Elav Horwitz is a visionary leader reimagining the intersection of technology, creativity, and business transformation. As EVP and Global Head of Strategic Partnerships and Solutions at WPP, she translates complex technological landscapes into breakthrough opportunities, guiding organizations to harness emerging technologies like Generative AI and crafting innovative marketing solutions for global brands.

With over 20 years of experience driving growth for industry giants like McCann Worldgroup, L'Oréal, GM, and Nestlé, Elav specializes in turning innovation into impactful business results. Her expertise spans AI, XR, and Web3, consistently pushing the boundaries of what’s possible by creating new pathways for organizational transformation.

A dedicated champion of responsible technology and diversity in leadership, Elav is a founding member of Chief and an active mentor to AI startups, where she fosters human-centered innovation and empowers female founders. She serves as an advisor to influential groups like the Meta Creative Council and has built global C-Suite Innovation Councils, establishing herself as a leading voice in innovation and strategic partnerships.

Her contributions to the industry have earned her recognition from Cannes Lions, Campaign Magazine, and ‘The She Runs It’ Award. Elav is frequently sought after as a speaker, industry judge, and thought leader, sharing her insights in top publications like Forbes. AdWeek, The Drum and more.

David Justus is a technology executive who's spent 15+ years obsessed with building AI-powered experiences that actually move people. A Forbes 30 Under 30 alum and Cannes Lions winner, he's founded AI practices, scaled engineering teams to 200+, and shipped award-winning work for Nike, Google, Mayo Clinic, and others—always with a focus on craft and human connection. He's built everything from AI coaching chatbots to predictive systems monitoring 800,000+ solar installations, and helped establish a digital transformation consultancy in Tokyo along the way. These days he leads AI platform development at Panasonic Holdings, where his team builds agentic AI solutions for business units spanning smart mobility to avionics. When he's not wrangling multi-cloud AI platforms, you can find David playing his guitar or diving down some musical rabbit hole.

As Head of Brand & Content Marketing, North America at Audible, Jess Kessler leads an in-house team promoting groundbreaking audio content available on Audible and Amazon and delivering innovative solutions to make audio content widely accessible around the world. With more than 15 years of experience delivering global content and brands directly to consumers, Kessler plays a key role in shaping award-winning initiatives to reach North American audiences. She spearheaded Audible’s first-ever global brand campaign and launched campaigns for Harry Potter, the Obamas’ Higher Ground, Chrissy Teigen, and hundreds of other authors and creators. 

Prior to joining Audible, Kessler held leadership positions at Cinedigm Digital, one of North America’s largest independent TV and film distributors across home entertainment, SVOD, and OTT platforms, and at Nickelodeon Consumer Products, where she marketed various properties including SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.

Kessler leverages her background in journalism, including publications in Maxim Magazine, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and more, to inform her unique approach to storytelling and craft compelling narratives.

An enthusiastic consumer of storytelling in all its forms, she is a loyal University Miami Hurricanes fan who lives in New Jersey with her husband, two kids, and too many animals.

Octavio is the Chief Creative Partner at Dentsu Creative – US, and the Global Creative Lead for Adobe at Dentsu. Prior to joining Dentsu, they served as the Executive Creative Director at Publicis, where they oversaw digital projects for top-tier brands like Chevrolet, Samsung, and P&G. With over 20 years of experience in advertising, Octavio has consistently focused on tackling business challenges. Notably, they presented on “Mobile First World” at Cannes in 2014.

Throughout their career, Octavio has collaborated with a wide array of clients, including established brands such as Adobe, Lowe’s, T-Mobile, and Chevron, as well as digital-native companies like Apple Music and Hulu.

Over the past eight years at R/GA, Eli Mavros has helped shape the Studio into a creative force, collaborating across every brand in the R/GA portfolio. He has been at the forefront of generative video and AI-driven creativity, blending traditional editorial and animation craft with emerging technology. His work on projects like Moncler x Google: From the Mountains to the City earned him R/GA’s Visionary Cube Award. A former video editor and lifelong “film school kid,” Eli believes that in the intelligence age—an era overflowing with content—great storytelling is more essential than ever for brands to thrive.

Brendan is a seasoned marketing executive who has spent his career managing all aspects of digital marketing across client service, creative development, product development, technology deployment, data activation and media strategy/planning/buying/activation. Brendan is considered as one of the pioneers of digital and data enabled marketing, commerce media and programmatic media services.

Most recently, Brendan was the Chief Engineering Solutions Officer for Groupe Solutions at Publicis Groupe’s. He was responsible for the Marketing Technology platform and products, creating bespoke solutions, inclusive of new agentic AI platforms, clean room, CDP technologies, connected CRM and Media strategies, for clients, using combinations of Groupe technology and other components in market. The Groupe Solutions product suites include CoreAI, the next generation of Generative AI applications, and Growth OS, the media operating systems that include planning, investment, activation, and delivery applications and dynamic creative and content solutions. He is responsible for all product management, user experience design, data science, and front and back-end engineering, data partnerships and technology partners both inside and outside the Groupe to bring modular, intelligent design system functionality to the platform.

Prior to Publicis, he served as the CEO of Choreograph, WPP's data solutions and product company. There he was responsible for the business and product strategy, driving new industry leading capabilities by building and combining existing assets into one cohesive product suite across a wide spectrum of capabilities. Choreograph, which was created to help clients realize the value of their first-party data, consult on, and implement their data and technology strategies, and advise on privacy-first approaches.

Prior to WPP, Brendan served as the Head of Solutions and Services for Hearst. There he created a new holistic product and service offering by combining different independent capabilities of the Hearts corp. to create one new integrated go to market. Solutions and Services brought together the vast 1st party data ecosystem in Hearst and combines it with Content and Digital Services capabilities aimed at solving Hearst’ client’s biggest business challenges.

Before joining Hearts, Brendan was the co-founder and principal of UNBOUND. UNBOUND was the first independent strategic advisory firm created to help brand marketers and media companies harness the power of data-driven marketing, technology enablement and media to transform their businesses. They helped both brand and media companies leverage data as a strategic asset to accelerate growth. They provided strategic guidance, designed new marketing systems to harness the power of technology into the broader marketing ecosystem. Principle projects included uniting the audience, content and advertising programs for Time Warner across HBO, Warner Brothers and Turner, architecting, and developing the business and product strategy, then go-to-market for Roudel, Target’s Commerce Media company and developing a technology enabled marketing ecosystem for both Intel and HP.

Previously, he has served as the CEO of the MEDIABRANDS AUDIENCE PLATFORM (Now Kinesso), the specialist digital and addressable media platform company for IPG MEDIABRANDS that included CADREON (Matterkind), REPRISE MEDIA, SPRING CREEK GROUP and ANSIBLE MOBILE companies. 

He was the Founding CEO of Cadreon (Now Matterkind), the first agency programmatic media trading company created for IPG. Cadreon was among the earliest pioneers of what’s now referred to as the programmatic media industry. He helped define the first product requirements for enabling technologies now commonly referred to as DSP, DMP’s and other AdTech capabilities.

Prior to leading the platform group, Brendan served as the SVP of Global Digital Strategy for UM. His responsibilities included creating the digital strategy for UM’s digitally centric clients including Microsoft, Chrysler, Charles Schwab, Intel, and others, as well as driving the digital business capabilities internally for the holding company, IPG/MEDIABRANDS. 

Before joining IPG/MEDIABRANDS, he served as the Executive Director of Engagement Management for ORGANIC, where his clients included Sprint, Bank of America, Sony PlayStation, NetApp, Samsung, Estee Lauder and The Reelz Channel. There, his worked spanned across website development, creative and content development as well as digital media planning and buying.

In addition, Brendan served in several regional and national leadership positions at some of the most notable media- and digital agencies including GREY, BEYOND INTERACTIVE and MEDIACOM.

Born and bred in South Africa, Brendan spends his weekends catching up on local and international sports such as rugby or cricket. When not watching sport, he will mostly likely be catching up on the latest advancement in wine making or reading critic review of burgundies from Jancis Robinson.

Nick Mountford is the founder of Active Theory, the award-winning creative technology studio behind some of the world’s most ambitious digital experiences. Since launching the company, Nick has pioneered a new standard for real-time interactive storytelling, shaping immersive worlds for brands such as Tripadvisor, Google, Spotify, NASA, Airbnb, Riot Games, Meta, Nike, Wall Street Journal and global cultural institutions.

Nick is a sought-after voice on the future of immersive creativity, spatial computing, WebGL/WebGPU innovation and the evolving relationship between humans and digital worlds. His talks reveal how technology can be emotional, artful and profoundly human and why the next era of digital experience demands craft as much as code.

Nick’s award wins include: 17 Cannes Lions (2 Grand Prix), and 120 FWAs (which puts Active Theory in the 10-member FWA 100 Club), plus Emmy, Webby, Awwwards, D&AD, and One Show awards.