Fred Thiel
Advisory Board Chairman

Fred is the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA), one of the largest Bitcoin miners today. With a market capitalization in excess of $3.5, the company has been in the news quite a bit the past few months. Its stock value tripled in the first half of the year, and more recently Fred (who was appointed CEO this spring) has appeared on CNN, Fox Business News, and other media outlets discussing energy usage in crypto mining and where the crypto mining industry is heading.

Prior to serving as Marathon’s chief executive officer, Fred co-founded and served as Chairman of Sprocket, a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and financial services company. During his career as a board member and CEO of multiple public, private, and PE-owned companies, Fred has created more than $1B in shareholder value and raised more than $150 million through both public (IPO and secondary offerings) and private capital sources.

Denyse Cardozo

 Denyse is the former CEO of Silicon Valley Forum, the oldest and largest non-profit for the technology industry in Silicon Valley. With more than 20 years of experience guiding the strategic operations for nonprofits, corporates, and small businesses, she is regarded as a strong leader with the ability
to elevate organizational success across a wide range of operational areas, including partner
development, finance, human resources, program management, and stakeholder engagement.

Denyse is passionate about community and creating diverse, inclusive & welcoming programs in
which everyone’s unique backgrounds, identities, cultures and perspectives are respected,
embraced and celebrated. Denyse currently serves as Managing Director for #LatinaGeeks, a
non-profit organization with the mission to empower and inspire Latinas by sharing technical
knowledge, business skills, and entrepreneurship resources through hands-on workshops and
community events.

Keith Weiner

Keith Weiner is President of the Gold Standard Institute USA in Phoenix, Arizona, and Founder and CEO of precious metals fund manager Monetary Metals. In 1994 Keith founded DiamondWare, a technology company that he sold to Nortel Networks in 2008. He speaks and writes about free markets, money, credit, and gold. Keith’s work is published in Forbes, the American Spectator, Zero Hedge, and many other sites in the US and abroad, in English and seven other languages. He is in demand as a speaker and interviewee on the topics of gold, the dollar, interest, and economics.

Keith attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and earned his doctorate in economics from non-accredited New Austrian School of Economics. His thesis showed how government interference in the economy always reduces coordination and in particular focused on monetary discoordination due to central banking and irredeemable currency.

Dr. Edwin A. Locke

Edwin Locke is Dean’s Professor (Emeritus) of Leadership and Motivation at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his BA from Harvard in 1960 and his Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology from Cornell University in 1964. Dr. Locke has published over 260 chapters, notes and articles in professional journals, on such subjects as work motivation, job satisfaction, incentives, and the philosophy of science.

He is also the author or editor of more than ten books, including Study Methods and Study Motivation (Second Renaissance Books, 1998), Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works (Prentice Hall, 1984, with G. Latham) and A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance (Prentice Hall, 1990, with G. Latham), Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior (Blackwell, 2000), The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators (AMACOM, 2000) and Postmodernism and Management: Pros, Cons and the Alternative (JAI: Elsevier, 2003).

Dr. Locke is internationally known for his research on goal setting. A recent survey found that his goal setting theory (developed with G. Latham) was ranked #1 in importance among 73 management theories.

Dr. Locke has been elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Management, and has been a consulting editor for leading journals. He was a winner of the Outstanding Teacher-Scholar Award at the University of Maryland, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Career Contribution Award from the Academy of Management (Human Resource Division), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management (Organizational Behavior Division), and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. He is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and is interested in the application of the philosophy of Objectivism to behavioral sciences.

Mark Florman

Mark is the Chairman and CEO of Time Partners, Ltd. in London. He was a founder of the merchant banking group Maizels Westerberg and has since founded a number of businesses in the technology, advisory, financial services and investment sectors. Mark was Managing Director of the private equity firm Doughty Hanson, Chair of LM Glasfiber (the global renewable energy group) and started the African venture capital firm 8 Miles LLP with Bob Geldof.

Mark has been active in policy ideas and campaigns related to social mobility and poverty fighting in the UK and across the world. He co-founded the Centre for Social Justice, the Early Intervention Foundation and B Labs (UK). In March 2015, he was appointed to the Board of the BBC Trust, and was the Trustee for England for two years. Mark was a member of the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force in 2014, and was appointed to the Triennial Review of the Big Lottery Fund by the UK Cabinet Office in the same year.

Mark is a leading authority on some of the world’s most entrenched socio-economic challenges, speaking widely on reforms that must be made to drive improved governance and productivity, and always championing the power and social impact of good business. He is the author of the External Rate of Return with the London School of Economics. He was appointed as a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs, London School of Economics & Political Science in November 2016 and a Visiting Professor at the Policy institute, Kings College London in January 2017.

Current roles include:

Distinguished Fellow, Global Private Equity Initiative, INSEAD
Hon President, B Corp (UK) Ltd
Life Ambassador, The Centre for Social Justice
Chairman, LPEQ (association of Listed Private Equity firms)
Chair of Patrons & Ambassadors, Build Africa
Trustee, The Commonwealth Education Trust
International Advisory Committee, The Paleo-Anthropology Scientific Trust Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE IGA
Visiting Professor, Policy Institute, King’s College London

Speaking on:

The next 25 years – changes coming from technology and artificial intelligence, demographics, migration and the ever growing role of business in solving society’s needs.

David Allen

David is Chairman of the David Allen Co. and widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on personal and organizational productivity. His thirty-year pioneering research and coaching to corporate managers and CEOs of some of America’s most prestigious corporations and institutions has earned him Forbes’ recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the U.S. and Business 2.0 magazine’s inclusion in their 2006 list of the “50 Who Matter Now.” Time Magazine called his flagship book, Getting Things Done, “the definitive business self-help book of the decade.” Fast Company Magazine called David “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” in the arena of personal productivity, for his outstanding programs and writing on time and stress management, the power of aligned focus and vision, and his groundbreaking methodologies in management and executive peak performance.

David is the international best-selling author of Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity; Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life; and Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life.

Stephen Ciesinski

Steve Ciesinski is senior advisor and past president of SRI International, one of the world’s leading independent R&D organizations and an icon in Silicon Valley innovation history. He has held executive/board positions with Applied Materials, Octel Communications, Resumix, and Laszlo Systems. Steve started his career at Procter & Gamble, was a consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and served as a partner with Earlybird Ventures. He manages his own private venture capital fund, chairs the board of Ravenswood Solutions and is an investor/advisor to several international VC funds and private companies. His current interests include Enterprise application software, HealthTech, FinTech and EdTech.

Steve has been on the faculty at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for 10 years, teaching on venture capital, entrepreneurship and innovation topics. He is past Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Union College as well as the President’s Cabinet at Cal Poly. He has also been a board member of public, private and not-for-profit organizations, and has served on many board and advisory committees. Steve has a BSEE and AB from Union College, and an MBA from Stanford University. He and his family are involved in several organizations providing character-building experiences and scholarship assistance for disadvantaged youth.