LeadershIP 2026 Speakers

Steve Akerley, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Global Head of Litigation, InterDigital

Steve is the global head of litigation for InterDigital, one of the world’s largest and most successful pure research and development companies. Since joining InterDigital in 2020, Steve and his team have been at the forefront of the rapidly developing international legal landscape for cases involving standard essential patents. Prior to joining InterDigital, he was in private practice at several international firms where he litigated and tried company-critical patent cases for both patent owners and accused infringers. At InterDigital, Steve has been recognized repeatedly by IAM in its Global Strategy 300 and, in private practice, as one of the country’s top patent litigators by the National Law Journal, the Daily Journal and other peer-nominated reviews.

Prof. Jonathan Barnett, Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law, University of Southern California

Jonathan M. Barnett is the Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law at the University of Southern California School of Law. He is the author of Innovators, Firms, and Markets: The Organizational Logic of Intellectual Property (Oxford University Press 2021) and has published widely in scholarly journals on antitrust and intellectual property law and policy. He also comments and speaks regularly on legal, policy, and business developments in these areas. Prior to academia, he practiced corporate law at Cleary Gottlieb in New York.

Mark Cohen, Senior Technology Fellow, Asia Society of Northern California; Edison Fellow, University of Akron School of Law

Mark currently serves as the Senior Technology Fellow of the Asia Society of Northern California and the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, DC. He is also a research fellow of the IP Policy Institute at the University of Akron School of Law, as well as the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and the University of California at San Diego. He previously served as the first USPTO representative in China, and as Senior Counsel to the USPTO leading its 21 member China team.

In total, Mark has 40 years of private, public sector, in-house, and academic experience in China and transition economies, with a focus on such issues as technology trade and monetizing intellectual property. Mark has been involved in Chinese technology transfer matters as a government official, academic, senior corporate executive, attorney and expert witness. During his diplomatic service he started the US-China IP Dialogue, the US Embassy IP Task Force, the US IP Attache program, the China Resource Center at USPTO, and the China Office at USPTO. Apart from his diplomatic service, he instituted the Track II US-China IP Dialogue under the US Chamber of Commerce, as the US-India “Track 1.5” IP Dialogue with India.

In 2018 Mark was the recipient of the Meritorious Honor award from President Trump for his service on Chinese IP licensing issues. This is the highest award offered to a civil servant in the federal government. He also received a Gold Medal award from the Secretary of Commerce for his work on promoting rule of law through intellectual property. Mark has been recognized as a “Top 300” Global IP Strategist by Intellectual Asset Management magazine, an IP “Trailblazer” by the National Law Journal, an “IP Champion” by the US Chamber of Commerce, and a leading “IP Diplomat” by PhRMA. He has been tested as fluent to near fluent in Chinese language by the State Department Foreign Service Institute.

Mark has authored numerous publications, including serving as the editor and author of the blog www.chinaipr.com. His recent areas of research have included mistranslations of “FRAND” by Chinese courts, cross-border trademark legal ethics (US/China), the role of anti-suit injunctions in settling global FRAND disputes, IP intensive industries and supply chain disruptions, and the geopolitical influences on China’s approach to pharmaceutical IP issues. He holds a J.D. degree from Columbia University, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin (Chinese Language and Literature), and a B.A. from the State University of New York. He is admitted to the District of Columbia Bar (Chinese Studies).

Tonya L. Combs, Sr. Vice President – General Patent Counsel, Eli Lilly and Company

Tonya Combs currently serves as Sr. Vice President, General Patent Counsel, where she advises senior leaders at Eli Lilly and Company on IP strategy. She also has the good fortune to lead a group of talented and experienced patent and trademark professionals responsible for global patent and trademark procurement (drafting and prosecuting), maintenance, litigation, and enforcement for Lilly. In addition, she and her team assess third party patents for potential impact on Lilly’s development efforts and value in business due diligence.

Ms. Combs started her career at Lilly as a chemical engineer in research and development with responsibility for optimizing scale up of clinical trial material. She’s held a number of positions of increasing responsibility in Lilly Legal, focusing on patent preparation and prosecution, multi-jurisdictional patent litigation, brand support, trade secret protection and enforcement, general counsel for the oncology business unit, and others. Ms. Combs joined Lilly Research Labs in 2001 after receiving a B.S. in chemical engineering from Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. She received a J.D. summa cum laude from IU McKinney School of Law in 2006. She currently sits on the IPO Board of Directors where she also serves on the Executive Committee and as the board liaison to IPO’s Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Issues Committee, and is active in AIPLA, where she was named a Woman to Watch in January 2019. Ms. Combs also serves on the boards of, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and the Foundation for Advancement of Diversity in IP Law.

Walter G. Copan, Senior Adviser (Non-Resident), Renewing American Innovation, CSIS

Dr. Walter Copan is senior adviser of the Renewing American Innovation Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Currently, he serves as vice president for research and technology transfer at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He previously served as under secretary of commerce for standards and technology and 16th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. He served as the U.S. principal presidential adviser on standards policy and technology matters and provided high-level oversight and strategic leadership for NIST, a world-leading science and technology institute. Under his widely acclaimed leadership, he spearheaded streamlining and modernization of foundational policies and practices for innovation and technology transfer arising from federally funded research to benefit the economy and society. Dr. Copan is a distinguished leader with wide-ranging experience spanning large company, entrepreneurial tech start-up, U.S. government, nonprofit, and other public sector settings. For the U.S. government, he also served with two of the Department of Energy national laboratories: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a sought-after speaker and thought leader on matters of science and technology, strategy, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, intellectual property, and innovation. Dr. Copan began his career in research and development and business leadership at the Lubrizol Corporation. He earned undergraduate degrees and his PhD in physical chemistry from Case Western Reserve University and holds a certificate in advanced business administration studies at Harvard Business School. He was named 2020 laboratory director of the year by the U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium. The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) recognized Dr. Copan with its 2021 Bayh-Dole Award for contributions to innovation and technology transfer.

Angela Dunning, Partner, Cleary Gottlieb

Based in Silicon Valley, California, Angela has 25 years’ experience litigating copyright, trademark, trade secrets, unfair competition, and other complex commercial litigation for the world’s top technology companies. She is currently defending several leading AI developers in lawsuits alleging copyright and trademark claims arising out of the training and outputs of generative AI models and helped secure a recent ruling that Meta Platforms’ training of its Llama large language models is fair use and not infringing. Angela’s work and thought leadership on AI is internationally recognized by universities, boards of directors, industry associations, and organizations such as TED AI. She is a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and teaches trademark law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Dr. Francesca Ferrari, Professor, University of Insubria

Francesca Ferrari, a professor of Civil Procedure Law at the University of Insubria – Como/Varese, has an extensive academic background, having served as a visiting scholar at both Harvard Law School and Maastricht University. She holds the qualification for full professorship both in Civil Procedure and in Comparative Law. She boasts a prolific publication record, with over one hundred works focusing on civil procedure and IP subjects, including four books and numerous essays published in esteemed journals. She previously held the position of IP and Consumer Protection attaché at the Italian Permanent Representation at the European Union, appointed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, until June of 2025. In addition to her academic pursuits, she is also an experienced lawyer and had been partner and of counsel of several law firms in Milan, the latter being Eptalex, with offices in Beirut, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. Ferrari's professional trajectory has endowed her with profound insights into IP law, particularly in transnational litigation involving patents and trademarks, with a focus on pharmaceuticals. She also possesses expertise in copyright law, particularly in relation to emerging technologies and artificial intelligence as well as in antitrust law. Actively engaged in scholarly communities, Ferrari is a member of several scientific associations and seats in the editorial boards of prestigious journals. She is frequently invited to speak at both domestic and international conferences on civil procedure and IP-related matters.

Navin Girishankar, President, Economic Security and Technology Department

Navin Girishankar is president of the Economic Security and Technology Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He leads a bipartisan team of over 40 resident staff and an extensive network of non-resident affiliates dedicated to providing independent research and strategic insights on economic and technology policies and their critical role in competitiveness as well as national security.

Prior to joining CSIS, Navin served as Counselor to the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce on a wide range of domestic and international issues. In that role, he crafted the Department of Commerce’s place-based framework for industrial investments in chips, broadband, and other strategic technologies; its approach to U.S.-China economic relations; and U.S. economic diplomacy efforts with allies in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Global South, including the U.S. commercial engagement strategy for the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and the first-ever Department-wide Africa strategy. Navin also helped architect the Department’s national security approach to critical and emerging technologies and threats covering investment screening, export controls, and strategic capital deployment.

Prior to his service in U.S. government, Navin held senior commercial roles at Bridgewater Associates, where he worked with founder Ray Dalio advising the largest institutional investors in the Middle East and Asia. Prior to his work in asset management, Navin spent over 20 years at the World Bank, where he held senior policy, country, finance, and evaluation roles. Over his career at the World Bank, Navin led a number of major initiatives including the Bank’s 2015 trade and competitiveness strategy, Expanding Market Opportunity and Enabling Private Initiative for Dynamic Economies; its 2011 flagship evaluation, World Bank Country-Level Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption; and the first-of-its-kind 2009 study, Innovating Development Finance: From Financing Sources to Financing Solutions. He also authored numerous articles and papers on economic, fiscal, and innovation policy; sustainable finance; governance and state-building; and evaluation.

He holds a masters in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor of arts in economics with a minor in African and Middle East studies from Williams College. He is a percussionist in the Indian classical tradition and a student of various meditation traditions.

Dr. Kirti Gupta, Executive Director, LeadershIP; Senior Adviser (Non-resident), Renewing American Innovation, CSIS

Kirti Gupta is a noted economist and expert specializing in global matters related to technology, antitrust, and intellectual property (IP). Dr. Gupta’s diverse expertise spans engineering, product, litigation, and policy issues in the technology sector. She has more than 20 years of experience working at the forefront of technologies, including mobile/wireless telecommunications, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. She currently serves as vice president and chief economist of global technology at Cornerstone Research, leading their technology, digital economy, and artificial intelligence practice. Before joining Cornerstone Research, Dr. Gupta was a vice president and chief economist at Qualcomm Inc. In this role, she provided economic analysis and strategic guidance on global technology, IP, antitrust, and macroeconomic policy issues in collaboration with business stakeholders and a global network of experts, economists, attorneys, and policymakers. She worked directly on Qualcomm’s strategic IP initiatives, antitrust investigations in various regions around the world, global litigation matters, mergers and acquisitions, and global trade issues. She is a cofounder and executive director of the IPLeadershIP platform, which convenes timely dialogues on IP and antitrust policy issues on a regular basis. She is also the executive director at the Institute for Business Innovation at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley; is a coinventor of over 40 patents in the field of wireless communications; and has published in various policy, law, and economics journals. Dr. Gupta holds an MS in electrical engineering from Purdue University and a PhD in economics from the University of California, San Diego.

Annette Hurst, Partner and Global AI Practice Lead, Orrick

Annette L. Hurst, a partner in the San Francisco Office and Intellectual Property trial lawyer, is the firm’s Worldwide Tech Sector Leader and also coordinates its interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence practice.

Annette is an experienced trial lawyer who has tried copyright, trade secret, trademark, patent and business tort claims. As a risk analyst and problem solver with deep proficiency in the software industry, Annette is a go-to counselor and speaker regarding the legal issues surrounding access and use of datasets in the development of machine learning algorithms. She was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for her work as co-lead counsel on the Mattel/MGA case. Chambers USA ranks her in Band 1 for Trademark, Copyright & Trade Secrets, with clients reporting that she is “smart, creative and terrific at oral argument” and “a very well-known authority in copyright law, a great advocate and a great trial lawyer.” Chambers reports: “Clients agree that Annette Hurst is ‘a very powerful and experienced trial lawyer for copyright cases, and a good team leader who is reliable before judges,” and “Peers consider Annette Hurst a ‘remarkably intuitive’ lawyer who ‘brings unique perspectives to soft IP cases.” Since 2018, The Legal 500 has recognized Annette as a “Leading Lawyer” in copyright law, and she was named “Female Litigator of the Year West” by Benchmark Litigation in 2013. Annette has been repeatedly named one of the top 75 IP litigators in California by The Daily Journal.

Annette’s community and professional activities include past service on the Northern District of California Patent Local Rules Committee, President of the Lafayette Elementary School PTA, and past membership on the Board of Directors of the Volunteer Legal Services Program and Board of Directors of the Bar Association of San Francisco for which she was chair of the Finance and Investments Committee. She also is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco and the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, Northern California Chapter, as well as a past president of the Barristers Club.

Hon. Andrei Iancu, Senior Adviser (Non-resident), Renewing American Innovation, CSIS

Andrei Iancu is senior adviser of the Renewing American Innovation (RAI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. In this role, Mr. Iancu led an agency with approximately 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3.5 billion. He was also the principal adviser in the administration on domestic and international intellectual property (IP) policy matters. Currently, Mr. Iancu is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell. Before that, he was a partner at Irell & Manella LLP, where he worked prior to government service. Mr. Iancu has also taught patent law at the UCLA School of Law. Earlier in his career, he was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. Mr. Iancu is a sought-after speaker and has had hundreds of engagements on IP and innovation policy issues. One of his speeches received the 2020 Cicero Speechwriting Award in two separate categories: public policy and technology. Mr. Iancu has also written on a variety of IP issues. The Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society recognized one of his articles as "the greatest contribution to the fields of patents, trademarks and copyrights" in the publication year. Recently, and among many other recognitions, he received the IP Champion Award from the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation for “his extraordinary leadership in advocating for the value of intellectual property to stimulate the progress of innovation.”

Steve Jedlinski, Chief Legal Officer, Sisvel; President, Sisvel US

Steve Jedlinski is Chief Legal Officer of the Sisvel Group, Europe’s largest and most established patent pool operator. In this global role, he oversees all legal affairs for the organization, providing strategic guidance on matters ranging from licensing and litigation to pool formation and policy. Steve also serves as President of Sisvel US, where he leads the Group’s operations and growth initiatives in North America.

With nearly two decades of private practice experience, Steve brings a unique blend of courtroom acumen and transactional insight to Sisvel. Prior to joining Sisvel in 2024, Steve was an equity partner in the IP Group at Holland & Knight LLP, an AmLaw 30 firm. There, he earned a reputation as a formidable trial lawyer and trusted strategic advisor. His work in the standard‑essential patent arena dates back to representing an implementer in the landmark Innovatio IP case in the United States, and he has remained deeply involved in SEP matters ever since.

Steve holds a J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. He is also a registered U.S. patent attorney.

Dina Kallay, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International, Policy and Appellate, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Dina Kallay serves as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International, Policy and Appellate. Before joining the Antitrust Division, she was global Head of Competition Law at Ericsson. From 2006-2013, Dina served as Counsel for Intellectual Property & International Antitrust at the Federal Trade Commission. Earlier in her career she practiced law at several law firms, most recently with Howrey LLP in Washington DC, and worked at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) in Brussels, Belgium. >

Dina received her LL.B. magna cum laude and B.A. in economics from Tel Aviv University (1996), and her LL.M. (International Economic Law) (1998) and S.J.D. (2003) from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she was a student of former AAG for Antitrust, Professor Tom Kauper.

She has taught antitrust and intellectual property at several universities and is a frequent writer and speaker on antitrust issues, including international antitrust and the antitrust-intellectual property interface.

Kyle Mach, Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell

Kyle Mach is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Palo Alto office and a member of the Firm’s Antitrust Group. A former Deputy Director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition and a deeply experienced trial lawyer, Mr. Mach brings decades of experience from the FTC and private practice to his representation of clients in a range of complex litigation, merger clearance, antitrust counseling and regulatory matters.

At the FTC, Mr. Mach oversaw three of the four sections of the Bureau of Competition that evaluate and challenge proposed mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Mach and his teams evaluated transactions representing hundreds of billions of dollars in value in a wide variety of industries, and successfully blocked several mergers through litigation. For example, Mr. Mach and his FTC team successfully sued to block Tapestry’s proposed $8.5 billion acquisition of rival Capri. Mr. Mach also served as the FTC’s lead negotiator for the groundbreaking consent decree in connection with the $60 billion Exxon-Pioneer merger.

Prior to joining the FTC, Mr. Mach counseled clients on a wide variety of antitrust matters and was central to some of the most significant antitrust trials in the last two decades. For example, Mr. Mach served as counsel for Texas doormaker Steves & Sons in litigation resulting in the first ever victory for a private party seeking to enforce Section 7 of the Clayton Act to unwind a consummated merger.

Kevin Madigan, Senior Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs, Copyright Alliance

Kevin Madigan is SVP, Policy and Government Affairs at the Copyright Alliance. Kevin joined the Copyright Alliance in early 2020 after four years at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Serving most recently as CPIP’s Deputy Director, Kevin conducted academic and policy work across all areas of intellectual property law.

Kevin’s work in copyright includes drafting amicus briefs, regulatory comments, policy papers, and essays on diverse topics such as artificial intelligence, online piracy and enforcement, anticircumvention, standard technical measures, sovereign immunity, licensing, and Copyright Office modernization. He has authored law review articles on patent and trade secret policy issues, and he blogs at mistercopyright.org. In addition to being a lawyer and advocate for the rights of creators, Kevin is a visual artist, musician, and registered copyright owner.

Kevin holds a B.A. from Boston College, a J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law, and an LL.M. in Intellectual Property Law from George Washington University Law School. He is admitted to practice law in Maryland and Washington, DC.

Tim Marquart, Senior Associate General Counsel IP - Gilead Sciences

Tim Marquart is a senior intellectual property executive with extensive experience at the intersection of patent law, innovation, and life‑sciences policy. He currently serves as Senior Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property at Gilead Sciences where he leads Gilead’s Patent Strategy and Analytics Team. As part of his role, Tim oversees global patent strategy supporting the discovery, development, and commercialization of Gilead’s medicines.

Tim brings a practitioner’s perspective to intellectual property policy discussions, informed by more than two decades of experience spanning in‑house leadership, private practice, and scientific research. Prior to joining Gilead, he held IP roles at Nektar Therapeutics and practiced patent law at Finnegan, advising clients on patent prosecution and strategic portfolio development in the life sciences and chemical arts.

His career began on the scientific side of innovation, having worked as a medicinal chemist at CV Therapeutics. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law.

Robert Merges, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professor of Law, UC Berkeley Law; Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology

Professor Merges is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professor of Law and Technology at U.C. Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, and a Founder and co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, rated the number one Intellectual Property program among U.S. law schools for nineteen of the past twenty years, including 2020, according to US News and World Report. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools.

He has authored or coauthored ten books, including Justifying Intellectual Property (Harvard, 2011), Transnational Intellectual Property, (2018), IP Strategy for Business (with Helen Liu; published in Chinese and English, 2020); and, most recently American Patent Law: A Business and Economic History (Cambridge University Press 2023). He has also edited six other books. He is the original author of the most influential and widely adopted patent law casebook in the U.S., Patent Law and Policy (8th ed., forthcoming 2021). He is also a co-author of the leading casebook on intellectual property, which is also used in many major law schools.

Professor Merges has written numerous articles on the economics and philosophy of intellectual property. Several of his articles have been cited in opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has taught and lectured overseas in Germany, England, France, Italy, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Japan. His book Justifying Intellectual Property has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

He has testified numerous times as an expert on IP issues before the US Senate and House of Representatives. He has also consulted with leading law firms and companies including Microsoft, Apple, SAP Software, Eli Lilly, and Honeywell, Inc. In 2008 he co-founded and became a Managing Director of the IP business and investment firm Ovidian, Inc., in Berkeley, California, which was acquired in a successful buyout in 2010.

Professor Merges received his B.S. degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and Ll.M. and JSD degrees from Columbia Law School.

Judge Paul Michel, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Ret)

Judge Paul R Michel served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from March, 1988 through May, 2010 and as its chief judge from December, 2004 to May 31, 2010 when he retired from the judiciary in order to speak freely on the nation’s need for a stronger patent system. In pursuit of that goal, he has written dozens of articles and numerous amicus briefs for the Federal Circuit, the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court. The articles have been published in both general media and IP media, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek magazine, STAT, Boston Sunday Globe, Fortune, Thompson-Reuters, International Business Times, The Hill, Roll Call, Bloomberg Law, the National Review and IPWatchdog, among many others. He has co-authored scholarly articles, including for the Berkeley Law School and Business School journals and the Drake University Law Review. At IP conferences, he is a ubiquitous panelist and a frequent keynote speaker. He has been called repeatedly to testify before the IP committees in Congress, including on the urgent need to reform the law of eligibility. Managing Intellectual Property magazine named him one the 50 most influential leaders in intellectual property law in the world and Intellectual Asset Management magazine inducted him into its international Hall of Fame. He serves on the boards of the IPO Education Foundation and the U.S. IP Alliance. A graduate of Williams College and the University of Virginia Law School, he was awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degrees by John Marshall Law School and The Catholic University of America. Previously, he was an assistant Watergate special prosecutor, assistant counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Korea-gate prosecutor, associate deputy attorney general, and chief of staff and counsel to Senator Arlen Specter.

Rep. Deborah Ross, United States House of Representatives

Congresswoman Deborah Ross is a civil rights advocate, a clean energy champion, a lawyer, and a proud North Carolinian. She was sworn into the House of Representatives on January 3, 2025, for her third term representing North Carolina’s Second Congressional District, which includes most of Wake County.

She serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. She is also a member of House Democrats’ leadership team, serving as a Chief Deputy Whip and on the Steering and Policy Committee. In her first two terms, Deborah became a leading voice on issues ranging from women’s health and health care access to immigration reform and clean energy technology.

She graduated from law school at UNC-Chapel Hill and entered public service in 2002, when she ran for and won a seat representing Wake County in the North Carolina House of Representatives, where she went on to serve for more than a decade. Prior to serving in public office, Deborah worked as a civil rights lawyer, helping to pass the South’s first anti-racial profiling law and reforms to the state’s juvenile justice laws. Later, in private practice, she worked to build North Carolina’s clean energy future, helping to create thousands of jobs in the renewable energy sector.

Sujai Shivakumar, Director and Senior Fellow, Renewing American Innovation, CSIS

Sujai Shivakumar directs Renewing American Innovation (RAI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he also serves as a senior fellow. Dr. Shivakumar brings over two decades of experience in policy studies related to U.S. competitiveness and innovation. Previously, he directed the Innovation Policy Forum at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and led major studies of U.S. policies supporting advanced manufacturing, small business growth, workforce development, and entrepreneurship. He was also a lead contributor to a seminal National Academies study of strategies adopted by U.S. states and regions to foster entrepreneurship, drive technology transfer, and encourage regional high-tech ecosystems. He also helped prepare National Academy of Public Administration studies on laboratory technology transfer and the management of space situational awareness. Reflecting his expertise in innovation policy, Dr. Shivakumar has testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and has been quoted in leading publications such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. His academic background includes a doctorate in economics from George Mason University and service as an Earhart Foundation scholar at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington, where he authored The Constitution of Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and coauthored with Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom The Samaritan’s Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid (Oxford University Press, 2005). During his tenure at the National Academies, he contributed to over 50 assessments of U.S. and foreign innovation programs.

Christian Smolizza, Chief Patent Counsel Oncology, VP & Assistant General Counsel, Pfizer Inc.

Christian Smolizza is a Vice President and Chief Patent Counsel for Oncology at Pfizer Inc. based in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Christian has been at Pfizer for over 20 years and in his current role he leads a global team of patent attorneys and agents responsible for providing strategic intellectual property support for discovery through commercialization of small and large molecules. Prior to joining Pfizer, Christian worked as an associate at a New York based intellectual property law firm where his practice focused on patent procurement, client counseling and Hatch-Waxman litigation. Christian is a registered patent attorney before the United States Patent and Trademark Office and is admitted to practice in New York and Pennsylvania. He earned his law degree (JD) from St. John’s School of Law and holds a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Coke Morgan Stewart, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office

Coke Morgan Stewart is the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Most recently, Ms. Stewart served as Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of the USPTO, where she led one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world—almost a $5 billion operation with over 14,000 employees located across the 50 states and Puerto Rico.

Ms. Stewart worked at the USPTO for 10 years, from 2011 to 2021, and re-joined the agency on January 20, 2025. During her tenure at the USPTO, Coke served in many important roles, including as Acting Deputy Under Secretary and Acting Deputy Director, Acting Chief of Staff, Counsel to the Director, Senior Policy Advisor, Acting Deputy Solicitor, and Associate Solicitor. In these roles, she defended agency decisions in federal court and advised multiple administrations on a wide array of legal and policy matters, from patent eligibility to drug pricing to artificial intelligence. She was honored with numerous awards, including “Litigator of the Year” and Special Act Awards for her work supporting the agency during the pandemic and the 2020-2021 presidential transition.

Ms. Stewart has a distinguished career in intellectual property litigation. She has handled 70 appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She has advised the Department of Justice Civil Appellate Staff and the Office of the Solicitor General on dozens of patent, trademark, and copyright cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. And she has overseen administrative law cases, defending agency practices and procedures in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

In private practice, Ms. Stewart represented both patent holders and accused infringers in patent infringement cases throughout the United States, including in the Eastern District of Texas. In one of her first patent cases, she successfully represented a small technology company in a patent litigation that resulted in the eighth-largest jury verdict in federal court that year and the then-largest patent infringement jury award in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Ms. Stewart most recently practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in the Intellectual Property and Technology group. Prior to that, she served as Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, supervising 150 attorneys and professionals in the areas of healthcare, education, and social services, and overseeing hundreds of active federal and state court cases and internal investigations. Prior to her Deputy Attorney General role, she taught Appellate Advocacy at the Regent University School of Law.

Ms. Stewart is a graduate of Duke University, cum laude, and the University of Virginia School of Law, where she served as Executive Editor of the Virginia Tax Review and Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Weekly. After law school, Ms. Stewart clerked on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears monetary claims against the U.S. government, including patent cases.

Dr. Arun Sundararajan, Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship, Director, Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation, New York University

Arun Sundararajan is the Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technology, Operations and Statistics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he also serves as Director of the Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation. An internationally recognized expert on AI governance and digital strategy, his best-selling and award-winning book, “The Sharing Economy,” published by the MIT Press, has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and Vietnamese.

Arun’s research studies how digital technologies transform business, government and civil society. He has published numerous scientific papers in peer-reviewed academic journals and conferences, and over 40 op-eds in outlets that include The New York Times, The Financial Times, CNBC, TIME, The Guardian, Wired, Bloomberg View, Le Monde, El Pais, the Economic Times and the Japan Times. His scholarship has been recognized by nine Best Paper awards, two Google Faculty awards, two Microsoft AI Economy Institute Awards, an Axiom Best Business Books Award, and a Thinkers50 Award. He has testified and provided expert input to the United States Congress, the European Parliament, the United Nations and numerous regulators globally. He is a widely sought-after commentator by top media platforms.

Arun co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Data Frontiers and is a member of their AI Governance Alliance. He serves as a board member and advisor to numerous additional organizations, ranging from startups to Fortune 500s.. He has degrees from IIT Madras and the University of Rochester. He is a frequent angel investor.

Sen. Thom Tillis, United States Senate

Senator Thom Tillis was first elected to represent North Carolina in 2014 and is currently serving in his second term after being re-elected in 2020.

Senator Tillis is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Judiciary Committee.

Before serving in the Senate, he was Speaker of the House in the North Carolina General Assembly where he played an instrumental role in enacting job-creating policies and reforming North Carolina’s tax and regulatory codes.

He lives with his wife Susan in Huntersville, North Carolina, and they are the proud parents of two grown children.

Christine Wilson, Partner, Freshfields

Christine leads Freshfield’s US antitrust, competition, and trade practice, and is based in our Washington, DC office. Drawing on 30 years of public and private sector experience at the intersection of law, policy, and politics, Christine counsels clients on how to navigate complex and evolving legal and regulatory regimes to achieve their desired business goals.

Most recently, Christine served as a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) where she helped shape policies and enforcement actions in the fields of antitrust, consumer privacy & data security, and consumer protection. Before joining the FTC, Christine was a Senior Vice President at Delta Air Lines, where she oversaw the carrier’s regulatory and international legal matters. Prior to moving in-house, she was a partner at two international law firms where she worked with clients to achieve regulatory clearance for multi-jurisdictional mergers and to defend businesses in high-stakes investigations.

Her broad sector experience ranges from aircraft and automobiles to veterinary services, video games, and virtual reality. She has worked extensively in the highly regulated fields of airlines, health care, and pharmaceuticals. After leaving the FTC in 2023, Christine founded an organization to provide safe housing and comprehensive support services to survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Freshfields provided pro bono services to the organization, including handling its corporate formation. Christine will continue supporting this organization alongside client practice.

The Future of Global Energy: Insights from the 2026 Statistical Review

NATO Summit and European Strategic Forces Priorities | HTK

Is the United States Winning the Fusion Race? Featuring Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems | Betting on America

The Air Campaign Returns: From Epic Fury to Midnight Hammer

LeadershIP 2026 Speakers

Media Inquiries