Four new tech leaders head for Tech Beach Retreat
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More tech leaders have signed up for the Tech Beach Retreat scheduled for December 1-3 at Secrets Resorts in Montego Bay.
Tech Beach Retreat will offer a global ecosystem of technology entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and influencers, creating a gateway for commerce through the convergence of three potential pillars of growth for Jamaica and the Caribbean: Entrepreneurship + Technology + Innovation.
The newly added speakers include Dr Kingsley Chin, founder and CEO of KIC Ventures. Chin emigrated from Jamaica in 1984 with $47 in his pocket to attend Columbia University in New York on a soccer scholarship. Being the first in his family to attend college, he set out to prove himself capable of achieving the highest level of success at every level. He excelled as a scholar athlete and was the Ivy League Player of the Year, president of his senior class, and a member in the Electrical Engineering Honours Society Eta Kappa Nu.
Chin gained business experience at AT&T Bell Labs and Accenture, where he consulted at Cigna Insurance and Goldman Sachs. He then attended Harvard Medical School and graduated with honours and four diplomas.
Chin is an orthopedic spine surgeon and was chief of spine surgery at the University of Pennsylvania for four years, where he began developing KIC Ventures.
Chin spends up to 10 per cent of his time teaching as a professor and in clinical practice and research. For the past 10 years his focus has been managing funds with KIC Ventures, investing US$190 million to build a portfolio estimated at US$1 billion.
Marlon Nichols, another great Jamaican from the diaspora, will also be attending Tech Beach Retreat. Nichols is co-founder and general partner at Cross Culture Ventures (CCV), an early-stage venture capital firm with a focus on cultural investing (global trends and shifts in consumer behaviour).
Before founding CCV, Nichols was an investment director at Intel Capital where he completed his Kauffman Fellowship. Prior to his time in venture capital, Nichols worked in software and strategy consulting in the technology, private equity, media and entertainment sectors. Some of his investments include Afrostream, Gimlet Media, Hingeto, LendStreet, LISNR, Mark One (Vessyl), Mayvenn, Mirantis, MongoDB, mSurvey, Sidestep, Skurt, and Thrive Market.
Nichols was named to Silicon Republic’s list of 26 venture capital professionals spearheading change in technology investing, was a recipient of Digital Diversity’s Innovation & Inclusion Change Agent award, and was named a member of the
theRegistry’s 40 under 40 Top Diverse Talent.
Bedy Yang, managing partner at 500 Startups, is also lined up for Tech Beach Retreat. 500 Startups is a leading seed and incubator fund in Silicon Valley. The company provides early-stage companies with funding and mentorship from more than 200 experienced start-up mentors. Yang has invested in more than 50 start-ups, not only in Brazil and Spanish speaking countries, but also in Kenya and Russia.
In addition to 500 Startups, Yang founded Brazil Innovators, an organisation that became the epicentre and resource for Brazilian tech founders.
Before 500 Startups and Brazil Innovators, Yang worked as a management consultant specialising in distribution and go-to-market strategies for Fortune 500 companies in Brazil. She has also worked as social entrepreneur, creating opportunities for women and indigenous tribes in Brazil and China. Yang holds a BA at Fundação Getúlio Vargas and MLA (East Asian Studies) from University of Pennsylvania. She speaks Chinese, English, Portuguese, and Spanish fluently.
The fourth new participant for Tech Beach Retreat is Vijay Pradeep, a senior engineer with Google. Pradeep is a robotics engineer and angel investor based in Silicon Valley, and has been involved in the robotics sector for over a decade. He was a co-founder of hiDOF Inc, a Silicon Valley robotics consulting firm that has worked with Fortune 500 companies and start-ups in a variety of areas, including VR/AR, vehicle autonomy, medical imaging, drones, personal aviation, and industrial automation. His team has since joined Google’s Daydream VR effort, where Vijay is now a senior engineer and leads the sensor characterisation and factory deployment teams for
Tango: Google’s handheld AR/VR platform.
Pradeep received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems, focusing on robotics and mechatronics; and his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, focusing on control systems – both from Stanford University in California. His academic contributions have been showcased in a variety of robotics conferences, journals, and books, and his contributions to Robot Operating System and the PR2 robot platform are now used widely in the open-source robotics community.
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