Agenda
5:00p - Cocktails
6:20p - Welcome
Opening remarks from Andy Wilson
6:25p - Getting to Know You
Table members introduce themselves
6:40p - Panel Discussion + Q&A
What’s Ahead for SoCal?
7:35p – Dinner
Event Summary
The evening was well captured in Andy's
blog post but here are a few excerpts to give a sense for the evening:
The community of diverse stakeholder leaders who joined us for this celebration was truly amazing! We had strong representation from academia, corporates, VC’s, and community leaders - each bringing important perspectives and expertise to the table. As an aligned community, we can indeed make the SoCal region even more compelling as a center of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship.With such great leaders in the same room, of course there was great conversation amongst the guests but we also had a terrific panel conversation moderated by our board chair, Gene Sykes, who ran a lively discussion about how Covid has transformed the SoCal innovation ecosystem and what challenges and opportunities are now before us. A big thank you to Gene and our amazing panelists:
- Ryan Kuder runs Techstars Anywhere based in San Diego and is Board Chair of Startup San Diego
- Maria Anguiano, Executive Vice President Learning Enterprise at Arizona State University and UC Regent as well as an Alliance board of directors member (who lives in San Diego)
- Andrea White-Kjoss is Managing Director of the Long Beach Accelerator
- Tad Funahashi, Chief Innovation & Transformation Officer at Kaiser Permanente, and a practicing Orthopedic Surgeon lives in Orange County where Kaiser has its innovation lab
- Rosibel Ochoa, Associate Vice Chancellor Technology Partnerships at UC Riverside and member of the Alliance’s Board of Directors