The Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco was pleased to host the closing of its Heidi Goes AI event series “Deep Tech Nation Switzerland and AI”.
This special event highlighted Switzerland’s role as a global leader in artificial intelligence and its partnerships with Silicon Valley.
The evening started with a keynote speech by Daniel Naeff, Head of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the ETH Zurich AI Center, who gave insights into the Swiss AI Initiative and its new supercomputer ALPS.
The evening continued with a panel discussion featuring:
• Vera Zakem, Chief Technology Innovation Officer of California
• moderated by Marie-Astrid Langer, U.S. Correspondent, NZZ in San Francisco
You can now watch the full discussion in the video below.
Meet the panelists
Hanneke Faber, the CEO of Logitech, has returned the company to growth and is leading the company’s mission to extend human potential in work and play. She has more than 30 years of experience in global business leadership across a variety of consumer, B2B and e-commerce businesses. Prior to joining Logitech, she has driven growth and significant transformation across multi-billion dollar businesses at three of the world’s leading product companies: Unilever, Ahold Delhaize and Procter & Gamble. Throughout her career, she has focused on innovation across diverse portfolios, fostering a deep connection with end-users in both mature and emerging markets, and she is a world-class sustainability leader.
Daniel Naeff is Head of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at ETH AI Center, where he drives AI-related research commercialization and industry collaborations. He is a co-founder of the impact venture studio Brainforest and previously served as founder and CEO of Oakura. Daniel sits on several boards, including ETH Alumni and Mervin Scientific, where he draws on his strong engineering background from ETH Zurich and his affiliation with MIT’s Strategic Engineering Research Group.
Jean-Philippe “JP” Persico brings over 20 years of experience in business transformation and venture capital to his role as Co-Founder and Managing Partner at shuckerVC. His track record includes achieving 25x MOIC in corporate venture investments and driving 20x growth in corporate business during his operational roles. JP holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. shuckerVC is a $10M Bay Area seed fund dedicated to investing in AI-powered B2B software companies. The fund provides hands-on support to portfolio companies through strategic growth planning, corporate partnership development, and go-to-market strategy optimization.
Vera Zakem is the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for the state of California, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to lead efforts on safe and responsible technology and innovation. She previously served in the Biden–Harris Administration as USAID’s Chief Digital Democracy and Rights Officer, where she launched the global Advancing Digital Democracy Initiative. Vera was also a member of the Bipartisan Task Force on Democracy, co-leading work on democracy, technology, and information integrity. She helped build the Institute for Security and Technology, led strategy and research at Twitter, advised AI companies, and addressed U.S. national and foreign policy challenges at the Center for Naval Analyses. She holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from the University of San Francisco.
Marie-Astrid Langer is the US-foreign correspondent for Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in Silicon Valley, covering technology and politics since 2018. Prior, she worked at NZZ’s headquarters in Zurich as an editor focused on US politics. In 2015, she was the Arthur F. Burns fellow with the Wall Street Journal in San Francisco. Langer is a Young Leader of Atlantikbrücke and the American Swiss Foundation, and an alumna of the Henri-Nannen-Journalistenschule. She holds an MBA from the University of Tübingen. In 2021, Suhrkamp published her first book “Kamala Harris, ein Porträt”.
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