Dr. Shanté Williams is currently the CEO of Black Pearl Global Investments, a healthcare venture capital firm. She is a distinguished Venture Capitalist, business owner, Inventor, Intellectual Property Strategist, Author, and Private Investor. In her career years, she has used her wealth of scientific knowledge as well as her passion for innovation to solve multiple complex problems across the industries of health, finance, and real estate.

Dr. Williams continues to break barriers with Black Pearl’s fund focused on reducing health disparities across the globe. Black Pearl is an advocate for those that continue to experience inferior outcomes and reduced access. Black Pearl’s tag line “Be Well. Do Well.” captures the firm’s mission to invest in transformative companies around the world. Dr. Williams and her partners are seeking to change healthcare worldwide.

Jonathan Schaeffer is the former University of Alberta’s Dean of Science and a professor in the Department of Computing Science. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In 2001, Schaeffer and three fellow professors birthed the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), and its four founders still guide it today. U of A has been one of the most productive research groups in the world, second only to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and ahead of places like Stanford and MIT. Dr. Schaeffer is world-renowned for his work in applying artificial intelligence and parallel computing techniques to computer game playing. He was the author of the checkers-playing program Chinook, which has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the first computer program to win a human world championship in any game. In 2007, it was announced that he and his colleagues had solved the game of checkers, making it the largest game to be solved to date. Dr. Schaeffer received his B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and holds both an M.Math. degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo.

METADREAMER (also known as Hammad Jutt) is a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) engineer piecing together the web3 puzzle. He primarily focuses on development, design & strategy @ MetaFactory, Coordinape, and MetaCartel Ventures.

Arden provides startup capital to Alberta-based companies through Accelerate Funds II and III, which Yaletown manages with the A100. An accomplished investment professional with more than 15 years of private and public sector experience, he works with portfolio company teams to support their performance and is highly active in the Alberta technology startup community.Throughout his career, Arden has focused on discovering and managing value. As an investment analyst with AIMCo, he took part in the active oversight of environmental, social, and governance issues that impacted AIMCo’s then $70B portfolio of assets, as well as underwriting more than $1 billion in real estate transactions. He also worked in commercial leasing and sales with Barclay Street and Torode Realty.Before joining the Accelerate Fund team, Arden oversaw entrepreneurship development as manager of the University of Alberta’s Venture Mentoring Service. He holds an MBA in finance from the University of Alberta and is a graduate of Royal Roads University’s Certified Executive Coaching program.