Innovation Ecosystem Forum

Monday, July 29 | 11 AM–5 PM

Conrad Nashville, 1620 West End Avenue

At this inaugural Nashville Innovation Alliance event, Mayor Freddie O’Connell and Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier will present a call to action for a collaborative approach to advancing our city’s innovation ecosystem.

This half-day forum, starting with lunch and ending with a networking reception, will bring together leaders from Nashville’s corporate, civic, community and education institutions to learn about transformative approaches used by innovation-ecosystems leaders in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and beyond.

Founders and corporate innovation experts will share their insights on next steps for Nashville’s success and the afternoon will conclude with an opportunity to reflect and prioritize opportunities for the newly announced Nashville Innovation Alliance.

Join the conversation online:

#NashvilleInnovationAlliance

Presented by:

logos of Metro Nashville, Vanderbilt University, Greater Nashville Technology Council, Launch Tennessee, Nashville Entrepreneur Center

Agenda

11:00 a.m. | Check-In and Networking

11:30 a.m. | Lunch and Welcome - Introducing the Nashville Innovation Alliance

Mayor O’Connell and Chancellor Diermeier will welcome all guests to the Forum, explain their reasoning for founding the Nashville Innovation Alliance, what they envision for the future of Nashville’s innovation ecosystem, their hopes for the day and what the Alliance will focus on moving forward.

Freddie O’Connell, Mayor, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County
Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University
MC and Moderator: Nathan Green, Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, Vanderbilt University

12:00 p.m. | Innovation Ecosystem Showcases

Leaders of top-tier international innovation ecosystems will share how they’ve supported their innovation economies through physical and programmatic investments including branding, cluster development, start-up support, talent development, and place-based investments. What can Nashville learn from these leading innovation ecosystems?

Guests will be able to submit questions to the moderator via QR code or post comments and ideas to be compiled in a post-event summary.

Part 1

Isabel Sabadí, Director, 22@Network Barcelona
Julie Samuels, President and CEO, Tech:NYC
Moderator: Elise Cambournac, President and CEO, Greater Nashville Technology Council

1:00 p.m. | Break

1:15 p.m. | Innovation Ecosystem Showcases, Cont’d

Part 2

Travis Todd, Co-Founder, Silicon Allee
Florian Lennert, Co-Founder, Disrupting Mobility and Senior Fellow, Helmholtz Research Institute for Sustainability
Moderator: Isaac Addae, Manager of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, Nashville Mayor's Office

2:15 p.m. | Break

2:30 p.m. | Fostering a Climate for Innovation

The session will begin with a brief presentation on innovation support for founders by the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, then transition to an overview of Vanderbilt’s research and innovation strategy. This will be followed by a panel discussion with company founders, corporate R&D executives, industry pioneers and leading researchers who will share ideas on how we can work together to power Nashville’s future success while reflecting upon the ideas presented earlier in the day by innovation-ecosystem leaders.

Innovation Support for Founders

Dakota Simpson, Vice President of Programs, Nashville Entrepreneur Center

Innovation Strategy at Vanderbilt University

Padma Raghavan, Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Vanderbilt University

Innovators Panel Discussion

Adam Block, Senior Vice President of Strategic, Enterprise, and Public Sector, Motive
Shani Dowell, Founder and CEO, Possip
Carrie Jones, Senior Director of In Vivo Pharmacology and Drug Development, Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, Vanderbilt University
Jason Maynard, Executive Vice President of Revenue Operations, Oracle
Moderator: Lindsey Cox, CEO, Launch Tennessee

3:30 p.m. | What’s Next for the Nashville Innovation Alliance

Internationally renowned urbanist Richard Florida will moderate the closing session featuring Mayor O’Connell and Chancellor Diermeier. Members of the Alliance steering committee and guest speakers will share key takeaways from the day, followed by remarks from the Mayor and Chancellor who will also conclude the forum with a call-to-action as they articulate their hopes for the work of the Alliance moving forward.

Freddie O’Connell, Mayor, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County
Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University
Richard Florida, Urbanist and Visiting Professor, Vanderbilt University

With commentary from forum speakers

4:15 p.m. | Reception

Event Details

Date: Monday, July 29 | 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

Location: Conrad Ballroom, 2nd Floor | Conrad Nashville, 1620 West End Avenue, Nashville, TN 37203

Rideshare & Parking

Rideshare: Use destination address: 1620 West End Avenue, Nashville, TN 37203

Valet Parking: Pull into the front drive off West End Avenue and park with the valet. They will provide discounted event validations for guest parking tickets. The discounted valet rate for the day is $20.

Self-Parking: Hourly parking is available in the self-park garage via entrances on Hayes Street or 16th Avenue. Park from P2–P7 near the Conrad labeled elevators. Take the elevators to the 2nd floor.

Dress Code: Business

Speakers

Freddie O'Connell

Mayor, Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County

Freddie O'Connell is the tenth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.

He served on the Metro Council from 2015 to 2023 representing District 19, which includes the downtown core, Germantown, and parts of North Nashville.

In his time on the Metro Council, Freddie worked to limit the impact of poverty, to strengthen neighborhoods, and to make sure everyone participates as our economy grows. He oversaw an overhaul of the Metro Homelessness Commission as well as an increase in the number of Nashvillians who benefit from property tax freezes and rebates, and passed green energy bills that reduce costs for Metro, ensure cleaner air and water, and increase climate resiliency.

Freddie has served as a member of the Charter Revision Committee, the Planning, Zoning, and Historical Committee, Public Works Committee (Chair), and the Traffic, Parking and Transportation Committee (Chair). He has also served as a member on various special committees that serve Nashville residents including the Nashville Downtown Partnership Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Central Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Gulch Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the District Energy System Advisory Board, and the South Central Neighborhood Development Corporation Board of Directors.

Freddie has experience in Nashville's software and start-up industry, most recently as Integration Architect for HealthStream. He's served on several non-profit, civic, and committee boards including as Board Chair of Nashville MTA (now WeGo Public Transit), as Board President of Walk/Bike Nashville, the Board of Belcourt Theatre, and the Board of Cumberland Region Tomorrow. As a member of the Citizen Advisory Committee for Metro Water Services, he helped to fulfill a consent decree from the EPA intended to help clean up the Cumberland River.

Daniel Diermeier

Chancellor, Vanderbilt University

An internationally renowned political scientist and management scholar, Daniel Diermeier is the ninth chancellor of Vanderbilt University.

Since joining Vanderbilt in 2020, Chancellor Diermeier has led an ambitious program of growth and advancement. Under his visionary leadership, the university has risen in stature, successfully launched a record $3.2 Billion capital campaign, topped the $1 billion mark in research funding for the first time in the university’s history and reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to free expression and civil discourse. He has driven efforts to become the destination for leading faculty and the most promising students, to create a culture of radical collaboration and personal growth for Vanderbilt’s faculty, students and staff and to expand Vanderbilt’s global presence. Under his leadership, Vanderbilt was one of a very small number of the nation’s universities to safely and successfully bring students back to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before arriving at Vanderbilt, Chancellor Diermeier served in leadership and faculty roles at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and at the University of Chicago, where he served as dean of the Harris School of Public Policy and subsequently as provost.

Isaac Addae

Manager of Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, Nashville Mayor's Office

Dr. Isaac Y. Addae is an award-winning educator, speaker, and strategist. He serves as the Small & Minority Business Liaison in the Nashville Mayor's Office. Previously, he served as the Chief Strategy Officer of Pivot Technology School (a workforce development firm). For over a decade, Isaac has taught courses in business strategy, entrepreneurship, and leadership at the collegiate level. His recent roles include the Tennessee State University College of Business and the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management.

Isaac possesses more than a decade of experience in technology consulting and systems development across the automotive, defense, and information technology industries (IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Ford, Raytheon). He completed a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Systems Engineering at Tennessee State University. He also earned a Ph.D. in Business Administration at Morgan State University.

As an engaged servant leader, Isaac is a board member of Corner To Corner, Knowledge Bank, Nashville Black Chamber, and chairman of the Nashville Metro Health and Educational Facilities board. He is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. In the Fall of 2021, Isaac released his first book, Black Boy Fly: Embracing My Ancestry, Blackness, and Purpose in the African Diaspora.

Adam Block

Senior Vice President of Strategic, Enterprise, and Public Sector, Motive

Adam Block is a seasoned technology executive, currently serving as the Senior Vice President of Strategic, Enterprise, and Public Sector businesses at Motive.

Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. The Motive platform allows safety, operations, and finance teams to manage their workers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet-related spend in a single system.

Motive provides Western Express with Driver Safety, Compliance, and Fleet Management technology. Motive also serves nearly 120,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises such as Halliburton, KONE, Komatsu, NBC Universal, FedEx Freight, and Maersk across a wide range of industries including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, waste services, and the public sector.

Elise Cambournac

President and CEO, Greater Nashville Technology Council

Elise Cambournac is the new President and CEO at Greater Nashville Technology Council where she leads a small team to support a vibrant tech community made of 550+ NTC members, over 70k tech jobs and a $8B economy.

A global, strategic, business and technology executive and board member with 25 years in developing and leading tech teams and strategies from start-ups to Fortune 100, Elise is a passionate, insightful, and authentic leader, respected for setting the organizational vision and strategy, developing leaders, building highly effective teams, and leading organizational change and transformation. At NTC, Elise’s mission is to advance the diverse technology ecosystem by connecting and promoting members, growing, attracting, and retaining tech talent and providing opportunities to invest in the Great Nashville community. She is passionate about investing in building our community’s tech talent pipeline and working with members and community partners to create and develop junior talent locally as well as attract and retain talent into middle Tennessee.

Prior to joining NTC, she was Assistant Vice President of information technology at HCA Healthcare, leading many teams from Product Development, Integration, or Testing Services to Data and Analytics or Information Security. Elise brings multi-cultural and international leadership expertise acquired working internationally for Cognizant Technology Solutions, and serving as president and CEO for ITTI, a technology professional services firm located in Bangalore, India.

Originally from France, Elise earned a Master in Electrical Engineering from SUPELEC (Ecole Superieure d’Electricite) - Paris, France. She currently serves on the board of the Interfaith Dental Clinic in Nashville and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, is an Advisor on the Information Systems Council for the State of Tennessee, and previously served on the board of Women in Technology of
Tennessee (WiTT).

Elise has been a Nashvillian for 25 years and calls this region home, she is married to Alban Cambournac and the proud mother of Benoit and Julien.

Lindsey Cox

CEO, Launch Tennessee

Lindsey Cox is the Chief Executive Officer at Launch Tennessee (LaunchTN), a public-private partnership supporting entrepreneurs and innovation across the state of Tennessee.

A Tennessee native, Lindsey has dedicated her career to the support and acceleration of startups and entrepreneurs in Tennessee and the Southeast. During her first tenure at LaunchTN, she reimagined 3686 Entrepreneurship Festival into a two-day celebration of startup founders, investors and partners, which generated national attention for Tennessee’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. She also created LaunchTN’s government relations team and oversaw the passage and administration of the state’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Matching Program, which to date has deployed $11M of grants into tech-enabled, Tennessee-based companies.

Lindsey’s experience is vast with tenure at the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Washington, D.C., she led their signature grant program, Build to Scale. To recently, serving as CEO of The Company Lab (CO.LAB) in Chattanooga, TN, where she oversaw the relaunch of Startup Week Chattanooga, revitalized legacy programs and put in place a team positioned to grow Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Shani Dowell

Founder and CEO, Possip

Shani Dowell is the Founder and CEO of Possip, an AI and tech-based, human-centered company in Nashville. Possip is an engagement platform that gives organizational and civic leaders quick, actionable insights from their large and diverse communities. Possip was founded in 2017 based on Shani’s decades-long experience in education. More than 1,500 schools across 39 states rely on Possip to help them hear from more than a million stakeholders - and Possip has recently begun growing in health and human services, higher education, and nonprofits.

Shani began her career as a consultant at Bain & Co. She has also worked for Houston Independent School District, The Bridgespan Group, The Posse Foundation, and Teach For America.

Shani earned her BA at Howard University in Washington, DC, and her MBA at Stanford University. She has been a winner of the Google For Start-Ups Women Accelerator and Google Black Founder Fund. She has been a 2-time winner of Nashville Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs Award and a Marketplace Mover winner for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center NEXT Awards. Shani is recognized as the first Black woman in the state of TN to raise more than $1 million in venture funding.

Shani lives in Nashville with her husband, two school-aged kids, and one big shaggy dog.

Richard Florida

Internationally Renowned Urbanist; Visiting Professor, Vanderbilt University

Richard Florida is one of the world’s leading urbanists and international best-selling author of The Rise of the Creative Class. He is Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University and University Professor at the University of Toronto, He previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University and NYU and been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He is co-founder of The Atlantic’s, and now Bloomberg’s CityLab, the leading publication devoted to cities and urbanism. He provides strategic advice to companies, foundations, and governments worldwide, and serves on the boards of several real estate development firms, venture capital firms, and investment funds.

Photo by Daria Malysheva

Nathan Green

Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, Vanderbilt University

Nathan Green is vice chancellor for government and community relations at Vanderbilt University. He leads a 27-person team based in Nashville and Washington, D.C. that is responsible for the university’s advocacy work with all branches of government and for leading community initiatives and engagements.

Since his arrival at Vanderbilt, he has successfully advocated for the university on key policy topics, including student aid, the COVID pandemic response, and tax and employment issues. He and his team work daily on a variety of issues that impact higher education, Vanderbilt, and the community at large, ranging from fostering an ecosystem for research and discovery to providing access to education for all.

Green also plays a leading role in guiding the vision for Vanderbilt’s role in the greater Nashville area and directing the university’s approach for community involvement and economic development. He oversees the university’s Community Impact Fund which has supported more than 300 non-profits and community organizations across Nashville that are actively working to address challenges related to education, social justice, affordable housing, food insecurity, and more.

Carrie Jones

Senior Director of In Vivo Pharmacology and Drug Development, Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, Vanderbilt University

Carrie Jones received her B.S. in Biology from Indiana University and further completed her Ph.D. from the Indiana University School of Medicine. While obtaining her Ph.D., she began her work in the Neuroscience division of pharmacology at Lily Research Laboratories, starting in 2001 on her first Postdoctoral Research Fellowship there. In 2005, Dr. Jones embarked on further postdoctoral studies within Vanderbilt University’s Department of Pharmacology.

Dr. Jones joined the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Vanderbilt University in 2005, and now serves as the Senior Director of In Vivo Pharmacology and Drug Development and is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology. Her In Vivo Pharmacology team is dedicated to utilizing translational approaches, including assessment of changes in behavior, neurochemistry and imaging endpoints such as PET and functional MRI, to explore the underlying mechanisms of novel ligands targeting different G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) and transporters within the CNS and the implications of these effects on different disease states, most notably schizophrenia.

Florian Lennert

Klaus-Töpfer Fellow, Research Institute for Sustainability, German Geosciences Center and Co-Founder, Disrupting Mobility

Florian has engaged with sustainable innovation for many years and advises research institutions, governments, municipalities, businesses, and technology ventures internationally on sustainable technology, mobility and regional development. Florian is a distinguished fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability at the German Geosciences Center (GFZ). He is co-founder of Disrupting Mobility, an applied research and innovation network connecting cities, industry and mobility innovators in partnership with MIT, LSE, Berkeley and Fraunhofer and recently launched Turquois X, an innovation accelerator for sustainable ocean tech based in Berlin and Lanzarote, Spain working with the Canary Islands on smart islands strategies. He is a member of the advisory boards of Volocopter and the Austrian Ministry for Mobility, Climate, Technology, Energy and Environment, chair of the European Commission expert group for smart mobility systems and services and a member of the EU Commission expert assembly on smart and sustainable cities. Previously, Florian served as head of mobility and urban development at NEOM, a large-scale smart city development in Saudi Arabia and led on overall regional development, mobility strategy and transportation systems. Prior to joining NEOM, Florian was Director of the Innovation Center for Mobility and Societal Change (InnoZ) focusing on sustainable urban innovation and the design and implementation of the EUREF Campus, a smart city district and living lab for smart mobility, renewable energy and future city design in Berlin. Previously, Florian co-founded the Grantham Research Institute for Climate and Environment and the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics (LSE). A native of Berlin, Florian started his career at the German Institute for Urbanism (DIFU) working with local governments across Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe on municipal transformation following the fall of the Berlin Wall. He holds a BSc Economics and an MPA from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jason Maynard

Executive Vice President of Revenue Operations, Oracle

Jason Maynard serves as Oracle’s executive vice president of revenue operations, leading the global marketing, and sales operations. In his prior role, he was the senior vice president of global field operations for the NetSuite business unit. Jason joined Oracle as part of its 2016 acquisition of NetSuite. Prior to Oracle, Jason spent 17 years as an equity research analyst covering the software industry for Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, and Merrill Lynch. Before that he was an entrepreneur and cofounded and invested in multiple software startups.

Padma Raghavan

Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Vanderbilt University

Padma Raghavan is the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation and Chief Research Officer, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor, and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. As Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Raghavan oversees the advancement of the university’s research and innovation portfolio, including the development of strategic partnerships such as Ancora Innovation, with Deerfield Management, to accelerate the development and delivery of life-changing therapeutics from bench to patient, and Army Pathfinder, a program to rapidly advance mission-critical technology innovation.

In her faculty role, Raghavan specializes in supercomputing, and her contributions have been recognized through awards such as the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, elevation to Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is also active in the profession, currently serving on the advisory committees Office of International Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation, and on the Board of Governors of UT-Battelle, which operates the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In 2022, Raghavan was appointed to a two-year term on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science.

Isabel Sabadí

Director, 22@Network Barcelona

Isabel Sabadí, Director of 22@Network Barcelona, the 22@ Barcelona Innovation District Association, holds a degree in Business Administration and Management from the University of Barcelona (UB) and a Master's in Marketing Management from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

With 25 years of experience in innovative companies within the TIME sector (Technology, Internet, Media, Entertainment), she has established several digital projects as an entrepreneur and relocated to Silicon Valley to lead a knowledge center for entrepreneurs.

Isabel actively participates in numerous international innovation district roundtables and teaches courses on building innovation districts. She collaborates with various universities, events, and media, sharing her expertise in innovation districts, entrepreneurship, and smart cities.

Julie Samuels

President and Executive Director, Tech:NYC

Julie Samuels is the President and Executive Director of Tech:NYC, an organization representing New York’s fast growing, entrepreneurial tech industry, which she founded in 2016. She is also a Venture Partner at Hangar. Before that she was Executive Director at Engine, a nation-wide nonprofit focused on technology entrepreneurship and advocacy, where she remains a member of the Board.

She previously worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she was a senior staff attorney and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. Before joining EFF, Julie litigated IP and entertainment cases. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Julie spent time as a legislative assistant at the Media Coalition in New York, as an assistant editor at the National Journal in D.C., and she worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Champaign, IL.

Julie earned her J.D. from Vanderbilt University and her B.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She serves on the Boards of Engine, NY Forever, Chamber of Progress, 5Boro, the Freelancers Union, and the Internet Education Foundation, and on various Advisory Boards. She has been named one of Crain’s New York 40 under 40 and one of New York City’s 50 Most Powerful Women. She lives in New York City with her family.

Dakota Simpson

Vice President of Programs, Nashville Entrepreneur Center

Dakota Simpson is the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s (NEC) VP of Programs. In this role, he manages a portfolio of six programs comprised of industry and stage-based startup accelerators. As a member of the NEC’s leadership team, he advises stakeholders on connecting entrepreneurs with critical resources.

Before joining the NEC, Dakota served as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS). He was the project manager tasked with implementing the TANF Opportunity Act and the Child Care Task Force during his tenure. Additionally, he facilitated the creation of a strategic framework for the agency alongside agency executives, which led to the creation of a portfolio of projects dedicated to achieving the Commissioner’s vision.

Before DHS, Dakota served as a Governor’s Management Fellow and then as a Management Consultant for the Office of Customer Focused Government (CFG). Within CFG, he assisted with several enterprise-wide projects, such as Task Force Reimagine, while also serving as the program director for Transparent Tennessee and the Rural Enterprise Management program. As a Fellow, he worked in the Department of Economic and Community Development as the department’s inaugural Distressed County Liaison. In this role, Dakota served as the dedicated point of contact for distressed county officials and increased coordination of state efforts to maximize distressed county assistance. Before CFG, Simpson served as the Special Projects Coordinator for the Community and Rural Development division of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

Dakota graduated from Vanderbilt University in May 2018, majoring in human and organizational development with a concentration in community development and minoring in political science. He is passionate about civic engagement and assisting his fellow Tennesseans.

In his free time, Dakota enjoys reading historical books, coaching clients at a local gym, and exploring Nashville.

Travis Todd

Co-founder, Silicon Allee

Travis Todd is a dynamic entrepreneur, investor, and community builder based in Berlin, Germany. He is the Co-founder of Silicon Allee, Berlin's leading international startup community, specifically known for the longest consistently running tech event in Berlin (over 13 years and 150 editions).

Travis spearheaded the Berlin Founders Fund, an impact-focused non-dilutive pre-seed accelerator program. Startups from this fund have raised over $100 million in follow-on funding to date, marking a significant milestone in Berlin's startup ecosystem.

Travis currently serves as the Head of Venture Development at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, where he is leading the development of a brand new startup incubator focused on transitioning academic research into new deep tech startups.

Before his current roles, Travis co-founded Factory.com, developing startup campuses across Europe. In his earlier career, Travis was the technical co-founder and CPTO at several startup companies.

A U.S. and German citizen, Travis holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design and has been coding since age 14. He is an adventurous soul, enjoying activities like sport climbing, surfing, music and thru-hiking.