Keynote Speakers
Morning Keynote:
Doug Given, Partner, Bay City Capital
Douglass Given, MD, PhD, MBA, is an Investment Partner at Bay City Capital and has been with the firm since October 2000. He was formerly CEO and a director of NeoRx, corporate sr. vice president and CTO of Mallinckrodt, and CEO and a director of Progenitor and Mercator Genetics. He held positions as vice president at Schering Plough Research Institute, vice president at Monsanto/G.D. Searle Research Laboratories, and medical advisor at Lilly Research Laboratories.
Dr. Given is the chairman of VIA Pharmaceuticals, and chairman of Vivaldi Biosciences. He is Chairman of the Visiting Committee to the Division of Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, a member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Advisory Board, and the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative International Advisory Council.
Lunch Keynote:
Jeff Hoffman, CEO, Enable Holdings, Inc.
Jeff Hoffman is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator in the fields of Internet, e-commerce, and media/entertainment. Having launched his first software company while still a student at Yale University, Hoffman has founded and grown a series of successful startup companies in his career, raising independent financing for his ventures and guiding his companies to both acquisitions and public offerings.
Hoffman currently serves as the CEO of Enable Holdings, Inc., one of the world’s leading excess inventory solutions companies. Enable Holdings is dedicated to helping manufacturers and retailers get the maximum value for their excess inventory. Enable Holdings offers seller asset recovery solutions through five sales channels; auction website uBid.com, fixed-price Web site RedTag.com, business-to-business trading division Dibu Trading Corporation, offline excess inventory solution RedTag Live!, and private auction software company Commerce Innovations.
Fireside Chat:
With Eric Lefkofsky, President of Blue Media LLC and
Steve Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Chicago Booth
Eric Lefkofsky is currently the President of Blue Media, LLC, a Chicago-based private equity and consulting firm focused on applied technology. He is the founder and a director of several firms, including InnerWorkings, Inc. (NASDAQ: INWK), a global provider of managed print and promotional solutions; Echo Global Logistics, Inc., a technology-enabled transportation and logistics outsourcing firm; MediaBank, LLC, a leading provider of integrated media procurement technology; and ThePoint, Inc., an online collective action website.
Eric serves on the board of directors of Children's Memorial Hospital, the board of trustees of the Steppenwolf Theatre and the board of governors of The Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a member of the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee. Eric is the author of Accelerated Disruption and a guest professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
