Braintrust
Presented by
Protocol's experts on the biggest questions in tech.

Introducing Protocol's Braintrust

See who's who in our community of experts.

Too often, discussions about tech and its impacts are dominated by the loudest voices on Twitter and the purveyors of the hottest take — even as the voices of people with real expertise on the issues go unheard. The Protocol Braintrust will change that.

Protocol is assembling a group of genuine experts to become members of Braintrust — C-suite executives from tech companies and legacy companies dealing with tech's impact; engineers and others who do the hard work of making tech happen; innovators and investors whose startups are on the cutting edge; bankers and lawyers who make deals happen and see the risks around the corners; tech company employees who watch the future unfolding from the inside; and the smartest, most dialed-in thinkers from academia and public policy.

Each week, we'll poll the group on pressing questions in tech and present their views as a snapshot of the smartest, most informed thinking available. And each week, we'll dive deeper with a selected group of Braintrust members who have specific expertise on the issue of the week, publishing responses from them that will give you access to the smartest, best-informed insights available anywhere.

We'll ask the Braintrust to respond to a mix of questions — some that go to big, existential and evergreen issues and long-term trends, and others that offer opportunities to understand their real-time analysis and predictions about the major developments in tech news.

Should you or someone you know be a part of the Braintrust? Contact braintrust@protocol.com

Who's contributing to Protocol's Braintrust?


Selim Aissi

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Ellie Mae

Stuart Alderoty

General Counsel at Ripple

Terry Angelos

SVP, Global Head of Fintech at Visa

Shannon Austin

Partner at Financial Venture Studio

Jeremy Balkin

Head of Innovation at HSBC

Gary Beasley

CEO & co-founder at Roofstock

Kobi Bentkovski

CEO and Co-Founder at Water.io

Jen Bennett

Technical Director, Office of the CTO, Google Cloud at Google Cloud

Sanjay Beri

CEO and Founder at Netskope

Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi

Director General at Abu Dhabi Investment Office

Asheesh Birla

General Manager at Ripple

Stacey Boyd

CEO at Olivela

Brian Brackeen

General Partner at Lightship Capital

Doug Brake

Director, Broadband and Spectrum Policy at ITIF

Rachel Carlson

CEO and Co-Founder at Guild Education

Anne Chow

CEO at AT&T Business

Peter Chapman

CEO & President at IonQ

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury

Responsible AI Lead at Accenture

Carl Christensen

CTO and Co-Founder at Spacemaker.ai

Vanessa Colella

Chief Innovation Officer, Head of Citi Ventures at Citi

Brandi Collins-Dexter

Senior Campaign Director at Color of Change

Topher Conway

Partner at SV Angel LLC.

Dr. James Cooper

Professor of Law and Director of International Legal Studies at California Western

Matthew T. Cornelius

Executive Director at the Alliance for Digital Innovation

Zachary Crockett

Founder and Former CTO at Particle

Renée Cummings

AI Ethicist, Criminologist, Criminal Psychologist

Matt Cutts

Administrator at U.S. Digital Service

Steve Dertien

CTO at PTC

Suzanne DiBianca

Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Chief Impact Officer of Salesforce

Dr. Seth Dobrin

VP IBM Data and AI, Chief Data Officer at IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software at IBM

Dr. Jennifer Doleac

Director at Justice Tech Lab

Dr. Renee Dua

CEO at Heal

Dr. Shahram Ebadollahi

Global Head of Data Science and AI at Novartis

Sarah Edwards

CEO & Consultant at Station X Labs

Tilman Ehrbeck

Managing Partner at Flourish

Paul Eremenko

Aerospace Executive and Entrepreneur

Susan Etlinger

Senior Fellow at Altimeter

Ruslan Fazlyev

CEO at Ecwid

Assaf Feldman

CTO at Riskified

Marcus Fowler

Director of Strategic Threat at Darktrace

Summer Craze Fowler

Chief Information Officer at Argo AI

Kurt Fulepp

Chief Product Officer at AccuWeather

Dario Gil

Director of IBM Research at IBM

John Godfrey

Senior Vice President of Public Policy at Samsung Electronics America

Andrew Graham

CEO and Co-Founder at Borrowell

Kirsten Green

Founding Partner at Forerunner Ventures

Helen Greiner

Army HQE Robotics, Autonomous Systems, and AI at ASAALT

Steve Grobman

SVP and CTO at McAfee

Jonathan Heiliger

General Partner at Vertex Ventures

Doug Hirsch

Co-Founder & CEO at GoodRx

Liz Howard

Counsel at Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

John Hultquist

Director, Intelligence Analysis at FireEye, Inc.

Raghib Hussain

Chief Strategy Officer at Marvell

Christina Janzer

Senior Director of Research & Analytics at Slack

Karen Jaw-Madson

Principal at Co.-Design of Work Experience

Alex Jiménez

Chief Strategy Officer at Extractable

Aaron Karczmer

Chief Risk Officer and EVP, Risk and Platforms at PayPal

Raj Kapoor

Chief Strategy Officer at Lyft

Abby Kearns

CTO at Puppet

Jess Keeney

SVP of Development at UKG

Raffi Krikorian

Managing Director at Emerson Collective

Morgan Kurk

CTO at CommScope

Chad Latz

CIO at BC&W

Lisa Lewin

CEO at General Assembly

Dan Lewis

CEO & Founder at Convoy Inc.

Nancy Ranxing Li Ph.D.

Director, Edge Cloud Platforms at Cox Communications

Dr. Susan Liautaud

Founder at The Ethics Incubator

David Linthicum

Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte Consulting

Kimber Lockhart

Chief Technology Officer at One Medical

Steven Long

Regional CTO at AppDynamics, part of Cisco

Lori MacVittie

Principal Technical Evangelist at F5

Dr. Maulik Majmudar

Principal Medical Officer at Amazon Halo

Roxana Marachi

Associate Professor of Education at San José State University

Dr. Ron Marquardt

Vice President of Advanced Technologies and Innovation at T-Mobile

Peter Marta

Partner, Privacy and Cybersecurity at Hogan Lovells

Evan Marwell

Founder and CEO at EducationSuperHighway

Lena Mass-Cresnik

Chief Data Officer at Moelis & Company

Tekedra N. Mawakana

Chief Operating Officer at Waymo

Jason Maynard

SVP Global Field Operations at Oracle NetSuite

Ed McLaughlin

President Operations & Technology at Mastercard

Gabrielle McMillan

CEO at Equiem

John McNelis

Industry Lead, Autonomous Transportation and Shared Mobility; Partner, Intellectual Property at Fenwick & West

Bruce Mehlman

Founder at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas

Ann Miura-Ko

Co-Founding Partner at Floodgate

Devie Mohan

Co-founder and CEO at Burnmark

Matt Murphy

Managing Partner at Menlo Ventures

Dr. Pravene Nath

Global Head for Digital Health Strategy at Genentech/Roche

Paul Newman

Founder at Oxbotica

Jason Oxman

President and CEO at Information Technology Industry Council

William Peteroy

Chief Technology Officer, Security at Gigamon

Riana Pfefferkorn

Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory

Wendy M. Pfeiffer

CIO at Nutanix

Amit Phadnis

Chief Digital Officer at GE Healthcare

John Pitts

Global Head of Policy at Plaid

Sanjay Poonen

COO at VMWare

Lila Preston

Partner & Co-Head of Growth Equity at Generation Investment Management

Vivek Ravisankar

CEO at Hackerrank

John Rich

CTO at Ford AV LLC

Beverly Rider

Chief Commercial Officer at Hitachi Global Social Innovation Business

Alex Rodrigues

CEO at Embark

Phill Rosen

CEO at Even Financial

Sherry Ryan

IT Vice President and CISO at Juniper Networks

Guido Sacchi

SEVP & CIO at Global Payments

Yuni Sameshima

CEO & Co-Founder at Chicory

Jarmo Sareva

Ambassador for Innovation at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland

Tige Savage

Revolution Ventures Managing Partner at Revolution Ventures

Caroline Savello

Chief Commercial Officer at Color Genomics

Marietje Schaake

International Policy Director at Stanford Cyber Policy Center; Member of European Parliament 2009-2019

Emmanuel Schalit

CEO at Dashlane

Mihir Shah

Co-CEO at JLL Technologies

Gary Shaprio

President and CEO at Consumer Technology Association

Usman K. Shuja

Chief Commercial Officer at Honeywell Connected Enterprise

David Siegel

Co-Chairman at Two Sigma

Dani Simons

Head of Public Sector Partnerships at Waze

Jon Sobel

Co-Founder and CEO at Sight Machine

Yancey Spruill

CEO at DigitalOcean

Ashok Srivastava

Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Intuit

Jennifer Stojkovic

Executive Director at sf.citi

Sash Sunkara

VP, Products and BD at Kontain

Mark Surman

President and Executive Director at Mozilla Foundation

Tom Taylor

SVP, Amazon Alexa at Amazon

Corey Thomas

Chairman and CEO at Rapid7

Anne Toth

CEO at Privacyworks

Lourdes Turrecha

Founder at The Rise of Privacy Tech

Bradley Tusk

Managing Partner at Tusk Ventures

Tien Tzuo

CEO at Zuora

Rich Uhlig

Managing Director of Intel Labs at Intel

Peter Ungaro

Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPC and AI at HPE

Hunter Walk

Partner at Homebrew

Maureen Waters

Partner at MetaProp

Gabriel Weinberg

Founder & CEO at DuckDuckGo

Glenn Weinstein

Chief Customer Officer at Twilio

Jason Wilk

CEO at Dave

Ian Wong

Co-Founder and CTO at Opendoor

Dave Wright

Chief Innovation Officer at ServiceNow

Angela Yochem

Chief Digital & Technology Officer, at Novant Health

Shelten Yuen

VP, Research at Fitbit

Michelle Zatlyn

Co-Founder & COO at Cloudflare

Ruby Zefo

Chief Privacy Officer at Uber

Scott Zoldi

Chief Analytics Officer at FICO

And More

If you should be here, email braintrust@protocol.com


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