Heriberto responsible for Corporate Ventures and External Innovation at Schneider Electric.  He is responsible for Schneider-Electric’s open innovation and incubation programs, and its investments in start-up and growth companies. Heri brings a breadth of experience to this role as he is an Global Business Leader with extensive experience running large companies, being a high-tech entrepreneur, and an angel investor.

He has a track record of delivering above market performance, proficiency at opening new markets, gaining market share in existing ones, and optimizing a global supply chain accordingly.  He has managed many geographic regions in world-class multinationals, a global automotive company, lived in 9 countries on 3 continents and speaks three languages.

Heriberto’s career started in an NGO managing unpaid volunteers, which taught him the leadership skills of how to create an environment providing intrinsic motivation to create high-performing teams.  He has experience in 6 different industries from Building Materials, to Transportation, Infrastructure, Automotive,  IoT, and Energy that has only enhanced his ability to develop a keen sense of understanding the winning strategy and right action plans to take.

Heriberto is a graduate of Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He is a Mexican and French National and enjoys skiing, singing and scuba diving.

Irene Arias Hofman is the CEO of IDB Lab, the innovation laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, the leading source of development finance for Latin America and the Caribbean. The purpose of IDB Lab is to drive innovation for inclusion by supporting early-stage entrepreneurial solutions capable of transforming the lives of vulnerable populations.

Previously, Irene worked for 20 years at the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where she managed the Financial Institutions Group and also the LAC region with its 16-billiondollar portfolio. Her focus has been on innovation and technology, venture capital, and organizational development.

With over 25 years of experience in the industrial software sector, Jim Chappell is currently global head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Advanced Analytics across AVEVA’s business units, products, and markets.  Prior, he led the Asset Performance Management (APM) suite of software products and related engineering/analytics services for Schneider Electric.   He was also a founding partner and COO of InStep Software, a global leader in industrial AI-driven Predictive Analytics and enterprise Big Data software, acquired by Schneider Electric in 2014.

Early in his career, Jim was an officer in the U.S. Nuclear Navy where he was trained to command and control nuclear reactors and held a Top Secret security clearance.  He holds a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando, FL, and a M.B.A. from Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii.  In addition, he graduated from the Civil Engineer Corps Officer's School (CECOS) in Port Hueneme, CA.

jean Louis Stasi has the direct responsibility of building long-lasting strategic partnerships between business of Schneider Electric and the most innovative Start Ups; with the goal of accelerating the innovation cycle, creating new channels & growth engines for the business.

His mission is to help start-ups succeed with Schneider Electric and to drive a culture of open and collaborative innovation.

John Absmeier is Chief Technology Officer of Lear Corporation and leads all aspects of the company's technology and innovation efforts.

Mr. Absmeier has outstanding academic credentials and deep automotive technology, engineering and business experience. Most recently, he was responsible for the ADAS/Autonomous business unit as Senior Vice President and General Manager at Harman International, and the Vice President of Smart Machines at Samsung Electronics, where he led the acquisition of Harman by Samsung. He joined Samsung in 2015 from Delphi, where he had a 19-year career and held job roles such as Founder and Managing Director of Delphi Labs @ Silicon Valley and Autonomous Driving, as well as Business Director for Electronic Controls and Electrification in Asia-Pacific.

Mr. Absmeier also held several roles of increasing responsibility at Delphi in the areas of Hybrid and Electric vehicles, Fuel Cells and Telematics. He joined Delphi after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and earning a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. John also has a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Master in Management Technology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Julie Vargas leads the Global RFID Market Development team for the food sector, where RFID is building new capabilities for supply-chain traceability, inventory optimization and convenience retail. Her global team drives accelerated market adoption of the core use cases for digital identity in food service, grocery and supply chains worldwide.

Julie joined Avery Dennison in 2011 and has spent the last decade at the intersection of digital and physical retail. As Director of Digital Solutions, she led brand and retail partnerships in on-product innovation and helped shape the vision for the “Internet of Clothing”. During her tenure at Avery Dennison, Julie has also partnered with apparel and footwear retailers and brands to implement innovative RFID and brand protection strategies. Prior to joining Avery Dennison, Julie led product and business development for interactive RFID experiences in Latin America and was a senior analyst at Coach, where she helped launch the buy online/pick up in-store program.

Julie has shared her expertise at global events, including SXSW, the Economist Feeding the Future, Greenbiz VERGE, the GS1 Digital Convergence Forum, PI Apparel, RFID Journal, the Internet of Things Summit and Label Summit Latin America. She holds a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Juergen Bilo is Managing Director of co-pace, the Startup Organization of Continental. Prior, Juergen led Strategy and Innovation for Corporate Systems and Technology, Continental’s cross divisional corporate function. Juergen started his career with VDO A. Schindling AG as Embedded Microcontroller Software Engineer further advancing to management roles in several areas. Throughout his career, Juergen accompanied several acquisitions, from VDO A. Schindling AG, to Mannesmann VDO, Siemens VDO on to Continental AG. In these companies, Juergen held several senior leadership roles as Managing Director and Vice President in Germany and the US, spanning from Displays, Instrument Clusters, Haptic- and Climate Controls and Hybrid Electric Vehicles. Thereby gaining a well-rounded perspective of automotive technologies and operations, which he greatly leverages for the success of co-pace. Juergen holds a Degree in Electrical Engineering, Business Administration and an Executive Management Education of Babson College USA.

Karin Gattegno is Chief Business Officer at Start-Up Nation Central, building links between Israel – the Start-up Nation, and companies, countries, governments, and entrepreneurs worldwide, connecting them to the Israeli innovation and tech ecosystem.

Karin has over a decade of experience working with High-Tech companies. Prior to joining Start-Up Nation Central, she headed up the Hi-Tech business development in PwC Israel, working with hundreds of start-ups and advising them on various issues including fundraising and M&A's. Before this, Karin worked at Tamir Fishman, a local investment house, as an investment banker in the Corporate Finance department and then as the head of operations and investor relations of DFJ-Tamir Fishman, the local affiliation of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Laila is an investor, serial entrepreneur, and Fortune 100 trained executive who enjoys working with fast growing technology companies. As a Techstars Managing Director, she works in partnership with Stanley Black & Decker on an accelerator, investing in startups building Artificial Intelligence solutions for Advanced Manufacturing.  In the 12 years leading up to this role, Laila founded and led a range of start-ups from communications technology spin-outs out of Caltech and MIT to innovative mobile and SaaS companies in retail and sustainability.  She has strong operational and technology innovation training from her tenure at Intel Capital, Intel’s venture capital arm. Laila was an investor and group manager during Intel Capital's formative years, investing in early enabling technologies such as RIM (the first mobile email provider) and in Red Hat and VA Linux (early leaders in the Linux/Open Source market).  While at Intel, she was also part of the executive team that launched Itanium® microprocessor family; her formation of the Intel® 64 Fund provided the basis for a Harvard Business School's case study.  Laila has a BA with Honors from Wellesley College.

Leyre Madariaga is a Bachelor of Economics and Business Sciences. A great part of her professional experience has been directed towards International Relations and Foreign Trade, and especially those with a high technological component.

Her most recent positions have been since 2013, Director for Foreign Affairs at the Basque Government President’s Office and since 2020, she is the Director for Digital Transformation and Entrepreneurship at Basque Government too

Lior is a business and technology veteran which brings to Grove Ventures experience in the entire life cycle of a startup. Lior is the founder of SolarEdge (NASDAQ:SEDG), and took part in inventing and developing the company’s technology, and saw it grow from a small startup to a $1B-revenue global company with a market leadership position in the smart and renewable energy markets.

In his last role at the company, Lior served as SolarEdge’s Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy in which he was responsible for defining and steering the company’s strategic global marketing activities, media outreach, product roadmap, corporate strategy, and corporate business development.

Prior to founding SolarEdge, Lior spent 11 years leading research and development teams and directing large-scale, multidisciplinary research and development projects in the fields of power electronics, analog design, communications and signal processing.

Lior holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (cum laude) and an MBA from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Liran Akavia is a serial entrepreneur and sales leader in the fields of AI and manufacturing. He is the co-founder and COO of Seebo, an industrial Artificial Intelligence start-up that helps tier-one manufacturers around the world to predict and prevent quality and yield losses.

Lotan has been an early stage technology investor since 2012, with a special interest in IoT, Digital Health and Enterprise IT. He is leading Grove Ventures’ Industry 4.0 and Cloud Infrastructure investment strategy and he is the founder of the Israeli Industrial IoT Forum and the II4 conference. Prior to joining Grove Ventures, Lotan was a Strategic Consultant at TASC, an international management consultancy firm, where he focused on the Telecommunication sector. Lotan served as a commander in an elite Israeli Air Force Intelligence unit, where he was honored with an Award of Excellence and took part of a team that was nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Award by the head of Unit 8200 (Israel’s NSA).

He currently serves on the boards of 3DSignals, Lumigo, RapidAPI, Navina and BeyondMinds. Lotan holds a Bachelor of Law degree (LLB) and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree (BA) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.