Organizers

Andrey Kunov, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO, Silicon Valley Innovation Center

Andrey is the founder and president of Silicon Valley Innovation Center. He is also the President and the member of the board of AmBAR. Andrey is a co-founder of Credentiality (aka "Professional" on Facebook) - a company that aims to provide career professionals with a very innovative service for managing their credentials. He is the co-founder of the US-Russia Technology Symposium (currently, the Global Technology Symposium). Besides creating companies, Andrey is an expert in economics and politics of Russia and Eastern Europe. An author and co-author of multiple publications and a book on Russia, he studied and worked at Stanford University and in Russia as an economist and a political scientist. Between 2003 and 2006, Andrey had worked in Moscow as a senior economist at the Institute for Open Economy. In 2006-2007, Andrey had been an associate director at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University. Andrey received his PhD from Stanford University, MA in international economics from the University of Newcastle (UK) and MA in transition economics and politics from the Central European University (Hungary).

Anna S. Dvornikova
Founder & CEO, Entana Corp.

Anna is a Founder and CEO of Entana Corp., an entrepreneurship and venture advisory firm that focuses on providing business strategy, planning, fundraising, and positioning services to the early-stage technology start-ups, as well as angel financing. Anna serves on the Advisory Boards and the Board of Directors of several technology startup companies. She is the author of many articles on entrepreneurship, angel and venture financing. Previously, Anna was a Co-Founder and the VP of Business Development at BKP Security, a government IT security company. Prior to that, she was a Foreign Advisor at the international law firm of Coudert Brothers. Anna has her J.D. from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and her Master of Laws degree from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.

Vera Shokina,
VP at Silicon Valley Bank

At SVB Vera is responsible for building relationships with early stage technology companies and is in charge of a diversified portfolio of loans to technology startups.  Prior to joining Silicon Valley Bank, Vera was a portfolio manager with GE Capital and a trader with Goldman Sachs. Before coming to US in 1998, Vera was a relationship manager with Citibank Moscow where she managed a portfolio of loans and traded Russian equities for institutional foreign investors. Vera holds B.S. from the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages and MBA from the Finance Academy of the Russian Federation.

Stas Khirman
Founder and CTO, Khirman&Son LLC

Prior to founding Skyrider, Mr. Khirman founded Narus, a global leader in software and technology for the telecom industry and government agencies, where he helped designed the world’s most scalable network transaction analysis system. He had previously served as the networking group leader at VDOnet, a pioneer in internet video. Mr. Khirman brings more than 20 years of experience in the software industry as an architect, manager, visionary, and inventor; he was behind the development of a number of standards organizations and participated in the early definition of the VoIP protocol. Mr. Khirman holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Kiev.