Archives: Speakers

David brings over 35 years of diverse business and scientific expertise to Xeno Biosciences where he is Chief Scientific Officer. He joined Abbott Laboratories in drug discovery and development and then then transitioned to business development and new venture roles including working with startups for the Nutrition division.  David held academic appointments in GI/Nutrition at U of Chicago and then in Neonatology at Rush Medical Center following his microbiology degree. He has 100+ peer-reviewed publications with 2000+ citations and numerous successful government filings.

Joe Smith, a partner in the firm’s Washington D.C. office, is a member of the Business Litigation group and co-leads the Cannabis practice. Joe focuses his practice on litigation and regulatory compliance with a particular bend toward the cannabis and hemp industries and related industries. Joe is considered one of the cannabis industry’s most knowledgeable lawyers on federal and state regulatory compliance, including compliance with the expanded PACT Act and related state licensure and tax requirements. Joe regularly counsels clients in the cannabis industry and ancillary businesses on federal and state regulations affecting marijuana, hemp, CBD and other cannabis-related products and services. Joe also currently serves as vice-chair of the State Regulations Committee of the National Cannabis Industry Association. Additionally, as an experienced litigator, Joe represents cannabis and non-cannabis clients in state and federal court in a broad range of commercial and civil matters.

Anat is a Board Member and a private investor in various technology startups.

At present Anat is a Member of the Board of Bank of Cyprus, where she focuses on Digital Transformation and serves on the Technology Committee and the HR and Remuneration Committee. She is also a member of World Economic Forum’s European Digital Leaders network, a member of the Steering Committee of Digital Switzerland, as well as a member of the boards of UNICEF Switzerland, INSEAD Center of Entrepreneurship, and the Swiss Society for the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Anat is an investor in successful High-Tech start-ups, including Revolut, ClimaCell, CyberX, IntSights and Fireblocks.

She co-founded, scaled and successfully exited several technology companies including numerous pan-European Telecom operator: Wimax Telecom (now AT&T), surfEU (acquired by Tiscali, traded on Milan stock exchange), RSLCom Austria (acquired by RSLCom, traded on Nasdaq) and Airpage (acquired by Telenor). Later on she co-founded and scaled a sub-Saharan internet operator, YooMee Africa (acquired by an African business family). She was the Chairwoman of Cyverse, which provided Israeli cyber-security and enterprise software solutions and services to leading European and Swiss and corporates.

Prior to her entrepreneurial career, Anat was an Investment Banker at UBS (Zurich), and a lawyer at Goldfarb, Levy, Giniger (Tel-Aviv).

Anat holds an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, and an LL.B. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

She won the following awards: Social Impact by the President of Cameroon; Red Herring’s Top 100 European Tech companies; Leading entrepreneurs of INSEAD.

Anat is a regular speaker at international conferences. She gave a TEDx talk in the Silicon Valley, and spoke in the World Economic Forum, the House of Lords, United Nations’ World Investment Forum, the World Trade Organization Summit, ITU, INSEAD Directors Forum, St. Gallen Board Forum, German Boards Conference, Danish Board conference and others. She has been featured on the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, NZZ, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, DER SPIEGEL and others.

Anat lives with her family in Switzerland for the last 30 years, is married and a mother of 3 children.