We've just revealed the first round of speakers at our annual WIRED Business Conference and, well, you're probably going to want to hear what they have to say. The lineup includes an essential range of leaders reinventing tech and transportation, business and culture—not to mention the culture of business. It's a live version of what you read in WIRED every day.
As we reported in our February cover story, GM CEO Mary Barra has led the century-old automaker's push to build the world's first truly affordable, long-range electric car, the Chevy Bolt EV. We'll be looking to hear from her about how Detroit beat Silicon Valley to create the future of getting from here to there.
Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz recently led his secretive "mixed reality" startup to land the biggest Series C round in history. So far, the company has released just a few short teaser videos to give the public a peak at its potentially transformative tech. And now it has nearly $800 million more to play with.
Carlton Cuse is maybe best known as an executive producer and co-showrunner on Lost, which rejuvenated the serial format that's become the definitive way TV is made in the streaming era. Since then, he's only become more prolific as showrunner on Bates Motel, The Strain, and Colony, among his many projects.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is the founder and CEO of video-shopping startup Joyus as well as the founder of theBoardlist, a marketplace for female business talent that aims to close the gender gap in the boardroom. Ryan Green is the creator of That Dragon, Cancer, a video game about his young son's cancer diagnosis, whose story we told earlier this year.
As managing director and executive producer of Funny or Die D.C., Brad Jenkins faces the formidable challenge of satirizing a presidential race that seems to parody itself on a daily basis. Nancy Lublin had the realization that to truly help young people in crisis, you needed to communicate with them the way they communicate, which led her to found Crisis Text Line.
As president and managing partner of BBG Ventures, Susan Lyne seeks out startups with female founders to tap what the firm describes as one of venture capital's great under-realized opportunities. At Red Bull North America, Director of High Performance Andy Walshe helps athletes hack their real potential (he also helped Felix Baumgartner jump from the stratosphere).
We'll be releasing the names of more speakers soon—oh, say, around the time we reveal who's on our annual Next List of the most important doers in business, coming in the May issue. That's ahead of the conference itself, which takes place June 16 in New York City.
- Correction at 9:53 a.m. on 3/24/16: We updated the spelling of Rony Abovitz's name. *
