The Construction Tech Summit Presented in Partnership with Era Ventures will span a wide range of digital innovations taking place both on and around job sites, and will look at how these new models and practices are changing the way that homes are being built. Sessions will look at innovations in homebuilding, and examine the outsize value of CVCs in construction innovation. Panelists will also look at how robotics are impacting the way buildings are constructed, and how artificial intelligence is being implemented in construction contexts.
Dafna Akiva is Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and co-founder at Veev and has decades of experience across real estate investment, development, management, and construction. Dafna previously oversaw day-to-day operations at Veev and drove a number of company-scaling initiatives in her role as Chief Operating Officer. As CRO, she leads the expansion of Veev communities that redefine the user’s living experience and drives revenue growth for the company’s bottom line. She serves as the voice of the user for Veev product development, while overseeing all aspects of customer experience including account management, customer service, sales and marketing.
Meg Baldini
VP Corporate Development
Procore
Meg Baldini is the VP of Corporate Development for Procore Technologies, where she is responsible for managing strategic investments, M&A, and integrations. Meg joined Procore from Human Ventures Partners, a startup studio in NYC, and Dataminr, where she focused on corporate strategy and finance. Prior to working in tech, she worked in consulting at Cornerstone Research.
Steve Glenn
Founder & Board Member
Plant Prefab
Steve Glenn is Founder and Board Member of Plant Prefab. Plant is the first Certified B Corporation™ building technology company dedicated to sustainable design, materials, and operations. The company’s patented Plant Building System™ utilizes advanced digital modeling and fully customizable Plant Panels™ and Plant Modules™ to help architects, developers, general contractors, and individuals design and build multifamily and custom single-family homes 20 to 50 percent faster than site-based methods. The system provides better quality control, design flexibility, and time, cost, and material efficiency than traditional methods of offsite or on-site construction. Plant has two factories in California (Rialto, Ontario) and recently broke ground on a third facility, the Hub, which will be their first fully-automated factory. Plant also maintains a Design Studio and show home in Santa Monica. With a mission to build a better world by design, Plant Prefab was the first housing prefabricator to announce a net zero goal and actually achieved carbon neutrality in their operations in 2020.
Morgan Hays
Chief Product Officer
ALICE Technologies
Morgan is responsible for setting product direction and scaling and leading a global team of product managers and designers. He and his team work in close collaboration with the ALICE engineering team to build out the company’s innovative construction optioneering solution. Before joining ALICE, Hays led product management for a portfolio of five B2B SaaS products within Autodesk Construction Solutions. Previously, he held senior product roles at companies such as TiVo, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, and Cablevision. Hays also co-founded Layer3 TV, a virtual cable TV start-up that was sold to T-Mobile in 2017. Morgan earned his MBA from Emory University and undergraduate degree from London School of Economics and Political Science.
Jeevan Kalanithi
CEO & Co-Founder
Openspace
Jeevan Kalanithi is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of OpenSpace, the leader in 360° construction site reality capture and analytics. OpenSpace has been deployed on projects exceeding $500B in total value, in more than 90 countries; the OpenSpace Vision Engine has processed more than 18B square feet of reality data to date.. Prior to starting OpenSpace, Jeevan served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Lux Capital. Jeevan sold his first company, Sifteo, to 3D Robotics, where he eventually became the company’s President. Jeevan holds a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford and an MS from MIT, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.
Jeremy Kaner
General Partner
Olive Tree Ventures
Jeremy Kaner is a General Partner at Olive Tree Ventures and Managing Director at Olive Tree Holdings. In his role, Jeremy oversees all of OTV’s investment activity, helps lead portfolio company management, helps lead the Strategic Partner Network, and is also a member of OTV’s Investment Committee. Before joining Olive Tree, Jeremy helped lead early-stage PropTech / ConTech investing at Tishman Speyer. Before joining Tishman Speyer, Jeremy helped launch Picus Capital in the Americas and helped lead their early-stage PropTech / ConTech investing efforts. Prior to moving into the VC space, Jeremy helped found the PropTech & ConTech Investment Banking group at Barclays, where he advised category-leading PropTech / ConTech companies. Jeremy started his career in the Real Estate Investment Banking group at Barclays after graduating from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in Economics.
Tessa Lau
CEO & Co-Founder
Dusty Robotics
Considered one of the most influential women in robotics, Dr. Tessa Lau is an award-winning CEO and roboticist whose most recent venture, Dusty Robotics, is revolutionizing the construction industry. Dusty automates the BIM-to-field layout process through a robotic FieldPrinter, eliminating costly errors and speeding up construction schedules. Prior to Dusty Robotics, Dr. Lau was co-founder, CTO, and Chief Robot Whisperer at Savioke (Relay) Robotics, where she automated hotel delivery and orchestrated the global distribution and management of consumer-facing robots. Dr. Lau was also an early member of Willow Garage, the legendary research lab and technology incubator known as one of the most influential forces in modern robotics. Though closing its doors in 2014, Willow Garage is responsible for the creation of an open-source robot operating system that's still being used by academics, engineers, and hobbyists around the world today. Dr. Lau is a frequent speaker at business, technology, and construction conferences and has received numerous awards, including 2023 Construction Dive's Up and Coming Women in Construction, Silicon Valley Business Journal's Women of Influence, SVR's Innovation Award, and the Award for Excellence from the Association of Computer Machinery. Currently living in Silicon Valley, Dr. Lau holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
Alice Leung
Vice President
Brick & Mortar Ventures
Alice started her career in the AEC industry with DPR Construction in the San Francisco Bay Area building UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. She led the Bay Area Skunkworks group and implemented various construction technologies on project sites. In April 2016, Alice relocated to Singapore to help start up the Southeast Asia HQ for DPR Construction as the resident BIM/VDC and construction technology expert and worked on data center projects. She was part of various workgroups led by the Singapore Building and Construction Authority (BCA), was a part-time lecturer for the BCA Academy BIM Management Certification Course, taught BIM courses for RICS and spoke at various conferences in the region. She joined the Digital Built Environment Institute(DBEI) organizing committee whilst in Asia and is now part of the DBEI North America Committee since her relocation back to San Francisco. After realizing the slow pace of digitization in the construction industry, Alice joined the Brick & Mortar Ventures team to work with startups that want to disrupt the way we design, construct and maintain the built world. Alice holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Brown University where she was on the Formula SAE racecar team and worked in a materials science lab researching lead-free piezoelectrics.
Bernd Oswald
Co-Founder
Gropyus
Bernd Oswald is Co-Founder and Vice President Development & M&A at PropTech GROPYUS, a company dedicated to transforming the residential construction industry through serial, digitized timber construction to make it more sustainable. With GROPYUS, he is ushering in a new era by taking a service-oriented product approach and digitizing all processes.
Before founding GROPYUS, the mechanical engineer and lawyer held positions including COO at CREE Buildings, a specialist in wood hybrid construction, and Chief Technology Officer and COO at Mayr-Melnhof Holz Holding AG, where he was responsible for the production of glulam products. Prior to this, he held positions as Managing Director at KLH Massivholz and Head of Operational Performance at Mondi Group.
Henning Roedel
Robotics Lead
DPR Construction
Dr. Henning Roedel is the Robotics Lead at DPR Construction, an ever forward international general contractor specializing in technically complex and sustainable projects. He serves as an expert in robotics for DPR helping to source, pilot, and craft the implementation strategy of these new technologies across the company. Henning's career has spanned across all aspects of innovation to advance the construction industry for the needs of the 21st Century. He received his doctorate from Stanford University, where he invented a new type of concrete for construction on the Moon and Mars.
Dareen Salama
CEO & Co-Founder
Gryps
Dareen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gryps, a construction technology startup powered by AI and Robotic Process Automation in NYC. Gryps is a fully managed data platform aggregating data and documents from different sources to support decision making for construction owners. Dareen has focused her career in the AEC industry on the application of technology, linking multiple aspects of project/construction management including cost, schedule and facility information using artificial intelligence, data analytics, building information modeling (BIM) and other emerging technologies. Prior to Gryps, Dareen was the Director of Technical Services at Lehrer LLC, leading the implementation of innovative technologies for $1B+ projects and programs in New York City.
Dennis Steigerwalt
President
Housing Innovation Alliance
Dennis has extensive innovation experience and a broad network of innovation leaders in the housing industry from the U.S. and around the world. He’s a boundary spanner, a connector, and an investor in all things related to the built environment. Navigating complex networks of transactional relationships and promoting broader investment in research and development, Dennis seeks out opportunities to connect the dots on transformational initiatives to achieve objectives together that we shouldn’t, and likely couldn’t, tackle alone.
David Swiatkowski
SVP, US Head Of Construction
Starwood Capital Group
David is the Senior Vice President at Starwood Design + Construction, responsible for project management of assets under development and construction across the US. He has an MBA from Loyola Marymount University and a BS in Architecture from the University of Illinois. David previously established Greystar's self-performing construction group in San Francisco. He is a seasoned professional with experience collaborating with PropTech companies to integrate innovative solutions. David is passionate about the intersection of technology and real estate and uses his expertise to drive innovation and efficiency in his projects. He enjoys sharing his insights and contributing to the advancement of the field.
Aaron Toppston
Managing Partner
GS Futures
Aaron Toppston is the Managing Partner of GS Futures' $70m early stage investment fund focused on real estate and construction technology. The fund is supported by GS E&C, one of the largest contractors in the world and member of GS Group, a large Korean conglomerate. In addition, GS Futures has a $155m fund focused on climate tech, energy transition and consumer technology. Aaron most recently worked at Navitas, a $160m proptech venture fund. Before Navitas, Aaron was Managing Director at The Walsh Group, an ENR Top 20 US contractor & developer. Aaron lives in Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
Brent Wadas
CEO & Chairman
BotBuilt
Brent Wadas and his wife Christy have two wonderful daughters. He founded BotBuilt along with his two business partners Barrett Ames and Colin Devine. Before becoming the CEO and Chairman of BotBuilt, Brent enjoyed success with his investment firm and a SaaS company creating automated processes for business CRM technology. In between civilian adventures, Brent was an officer in the US Army, deploying with Special Operations units alongside the bravest men and women from around the world. He currently resides in Pinehurst, North Carolina and is dedicated to building the future of robotics and construction.
Eric Whobrey
VP Innovation
ARCO Murray
Eric has managed web and data development teams, built his own tech, established an innovation strategy for a billion dollar business, and actively invests in startups in the built environment. Previously, he managed the Operational Effectiveness program at Basis Technologies (formerly Centro). He now leads Innovation for ARCO Construction, a Design-Build Construction company, and leads ARCO Ventures, an AEC focused venture capital investment fund.
Venue
The Venetian Las Vegas
Blueprint will take place September 11th - 13th at the Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Attendees to Blueprint will have access to a special room rate at two hotels.
Please book early as these rooms will sell out.