Alexandria Redmon is the Senior Director of Product & Technology at Hearst, where she heads the Magazines AI Team she co-formed at the dawn of the modern generative era and has held roles spanning engineering and product leadership.
Alexandria’s career began in tech startups where she cut her teeth as a software developer and technical leader, cultivating experience across a range of domains with a general focus on user experience and emergent technology. This foundation has informed her approach to managing high-impact technology projects and teams within Hearst’s consumer media portfolio at a critical time in the industry’s evolution.
In addition to her day-to-day role Alexandria is an active tinkerer and tech speaker, frequently building out solo weekend projects and speaking to various audiences on the topics of technology and artificial intelligence. Some of her recent talks have included “I Didn’t Make This: A.I. Driven Product Development,” “Using Generative A.I. for Business Intelligence,” “A.I. Tools & Productivity,” and “ELI5: Generative Pretrained Transformers.”
Josh Awtry is an editor and audience strategist with a background that ranges from leading content strategy at some of the nation’s largest media properties to helming small-town local news teams across America.
He uses a combination of data-driven insights, technology, team building and old-school journalistic ethics to help media outlets see new pathways to increase the quality of their readership and grow their business.
Awtry leads audience development at Newsweek, where his mission is to deepen the news outlet’s relationship with readers, working across news and product teams to help Newsweek’s millions of readers find the value in Newsweek’s mission.
Prior to Newsweek, Awtry led content strategy for the USA TODAY Network and Gannett, where he helped shift the journalism and revenue mix across a network of more than 4,000 journalists to an “impact over activity” model, powering the operation to 1.5 million digital subscribers and a reach of more than 130 million people each month. During his time with the network, he developed a unique national team of content strategists who blended backgrounds as shoe-leather journalists with advanced data science skills to predict and react to readership trends and train journalists accordingly. He has also served as Senior Vice President of Audience at The Hill, where he helped the nonpartisan news outlet reach a record high for the amount of time readers spend with The Hill each month.
Awtry’s background is in community news, a craft he’s deeply passionate about preserving and continues work on today. He got his start as a night-shift copy editor at the Grand Island Independent in Central Nebraska and has since served in newsrooms across the country, leading news teams from Nebraska to Utah, Idaho, Colorado and the Carolinas.
Ms. Eileen Vidrine most recently served as the Department of the Air Force Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer, where she developed and implemented strategies for enterprise data management, analytics, digital transformation, and responsible and ethical artificial intelligence to optimize performance and drive innovation in and across all missions and operations. Ms. Vidrine is currently CEO at Vidrine Vantage, LLC; she serves as an Advisory Board Member at FedLearn and AI Squared; and she has been an Adjunct Faculty member at The George Washington University since 2001.
Topher is a Chief Outsiders Partner and CMO who provides fractional, project, program, and coaching support to executives and companies of all sizes, along with over seventy Chief Outsider partner peers all who’ve previously held C-level titles at mostly fortune 1500 companies. Topher’s been a change agent at the intersection of technology, marketing, and sales for his entire career. Topher’s recent work has included large clients from the provider (Spectrum Health System), payor (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Priority Health), health-tech, and pharma industry as well as business services (Crowe) while his professional background is deep in media and fin-tech (Reuters, Liquidnet, Axioma). He has a unique ability to redefine brand identity, clarify value proposition, foster business awareness, and increase ROI from data driven digital and traditional marketing efforts. With an innate love of technology, he implements digital driven and delivered initiatives in order to drive business results. Topher works with B2B and B2C companies from startups through mid-sized to large corporate divisions and organizations. From new product launches to organizational res-design and change management, Topher helps to generate rapid growth and revenue gains. Topher is a strong collaborative influencer who’s able to bring together multi-faceted teams including with strategic partners and alliances who may sometimes view each other as competition.
Danny Brock is the Vice President of Customer Success at Fiddler AI, an enterprise AI Observability company, which focuses on monitoring, explainability, fairness, and responsible AI governance for predictive and generative models. AI Observability is a vital building block and provides visibility and transparency to the entire enterprise AI application stack. Danny leads the pre- and post-sales technical teams that unlock the value in AI insights for Fiddler’s prospects and customers. Throughout his career, Danny has brought his strong technical experience and passion for data, analytics and AI to lead customer facing teams at Endeca, Oracle, Incorta and even his own company, Branchbird.
Teresa Carlson is a global tech executive with decades of leadership experience and a visionary industry disruptor. She works to enact positive change for new and emerging technologies, focusing on accelerating global resilience in AI, cloud computing, defense, cyber, and mission intelligence. She serves as an international advisor and board member at the Venture Capital firm General Catalyst. Teresa is also a veteran executive of large tech companies, including Amazon, where she founded and led Worldwide Public Sector and Industries, growing it into a multibillion-dollar business. She led the US Federal Business at Microsoft and returned as a Corporate Vice President and Executive in Residence. Teresa also led large global organizations at Splunk and Flexport, where she served as President and Chief Growth Officer. She has spent her career driving digital transformation across organizations worldwide, working to modernize policies at all levels of government, and cultivating a 21st-century global workforce to increase jobs and improve the economy. Teresa also dedicates time to philanthropic and leadership roles in the global community. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of the White House Historical Association, Executive Committee of The Atlantic Council, Board of Trustees at Meridian International Center, and Commissioner at the National Portrait Gallery.
Marc Lavallee is the director of technology product and strategy for the journalism program at Knight Foundation. Marc brings more than two decades of experience as a technology executive and software developer to this role.
Prior to Knight, Marc led The New York Times’s Research & Development unit, which explores near-term applications of emerging technologies such as AI and spatial computing.
Previously, he led the Interactive News desk at The Times, and held a variety of technical roles at NPR, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.
