Ghena Alhanaee (she/her) recently received her PhD from the University of Southern California’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has been pursuing unique and unprecedented research in the area of nuclear energy catastrophe modeling, the impact of nuclear safety provisions on the Arabian/Persian Gulf, and the implementation of policies for risk mitigation.
Ghena's work has gained recognition at several international conferences including the Water Energy Nexus Conference in Salerno, Italy in 2018, and the Day Zero Conference in California. She was also named one of “The Top Innovators Under 35” in the Middle East and North Africa by MIT Technology Review in 2019, and subsequently named one of "The Top Innovators Under 35" in the World by MIT Technology Review in 2020, becoming the first USC student to have made MIT Technology Review's prestigious list twice.
Anne Solmssen (she/her) is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Ethena, a seed-stage startup reinventing corporate training with digestible drip campaigns instead of dated, yearly videos. Ethena launched with harassment prevention training, and is proud to be backed by GSV, Homebrew, and others. Previously, Anne was a technical lead at public safety startup Mark43, where she helped scale the engineering team 10x and built products that are live in major U.S. cities like Boston and Seattle. Anne earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Astrophysics from Harvard College, and co-founded Harvard Women in Computer Science in 2012.
Yael Swerdlow (she/her) is the CEO and Founder of Maestro Games, SPC (@maestrospc). She is also co-founder of the Women’s Empowerment Foundation, a board member of the International Visitors Council of Los Angeles and Shelters for Israel (@sheltersforisrael), on the Advisory Board of First Amendment Voice, Solution Point+ (@solutionpointplusllc), and a consultant at USC’s award-winning Game Pipe Labs. She serves on both the National Small Business Association’s leadership Council Advisory Board (NSBA) and the Small Business Technology Council (SBTC). Formerly, she was co-chair of the national leadership council of Games for Change (@gamesforchange).
A native Angeleno, Yael was a photojournalist based in Los Angeles for over 20 years, where she was a part of the LA Times Pulitzer Prize winning teams for the Los Angeles Riots in 1992 and the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. In summer of 1994, Yael went to Somalia, Southern Sudan, and Rwanda for the International Medical Corps, to document the reestablishing of the medical infrastructure in those war-torn countries.
Laura McGee (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Diversio (@diversioglobal), a leading technology startup that uses AI to help organizations become more inclusive. Prior to Diversio, Laura was a consultant at McKinsey & Company with a focus on economic growth.
She was named a Top 25 Women of Influence in 2017 and holds multiple board positions, including Global Citizen, University of Waterloo, Ted Rogers School of Management and ArcTern Ventures. She is a David Rockefeller Fellow with the Trilateral Commission.
