SALT Talks

Abdulmohsin Al Omran is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Family Office Co. BSC(c) (“The Family Office”), and Chairman of the Board of Petiole Asset Management AG, the investment arm of The Family Office, based in Zurich, Switzerland. Born into one of the oldest families in Riyadh, Al Omran set out from an early age to gain experience in different areas of finance with an eye on movin...

Deven Parekh, Managing Director of Insight Partners. He also manages the firm’s largest investment team, doing deals across the spectrum of venture, growth, and later-stage leveraged transactions. Heading into the pandemic, investment from Insight Partners was expected to slow down, but that ultimately was not the case. Technology investments have proven resilient in the age of COVID as it becomes...

A Democratic trifecta in congress and the presidency is the best-case scenario for the advancement of the cannabis industry. Initially, expect to see a Biden White House use executive orders that address the decriminalization and rescheduling of cannabis. Though, the start of the administration will be consumed with the COVID-19 pandemic. Support for cannabis has grown steadily over the years and...

Jonathan Medved is a serial entrepreneur and according to the Washington Post “one of Israel’s leading high tech venture capitalists”. Medved currently is the founder and CEO of OurCrowd, the leading global equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors and angels. OurCrowd has $1.2B in commitments and has made investments in 200 companies and funds, and 30 exits since its launch in Februar...

Angela Matheny is the CIO of Crewcial Partners. Angela also continues to drive the firm’s manager diversity initiative to attract and source diverse asset managers while monitoring protocol and the internal vetting process of women and diverse asset managers. The private equity and venture capital space continues to see a dearth of black and brown asset managers. For too long, companies and their...

Winston Ma is an investor, attorney, author, and adjunct professor in the global digital economy. He is one of a small number of native Chinese who has worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China. Most recently, he was Managing Director and Head of North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign weal...

Fareed Zakaria is th host of Fareed Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide and a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a bestselling author. Fareed Zakaria GPS is a weekly international and domestic affairs program that airs on CNN/U.S. and around the world on CNN International. Since its debut in 2008, it has become a prominent television forum for global newsmaker...

Marty Chavez is a widely renowned trailblazer and leader in venture capital. Most recently, Marty served in a variety of senior roles at Goldman Sachs, including Chief Information Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and global co-head of the firm’s Securities Division. Chavez began his long and illustrious career breaking from tradition as an openly gay Latino working on Wall Street, an industry tha...

Michelle Williams is Dean of the Faculty for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health as well as the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development. Dean Williams is an internationally renowned epidemiologist and public health scientist, an award-winning educator and a widely recognized academic leader. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016. The failure...

Saeed Al Mazrouei is the Deputy Chief Financial Officer of Mubadala Investment Company, a sovereign wealth fund for the government of Abu Dhabi. In this role, he oversees the group-wide finance function, supporting the delivery of the company’s growth strategy and ensuring the successful execution of strategic transactions and financing projects, as well as supporting the company’s business units...

Dr. Finian Tan is the founder of Vickers Venture Partners. Vickers is a top-performing, global deep-tech firm with $3B under management across six funds and co-investments. Vickers invests in early-stage companies with technical solutions to solve large, global problems. Finian was Deputy Secretary of Trade and Industry for the Singapore government. Serving as Deputy Secretary of Trade and Industr...

Michael Sonnenshein is the Managing Director at Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager with more than $5.9 billion in assets under management across its family of 10 products – all of which provide access and exposure to the digital currency asset class in the form of a traditional security, without the challenges of buying, storing, and safekeeping digital curre...

Noah Kerner is the CEO of Acorns, a financial technology and financial services company specializing in micro-investing and robo-investing. Born in New York City, Kerner got involved with Acorns two months after launch as an adviser, investor, board director and then CEO. He is a 4X entrepreneur, Co-author of Chasing Cool with the former CEO of Barneys, and former DJ for Jennifer Lopez. Acting on...

Nathalie Molina Niño, an entrepreneur, builder capitalist (at O³) and tech globalization veteran focused on high-growth businesses that benefit women and the planet. She is the author of LEAPFROG, The New Revolution for Women Entrepreneurs (Penguin Random House, Tarcher Perigee) and serves as a Venture Partner at Connectivity Capital Partners. Molina Niño launched her first tech startup at the age...

After serving many years in Afghanistan and Iraq, General McMaster was on the receiving end of policies and strategies disconnected from the reality on the ground. The tendency to view strategy only through one’s own lens can be described as “strategic narcissism,” where we don’t consider the influence other players have on an outcome. This calls for a shift towards “strategic empathy.” “Empathy i...

David Halpert is the founder & chief investment officer of Prince Street Capital, a specialist emerging and frontier market asset management firm based in New York and Singapore. With 30 years of experience researching and investing in the developing world, David coined the term ‘Digital Decolonization’ – a new paradigm for assessing investments in emerging and frontier markets, unveiling the...

Nathan Gelber, the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Stamford Associates Limited. Stamford was launched in 1984 with the vision to materially improve the traditional investment consulting model for UK pension schemes with a focus on providing superior investment solutions, generating superior risk-adjusted returns and establishing effective governance structures. It has subsequently grown to...

Michael Schmidt is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times, covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues and the other for coverage of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. It remains an open question as to whether the government institutions c...

Zulfiquar Ghadiyali is the Executive Director of Directions Investment Holding Company (DIHC), under the chairmanship of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Sultan bin Hamdan Al Nahyan. Ghadiyali’s family business spans across Asia and the Middle East in the fields of real estate, hospitality and general trading. Growing up in India in a family involved in major construction projects provided early e...

Kurt Andersen is the bestselling author of the novels Heyday, Turn of the Century, and True Believers. He contributes to Vanity Fair and The New York Times and was the host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award–winning public radio show and podcast. He also writes for television, film, and the stage. Andersen co-founded Spy magazine, served as editor in chief of New York, and was a cultu...

John O. Brennan, served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 until January 2017, following a long career in U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism. As director, he was responsible for intelligence collection, analysis, covert action, counterintelligence, and liaison relationships with foreign intelligence services.  Division among Americans on issues ranging from taxes to...

Peter Gleysteen is the CEO of AGL Credit. Before AGL he had two prior employers, JPMorgan Chase and CIFC, a loan asset manager he founded. More recently he built CIFC Asset Management into a leading private debt manager with $13B in AUM, serving as founder and CEO from 2005-2014. Syndicated bank loans are a non-traditional asset class in that they’re not securities, but loans, meaning they’re not...

Sarah Kunst is the managing director of Cleo Capital. Sarah is an investor and entrepreneur who has worked at Apple, Red Bull, Chanel & Mohr Davidow Ventures. She is also a contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine. She founded LA Dodgers backed Proday and has served as a senior advisor at Bumble where she focused on Bumble Fund, their corporate venture capital arm. She is also on the board...

Christopher Toomey, a partner of a top NYC-based Private Wealth Management team managing ~$5 billion in client assets. Their clients include high net worth individuals, family offices, foundations and organizations, money management principals, institutional money managers, small-cap banks and offshore investors.  With regard to tech stocks, “there’s a reason why tech companies have outperformed s...

Matt Salloway is an international business executive, venture capitalist, investor and attorney. He serves as the Chief Executive Officer of GSI Ventures, a top 50 Global Family Office, with a focus on venture capital and portfolio market expansion into the MENA region. Matt is also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SIP Global Partners (“SIP”), an independent, cross-border venture capital fir...