decade of continued growth to its current position as the industry’s leading mobility platform, which has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists. Prior to founding Passport, Bob served as a vice president in investment banking along and held various audit and consulting roles. Bob received his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and his Bachelors of Science from the University of Illinois. Outside of Passport, he loves spending time with his wife and four children and enjoys flying planes as a pilot.