Passion Talks 22 (Virtual) – November 5th, 2022 – 9am – 11am Pacific
We have an incredible spread of topics and passions this year, organized into spaces and communities around solving problems and cultivating solutions. This year, we are excited to present galleries of talks around Solving Addiction, Innovative Education, Artistic Expressions of Resistance, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain in a virtual interactive meeting space. By request of the speakers this year and the depth of topics, we are restricting attendance to “Invitation-Only.” Please submit a request at bit.ly/passiontalks22 to attend!
We are excited to introduce this year’s Program Committee:
INNOVATION – DANNY KIM
Danny is a leader in business and education and applies his entrepreneurial skills to transform both areas. As the founder and CTO of FullArmor Corp. (www.fullarmor.com) founded in 1987, Danny has worked with more than 30 of the Fortune 50 including Walmart, Boeing, and Bank of America and have done OEM and partnerships with large enterprise vendors such as Microsoft, NetIQ, Citrix, Dell, MicroFocus and others. As an educator, Danny heads the STEM and Research programs at Valley Christian Schools in San Jose, CA (www.vcs.net/amse), a K-12 school with over 2700 students. In addition, Danny serves as the Managing Director of Quest Institute for Quality Education (www.q4excellence.com), that provides one of a kind educational programs that allows students to create science experiments that run on board the International Space Station and newly released program to perform underwater research in the world’s only underwater research facility dedicated to education. Danny holds several patents around enterprise security and cloud computing and has recently led a team of high school students to become the youngest team in XPRIZE history to win the $1 million-dollar international competition to innovate in the oceans. Kim holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.
HEALTH – DR. WARREN YAMASHITA
Warren Yamashita is a family medicine and addiction medicine physician who works at an underserved federally qualified health center in Santa Ana, CA. He is adjunct faculty at Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, where he teaches their Diversity Equality and Inclusion curriculum. He founded and Chairs the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) – Section on Addiction Medicine, which is an multiprofessional and interdisciplinary network of healthcare professionals and faith-based leaders working together in partnership to free their communities from addiction. He also serves on CMDA’s Racism, Reconciliation, Equality, and Diversity Committee. Warren is currently conducting research with Stanford and the Asian American Drug Abuse Program to break the model minority myth around Asian American and Pacific Islander substance use and recovery. He is passionate about caring for the whole person and exposing myths and stigmas that exacerbate addiction, overdoses, and poor health in our communities.
ARTxRESISTANCE – CHRISTIAN BUSTOS
Christian Bustos is a Kapampangan-American, born in the Mission District and raised in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, California. Cross works with an arts nonprofit newly based in Brisbane, California called Lyrical Opposition. He also serves as a spoken word poet and graphic designer. Christian is a San Francisco State University Alumni, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Electronic Communication Arts with an Emphasis in Business. Cross was the Project Manager and Executive Producer for the short film, Re-Entrification: Oakland. One random fact is that his favorite movie is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. His whole life he’s been infatuated by the synergy of culture and organic produce.
ARTxRESISTANCE – SINEO
Sineo is a first generation of immigration and descendant of american slavery. Born in San Francisco raised in the Bay Area. Sineo has worked in the arts & community space for over 20 years refining his approach to supporting people in adverse circumstances. Sineo is a music artist who produces and performs his music focused on healing and change. You can find his voice on the Lyrical Ones podcast as well as the narrator of the LO produced movie Re-Entrification.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – DR. HANNAH EAGLESON
Dr. Hannah Eagleson is Director of Innovation & Partnerships for the American Scientific Affiliation, a professional society for Christians in science and science-adjacent fields. As a national faith and science organizer and the editor of Science and Faith: Student Questions Explored (Hendrickson, 2019), Dr. Eagleson frequently designs programming to support faith and work conversations. In the 2022/2023 year she will hold a visiting scholar role at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where she will create a report for religious nonprofits on key scholarship and best practices for events engaging with religion, social sciences, and artificial intelligence. She will also hold a Visiting Fellow role at New College Berkeley. Dr. Eagleson is also Associate Director of InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network and Director of Graduate & Faculty Engagement for Chesterton House, a Center for Christian Studies at Cornell.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – JOANNA NG
Joanna Ng pivoted to innovate in an entrepreneurial start-up setting after leaving IBM, continuing in AI, integrating IoT and Blockchain, focusing on augmented cognition. Joanna’s niche is translating complex abstractions and theories into useful solutions. Joanna had a seven-year tenure (October 2008 – October 2015) as the Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies, IBM Canada Lab. An IBM Master Inventor, she was granted 47 patents; co-authored two computer science books with Springer: The Smart Internet (2010) and The Personal Web (2013). She also published and co-authored over twenty peer-reviewed academic papers. Joanna has founded a ministry to integrate faith and work called KOE (Kingdom On Earth)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – DR. RICHARD ZHANG
Richard Zhang is a Senior Research Engineer at Google Brain in Pittsburgh, where he leads research efforts on hyperparameter optimization, Bayesian methods, and theoretical deep learning. He also spearheads faith-based diversity initiatives within Google to empower people of faith to bring their unique perspectives to research discussions and core initiatives in fairness, responsibility, ethics. He is grateful to have graduated with a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and before that, Richard graduated in the Great Class of 2014 from Princeton University, where he first personally experienced God in a wave of revival.
BLOCKCHAIN – JOHN KNOX
John lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. From a background working strategy consulting he transitioned to spending 7 years building mission driven startups (including an IPO with SurveyMonkey in ‘18). Recently he was the Director of Customer Success at CrowdSmart.AI and is an investment advisor and customer success coach for startups in the Silicon Valley. 2022-2023 he is a writing a book on theology and technology.
Passion Talks International 