Meet the 2021 Imagine Cup World Finals judges
Published Mar 30 2021 12:29 PM 7,588 Views

This week, twelve student teams from across the globe will pitch their purpose-driven applications in Round 2 of the Imagine Cup World Finals. Four winning teams will be selected by a panel of expert judges to move forward to the 2020 World Championship.

 

This year’s panel includes industry experts with backgrounds in sustainability, e-commerce, accessibility, science, and more. Aligning with our Earth, Education, Healthcare, and Lifestyle competition categories, judges’ combined expertise will allow them to assess which teams have designed inclusive and original solutions with the potential for global impact.

 

During the World Finals, teams will pitch their solutions live to showcase their ideas and technology to each judge. The top four innovations will be selected to win USD10,000 and advance to the 2020 World Championship this May, plus two runner-up teams in each category will take home USD2,500.  

 

Meet our World Finals judges

 

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Keira Havens

Sustainability and Public Affairs Manager, Pivot Bio

Keira Havens has been deeply involved in synthetic biology as a scientist, an entrepreneur, a communicator, and a thought leader. Her work has engaged all facets of the synthetic biology economy in the pursuit of beautiful biotechnology - well designed, elegant solutions to intractable problems. In her current role as Sustainability and Public Affairs Manager she is working with the Pivot Bio team to tell the story of the future of fertilizer. She received her B.S. in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and her Masters from CSU.
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Devendra Singh
Chief Technology Officer, PowerSchool

As Chief Technology Officer for PowerSchool, Devendra is responsible for all Product Development and Cloud Operations within the company. He brings more than 20 years of experience in building enterprise-class software and cloud solutions for managing mission-critical business processes at Fortune 1,000 companies. Prior to joining PowerSchool, Devendra was Vice President of Product Development at Oracle, held senior positions in Product Development and Product Management at Agile Software, and participated in major business transformation initiatives as a Management Consultant with A.T. Kearney. Devendra earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering and an MBA from University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

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Jason Goldberg
Chief Commerce Strategy Officer, Publicis

Jason Goldberg is the Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Communications.  He is one of the most followed e-commerce subject matter experts on the web (@retailgeek).  He is the executive chairman of the board of directors of shop.org (and the National Retail Federation Digital Advisory Board). Jason has served as an expert witness in Federal Court on e-commerce, a guest lecturer on retail and e-commerce at the Kellogg School of Management for Northwestern University, hosts iTunes top e-commerce podcast called “The Jason & Scot Show”, and has been voted one of retail’s top global influencers by Vend five consecutive years.
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Kai Frazier
Founder, KaiXR

Kai Frazier is an educator turned EdTech entrepreneur passionate about using tech to provide inclusive and accessible opportunities for underestimated communities. She is the founder & CEO of Kai XR, the most inclusive and accessible, educational VR platform where kids can explore, dream, & create. Before creating Kai XR, she worked with several museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, specializing in digital strategy and content creation. Kai served as an entrepreneur in residence at the Kapor Center for Social Impact as well as Techstars Social Impact accelerator.

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Amanda Silver
Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

Amanda Silver is the Corporate Vice President & Head of Product for Microsoft's Developer Division, which includes Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, .NET, TypeScript, and much of Microsoft’s developer platform. Her focus on customer-driven engineering, with a tight digital feedback loop, has helped ensure our products are loved by developers. She has been key to Microsoft's transformation to contribute to open source with the introduction of TypeScript, Visual Studio Code, and the acquisition of both Xamarin and GitHub. She championed customer-focused innovations like Visual Studio Live Share and IntelliCode, which have transformed how developers and teams build and collaborate worldwide. Amanda is a leader in driving cultural transformation, working with teams across Microsoft to foster diversity and inclusion, customer-driven engineering practices, and product incubation. Unleashing the creativity of all developers is her passion.

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Neil Sebire

Chief Clinical Data Officer, HDR UK

Neil Sebire is Professor of Pathology at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London and a Professor at UCL. He is the Chief Research Information Officer and runs the clinical-informatics research program at GOSH, as well as being national Chief Clinical Data Officer for Health Data Research UK.  He has published numerous scientific journal articles and several textbooks and current research interests are focused on the development and evaluation of data driven technologies to improve child health.

 

Follow the competition journey on Instagram and Twitter to find out which four teams judges will select to move forward. Stay tuned as they get ready to compete in the Imagine Cup World Championship for the chance to take home USD75,000 and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella! 

 

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Last update:
‎Mar 30 2021 12:34 PM