Connected Food 

Michael is founder and a partner at FOHBOH.com, a Digital Marketing agency and Restaurant consulting company with offices in Dallas and London. Michael has over 40 years of foodservice industry experience as an operator, developer, financier and serial ResTech entrepreneur. Michael is an Industry influencer, writer, speaker and strategic advisor to restaurant brands, investors and technology innovators on ResTech matters in the U.S, UK and Middle East.

Named a Top 10 Women in Grocery Tech by RIS, Katie Hotze is an innovative leader and entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in digital marketing, data analytics and business strategy.

Katie is the founder and CEO of Grocery Shopii, a Charlotte-based startup that solves a $550B problem in the CPG & Retail industry by reducing cart abandonment with machine learning. Grocery Shopii uses recipes as a recommendation engine to expedite online grocery shopping inside the shopping journey.

Prior to Grocery Shopii, Katie spent 20 years in management and technology consulting where she led global marketing teams for Mercer, the world’s largest HR consultancy, and BearingPoint.

She holds an M.B.A. and Business Analytics certification from William & Mary, and a B.S. in Marketing from Virginia Commonwealth University.

In 2018, Katie was a Direct Marketing News (DMN) 40-Under-40 Award Recipient. She’s also been awarded the Top Women in Grocery honor by Progressive Grocer. Today, she is a regular speaker on both digital and social media topics at conferences in the marketing and grocery retail spaces.

A resident of Charlotte, N.C., Katie is a graduate of UNC-Charlotte’s Ventureprise entrepreneurial program and is an active participant in the city’s tech community.

Up until recently, a 12-year veteran of T-Mobile US, Ali is an XR and 5G industry innovator and inventor. With over 15 technology patents to his name, his most notable works include bringing 5G to XR devices, far edge computing to XR-enabled phones, and on-demand metahuman sign language interpreters. Today Daniali is leading an AgriTech startup called HRVSTS, an indoor Farm-as-a-Service platform connecting hydroponic growers to institutional produce buyers. A hosted digital twin of an indoor vertical farm allows for a future booking of growing capacity, reducing waste in production and supply-chain disruption.

Tinia Pina has a B.S. in Business Information Technology from Virginia Tech. She began her career in sustainability as a former student pursuing a Masters of Science degree at Columbia University prior to becoming the CEO and Founder of Re-Nuble, Inc., an agricultural technology company and social enterprise headquartered in New York City. A strong advocate for sustainable waste management and closed loop agriculture, she has been involved in management and business development roles within the sustainability industry for at least ten years and in finance for eight years. Her professional interests focus on using unique and distributed technologies to extract the optimal value from organic waste streams for closed-loop agriculture for indoor growers.

Precia Carraway leads Walmart’s Last Mile Drone Delivery business strategy and drives expansion while amplifying the company's presence in existing markets. She has deep experience partnering domestic as well as EMEA businesses and has +15 years in the telecom sectors of IOT, connected cars, autonomous vehicles, and drones - developing a full range of static and mobile connective networks. She studied Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University.

An accomplished Sales Management Professional noted as an SME in tactical selling, prospecting, channel management, creating executive level relationships, responsiveness, closing business and repetitively winning major customers. Is recognized for developing strong sales organizations and molding company culture. Has a strong software & semiconductor background and is experienced in M2M, SaaS, Security, IoT, RFID, SCADA, Semiconductor Services and IP.

Johannes Beekman has more than 25 years of experience in manufacturing in the high-tech industry. Johannes has worked for 25 years in the semiconductor industry, where he worked for Philips, Infineon, and Sematech in various management positions in process development, engineering, operations, and sales and marketing. While working for Philips, he was an engineering manager in 2 wafer fab startups. And while at Sematech, he managed various international technical symposia. He has built 3 successful digital marketing companies in the past 8 years. His focus is marketing integration, marketing technology, SEO, and inbound and outbound marketing. And he has developed a content creation system that uses the AIDA model to develop content for every stage of the sales funnel. Johannes has experience working with companies in manufacturing, the high-tech industry, process industry, IT, healthcare, and legal industry, and he has published on several trade-focused websites.

Tiffani Neilson has extensive marketing, branding, and PR experience, as well as deep knowledge about IoT, LPWA, and many other technologies. Tiffani’s passion for delivering excellence is second to none and evident in her skillful ability to transition projects from strategy to seamless execution. Highly skilled in forming partnerships and developing strategic relationships, Tiffani aligns marketing initiatives with business goals to generate interest, demand, and recognition for businesses and their products. Her C-level experience in business, along with her background in product development, event management, and communications help Tiffani position brands as industry leaders and drive ROI.