2026 Technology M&A Conference

Barbara Blank is Director and Associate General Counsel, Competition and Regulatory, at Meta, where she leads the US team, with global responsibility for the M&A portfolio, alongside investigations, counseling, and regulatory strategy. Before joining Meta in April 2020, Barbara served as Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Anticompetitive Practices Division, where she managed a broad antitrust portfolio and led investigations and litigation in high-tech and digital markets. Previously, Barbara was an associate at WilmerHale.

Jeff Epstein leads Bessemer’s Chief Financial Officer Council, the peer group of all BVP portfolio company finance leaders, and helps portfolio company CEOs and CFOs share best practices.

He is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle.

He serves on the Boards of Directors of Autodesk, AvePoint, Twilio and Zoom. Earlier, he served on the Boards of Directors of Booking Holdings, Kaiser Permanente, and Okta.

Jeff co-teaches the CFO Leadership class at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He co-taught the Lean Launchpad class at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Engineering for many years.

Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as Chief Financial Officer of DoubleClick (sold to Google), King World Productions (sold to CBS) and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at The First Boston Corporation.

He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a BA from Yale College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

Gamiel Gran leads Mayfield’s global CXO network, a highly engaged community of thousands of CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and other enterprise leaders focused on elevating innovation and sharing best practices across the technology ecosystem. These leaders regularly share their priorities, insights and innovation goals with Gamiel and the Mayfield team, creating a unique source of proprietary intelligence that informs Mayfield’s investment perspective and gives portfolio founders a deeper understanding of the needs of today’s enterprise buyers.

A second core pillar of Gamiel’s role is helping Mayfield founders accelerate product-market-fit. He works closely with entrepreneurs on the art of achieving precise—and ideally “violent”—PMF: the point at which the value to the buyer is elegant, certain and quickly realized, creating the conditions for rapid adoption and durable company building.

Gamiel brings more than 25 years of operating and venture experience and focuses extensively on the intersection of enterprise innovation, AI adoption, customer insight, and the next generation of technology companies.

Gamiel is a California native, father of three, and husband of more than 30 years. He loves to give back as a volunteer to his community and to local universities. He frequently supports students and founders who want to turn ideas into businesses.

James Higa is the Founder and Managing Partner of Offline Ventures. Offline is an early stage fund with 136 investments across three funds. Investments in AI companies include OpenClaw, Groq, Mount Thor, Polsia, Quadric, Paperclip, Pi, and River.ai. Prior to Offline Ventures, James was with Index Ventures, whose investments included Robinhood, Figma, Slack, Dropbox, and ScaleAI. James has a long and storied career in Silicon Valley starting with the original Macintosh group in 1984, NeXT Computer, and back to Apple through 2012. He reported directly to Steve Jobs for most of that tenure in Special Ops to change the face of technology and consumer industries.

Sarah James leads the tech, media and telecom news team within S&P Global Market Intelligence. Bringing almost two decades of professional journalism experience to the role, she specializes in writing and editing data-driven, sector-focused financial content. Her extensive reporting spans highly complex industry dynamics, ranging from generative AI investment, data center development, fixed and wireless broadband deployments and market-moving M&A deals.

Sarah is deeply committed to producing fact-based, high-quality financial reporting to drive clarity in the market. In addition to her editorial coverage, she is a frequent moderator at major industry events. Sarah holds a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors degree from the University of Virginia. She is currently based out of South Carolina.

Henry Kwan is the founding member of the Corporate Development Integration team at OpenAI. He works across the full acquisition lifecycle, from valuation and diligence through closing, Day 1, and post-close integration, and is known for combining strong financial and operational judgment with pragmatic cross-functional leadership. Prior to OpenAI, Henry led Meta’s M&A Finance team, and began his career at Deloitte, spanning across M&A advisory, global capital markets, and audit in San Francisco, London, and Los Angeles. He is also a licensed CPA in California.

Todd Manley joined PayPal as Global Head of M&A Integration in June 2026. He is an expert in M&A, strategy, and business operations with over 20+ years of experience in corporate development delivering deals with a total value of approximately $70B and cost synergies of $10B across Intel, Marvell, Symantec, HP, Cisco and various consulting clientele. Todd has also been instrumental divestitures and post-merger Integration, from creating integration/separation management office playbooks and aligning deliverables, to building an employee experiences and driving top-line growth and capturing cost synergies. His business operations and transformation experiences span accelerating time-to-market for new products and pricing, leading privacy readiness for GDPR, and delivering operational efficiencies and process streamlining.

On top of his corporate experience, Todd has also served as an adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara University and holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Umi is Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Technology Private Equity and Venture Capital Investment Banking. With over 20 years of experience, Umi has advised some of the most disruptive technology companies and investors on their financial and strategic objectives.

He drives the firms relationships with the most important and active technology Private Equity, Growth and Venture Capital firms. Umi has also advised on M&A, IPO, and capital markets transactions for many leading global software and Internet companies including Amazon, AppLovin, Carvana, Chewy, Cvent, eBay, Facebook, Fiverr, Glu, GoodRx, Google, King.com, LinkedIn, Playtika, Roblox, Smartsheet, SNAP, Twitter, Wayfair, Wix, Uber, UKG, Yahoo, Zoom, Zynga. Umi serves on the Committee for Morgan Stanley’s Inclusive Ventures Lab, startup accelerator for early-stage technology companies led by underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Umi earned his BS from Northeastern University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. He currently resides in San Francisco with his wife Ashi and their two boys, Qais and Saif.

Anne Neuberger is the former Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology on the National Security Council. Previously, she served as the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Director of Cybersecurity, where she led NSA’s cybersecurity mission, including emerging technology areas like quantum-resistant cryptography. Prior to this role, Ms. Neuberger led NSA’s election security effort and served as Assistant Deputy Director of NSA’s Operations Directorate, overseeing foreign intelligence and cybersecurity operations. She also served as NSA’s first Chief Risk Officer, Director of NSA’s Commercial Solutions Center, Director of the Enduring Security Framework cybersecurity public private partnership, and the Department of the Navy’s Deputy Chief Management Officer. In 2017, Ms. Neuberger was awarded a Presidential Rank Award for her service at the NSA. Before her Government service, Ms. Neuberger was Senior Vice President of Operations at American Stock Transfer and Trust Company, where she directed technology and operations.

Heather has spent her career translating between the people who build technology and those who need to understand it. She brings twenty years of experience across the private sector, civil society, and the technology industry, where she shaped policy and product direction for emerging technologies and worked directly with policymakers to help chart the future of tech regulation.

At Eurasia Group, she advises clients on the political and regulatory risks shaping the technology landscape, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, data regulation, digital infrastructure, competition and sovereignty, and global regulatory strategy.

Brian leads Microsoft’s M&A Diligence & Integration Management, with deals ranging in value from $15M to $70B and spanning across the company’s Cloud & AI, Security, Experiences & Devices and Gaming businesses.  He and his team of Integration Leads drive cross-functional Due Diligence, Close/Day 1 Planning, Integration/Separation Execution and Post-close Governance.  Brian’s remit also includes a Strategy & Operations team, responsible for M&A practice engagement and capability advancement.  Prior to Microsoft, Brian held a similar role leading M&A at Arm and spent much of his career in Strategy & M&A at Deloitte Consulting, focused in the Tech, Media and Telco sectors.  His depth is in Global and Cross-border Transactions, Integration Strategy and Planning, Business Unit Stand-up and New Operating Model Design.  A strong people developer and team builder, Brian enjoys working closely with his team of leaders in advancing M&A capabilities and delivering successful deal outcomes.