Blockchain Advisory Council

Deborah Kestin - Schildkraut

IBM Blockchain & Global Alliances Ecosystem Marketing Leader, IBM

Deborah is the IBM Blockchain Ecosystem Marketing Leader focused on Blockchain-for-good and ecosystem development. She was recognized as a 2019 CRN Women of the Channel. She is a proud alumna of IBM Corporate Service Corps where she served as team leader consulting on a women's entrepreneurial school in Chile. Passionate about community service, she’s involved in many Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility projects. She expanded the IBM New Jersey MentorPlace Program for middle school students. She is on the Women@IBM NYC Planning Squad. Deborah developed the Emerging Leaders initiative to mentor and engage early career professionals. Former roles at IBM include Chief of Staff to the CMO for Industry Platform Marketing, and Global Program Director roles for Business Partner Strategy, Value Added Distributor marketing, and Digital Marketing delivering educational workshops globally. She developed and led the IBM Business Partner Innovation Center program launching 100 centers worldwide. Deborah earned a CompTIA advertising excellence award with her first IBM job, after starting her career as an advertising account manager for technology accounts. She’s active in her community serving on the Board of Directors and as past president for several non-profit organizations. Married with two children, she has a B.S. in marketing and music.

Adam Lesh

Technologist, AL Consulting

Adam Lesh is an emerging technology consultant specializing in blockchain, entertainment technology and digital transformation.  As VP, Technology for Breaker (formerly SingularDTV), a blockchain entertainment studio, he developed a SaaS rights/royalties/revenue management solution to empower independent artists (film, TV, music, eBooks and podcasts) to own, control and monetize their content. Prior to joining Breaker, Adam spent over 20 years in various emerging technology positions in the entertainment industry including DVD, file-based workflows, and studio operations.

Elena Dumitrascu

CTO, TerraHub Technologies

Elena as a computer scientist and ecosystem builder, is a driving force in driving global blockchain adoption. Recently recognized as an expert and a national leader in Canada and the United States, Elena is a pioneer in private blockchain education and software development. Elena as a Co-founder of TerraHub compliments the company’s ability to spot emerging trends and cross industry boundaries.

Previously an executive in software development and sales for supply chain, energy, automotive and e-commerce, Elena brings an enormous breadth of experience in identifying what, and determining how, new technologies best serve an organization.

Her passion is growing the capabilities of the next generation of innovators. She serves on the Board of the A100 and Chic Geek, is a Founding Business Mentor with Technovation and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Platform Calgary, where she co-created the Junction program for new entrepreneurs.

Jason Sfaelos

Director of Strategic Business Development - Blockchain & Neural Data Systems, Equinix

Jason is the Director of Strategic Business Development focusing on building ecosystems within both Blockchain and Neural Data Systems at Equinix. In this role he works with the world’s leading cloud providers, enterprise adopters and technology enablers to establish a growing ecosystem on Platform Equinix. Jason’s focus is at the intersection of Blockchain technology and the Enterprise IT landscape, otherwise known as “Distributed Ledgers at the Digital Edge”. This extends not only within blockchain technology but how it intersects with other ecosystems and technologies like the Neural Data System, where blockchain has the potential to provide key functionality.

Jason has held previous roles in Product Development, Sales, Finance and Strategy with organization ranging from Wall Street to the Telecom Industry. He holds a BS from James Madison University, an MBA from The George Washington University and has completed Oxford’s Blockchain Strategy Program through the Saïd School of Business. Jason is a former member of the JMU Alumni Association’s Board of Directors, co-founder of the Craig Blass Memorial and exhausted father of three.

Maxine Aitkenhead

Director of Business Development, DATA GUMBO

Maxine Aitkenhead is the Business Development Director for Data Gumbo, provider of GumboNet™, the trusted transactional network that automates smart contracts and transactions for industry leaders. With more than 20 years of experience in the oil & gas industry, she is responsible for developing business relationships with offshore oil & gas drilling contractors, operators and partners. She joined Data Gumbo after a decade with Schlumberger where she worked in the integrated project management (IPM) team. Prior to Schlumberger, she was an analyst at National Oilwell Vargo’s rig solutions division.

She holds a Masters in International Business Management from Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen, Scotland. More recently, Maxine studied Subsurface Petroleum Data Management with RGU.

Greg Forst

Partner, Go Immutable

Greg is an experienced executive with over 12 years of driving value through innovation.  He has built several companies that identified early innovations ranging from digital music, digital marketing and now blockchain.  His cross-discipline expertise, entrepreneurial mindset, management experience and knack for networking have made him an impact player.

Peter Jamack

CTO, Pagarba io

Leading Blockchain and IOT transformations and forming business networks for pagarba io and our clients across the America’s and EMEA and Asia Pacific. An experienced leader with a demonstrated history of helping organizations and clients achieve growth, define impactful digital strategies and launch new businesses powered by new technologies (Blockchain, AI, IoT, CyberSecurity, incident response, cryptography, RPA, big data, Open Platforms, Digital Transformation).

Raja Krishnasamy

VP / Head of Products, 5G, Edge and IOT, Terawe Corporation

Raja is currently focused on building the future Technology Value Chain for Core-to-Edge Clouds for Enterprise, Retail and Telco Carriers and 5G / RAN Aggregator Clouds (NFV, Software defined Compute, Networking and Analytics) to aid the growth of Smart Cities, Connected Cars, Computer Vision, Smart Retail, Remote Healthcare, Automated Manufacturing and Next Generation Solutions of Global Media and Telecom Carriers.

Raja is here to share his knowledge with leaders and learners in the technology industry to help shape the future of edge computing, machine intelligence, service assurance and cloud automation in the 5G Era - with the motivation to be the best and to further the growth of technology to the best of business and humankind.

Raja has a passion for the latest technologies, including IoT, Massive Data, 5G, cloud, AI and anything related to software – Raja is fascinated by collaborative modern ways of working, such as agility which give us the tools to contribute effectively while working independently towards a common goal.

Raja focus on Business Incubation, Ecosystem, Platform Engineering and Product Management, for the past 20+ years in infrastructure engineering, large scale services / distributed-systems, data and analytics, Cloud, Virtualization and Smart Networks!

Raja comes with strategic and tactical experience in Incubating and Building Business Verticals, mentoring v1 teams as well as curating processes for established products, managing operations and leading Global Business Unit Verticals in startups and established companies alike. 

Eric Powell

Founder, Rylet Industries, LLC

Eric Powell is the founder and CEO of Rylet Industries, an IT managed service provider based in San Antonio, Texas.

He's also a founding member of Ruddock Capital Investments, a privately held investment firm focused on Bitcoin and other promising cryptocurrencies.

While in the US Air Force, Eric held several positions that allowed him to serve as an aviation instructor, scientist, and R&D researcher. It was here that Eric first learned about cybersecurity and cryptocurrency.

Since then, Eric has focused his career on promoting cybersecurity best practices to small-to-medium businesses while evangelizing the power of blockchain technologies.

Neeraj Satija

CEO/CTO, Concordus Applications

Neeraj has over 21 years’ experience in setting up telecommunications companies in places like USA, New Zealand, Australia and Saudi Arabia. Neeraj is currently the CEO/CTO at Concordus Applications Inc. (www.concordusapps.com) where he is leading projects to automate the channel business processes and to get Concordus recognized as a disruptive innovator. This focus has led to the creation of Concordus Apps’ Digital Marketplace for Channel companies. Their next deliverable is a channel-focused, blockchain-based platform for Commissions, Loyalty and Payments.

Before joining Concordus Applications in 2016, Neeraj was founding member of 2degrees New Zealand (www.2degreesmobile.co.nz) and played a pivotal part in taking it from zero subscribers to serving nearly 25 percent of New Zealand mobile customers and a billion-dollar valuation in eight years.

Neeraj is a well-known speaker on the Technology events circuit and has given speeches at prestigious events like Channel Partners, Oracle Open World, WSO2Con etc. In recognizing Neeraj's contributions as a Thought Leader in Distributed computing and Blockchain.

On the personal front, Neeraj lives with his wife and two kids aged 10 and 9 in Austin, Texas. In his spare time, Neeraj likes to travel and explore new places with his family.

John Souza

Founder, Kingsland University

As the founder of Kingsland University - School of Blockchain, John Souza has set the world- standard in emerging and disruptive technologies education space, successfully delivering global award-winning education programs to some of the world’s most respected companies, universities, government agencies and not-for-profits, amassing over 150,000 students worldwide.

Lisa Westerman Spiegel

New Jersey State Bar Association, Associate Executive Director for Continuing Legal Education

Will Zhang

CEO/Solutions Architect, Fintelics Technology Inc

Will Zhang is the Founder and CEO of Fintelics, Fintelics is an advanced technology consulting & solution development company.

Will worked for IBM, then became a CTO of Stafits. Will provided consulting services doing cloud architecture/computing, data engineering for many large enterprises. During his time at Fintelics, the company has become an AWS Advanced Tier Consulting Partner and won "Leading Experts in Omnichannel Software" and "Best Custom Fintech Consultancy in Ontario" awarded by Wealth and Finance International. Will was Canada Developer 30 Under 30 winner in 2019, and awarded fellowship by Founder Institute(One of the best pre-accelerators in the world). Will was invited by IBM, CASCON and IEEE to present the academic speech of blockchain and cloud computing. Specializes in:  Software Engineering, Omnichannel App Development, DevOps, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Blockchain, Machine Learning.