Manny’s: Jobs, Truth, and AI: Where do we go from here?

Join Lexi Reese, Democratic Candidate for US Senate from California and the only technology leader in the race, and Kent Beck, original signer of the Agile Manifesto and author of the Extreme Programming book series, for a 45-minute fireside chat on Jobs, Truth, and AI.

Be part of a workshop where we co-create AI Objectives & Key Results for the country. Let’s improv being a very functional Senate for the night (no filibusters allowed). Together, let’s build a modern regulatory framework and set of suggestions for making sure we get the best from AI, while also protecting and strengthening people, the planet, our economy and our democracy in the process.

Lexi has 25+ years of experience leading nonprofits and finance and technology companies like American Express, Google, and Gusto, and she believes in the power of technology to reshape society for good. Kent Beck is a pioneering software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that emphasizes customer satisfaction, teamwork, and adaptability. Throughout his career, Beck has authored numerous influential books, including Extreme Programming Explained, solidifying his reputation as a visionary in agile and iterative software practices.

Lexi Reese for US Senate’s event is organized and operated solely by Lexi Reese for US Senate (not Yahoo Inc. nor any of its affiliates or brands, including TechCrunch

If you have any questions, please reach out to angelina@welcometomannys.com

About the Speakers

Lexi Reese:

Lexi Reese has devoted her life to helping others thrive — creating thousands of jobs, empowering small business owners, and reimagining a world of work that better supports families, businesses, and the economy. She is currently the only political outsider running for US Senate from California to replace Diane Feinstein.

She started her career in film, working on a documentary about young girls forced to sell their bodies to help feed their families. She continued in public policy, working at a non profit and successfully advocating for hundreds of millions in microfinancing for people, especially Latina women, to start businesses. Lexi went on to Harvard Business School where she focused on how the public, private, and nonprofit sectors can come together to end economic inequality. Since then, she has spent much of her career enabling access to high-quality jobs for people and business owners who are often under-looked or under-valued.

Lexi’s leadership philosophy is centered around empowering others. She launched the Make Mine a Million program at American Express to provide loans, coaching, and networking to women and BIPOC small business owners. At Google, Lexi helped small businesses compete with big chains and helped writers and other content creators get paid for their work. And as Chief Operating Officer of Gusto, she helped grow the customer base from 10,000 to 200,000 small and medium sized businesses, giving them the tools to easily pay and insure more than 1 million workers. Under her leadership, she fought for small businesses to access more than $2.5 billion in federal loans to protect their teams during the pandemic.

Equal parts heart and brain, Lexi has built coalitions across the public and private sector to create shared prosperity and growth for families and businesses. With a deep understanding of the American workforce, labor markets, and income inequality, she’s focused on creating a more inclusive, sustainable, and just economy for all.

Lexi lives in San Mateo County with her husband, Corby, their two daughters, a dog named Nico, and a cat named Amelia.

www.lexireese.com

@lexireeseforsenate

Kent Beck:

Born & raised in the early days of Silicon Valley, Kent Beck has gone on to shape the relationship between technology, technologists, and business. As the creator of Extreme Programming, he emphasized customer satisfaction, adaptability, and team collaboration setting the stage for modern agile approaches. He rediscovered test-driven development (TDD) and co-wrote the JUnit testing framework with Erich Gamma, work that has helped programmers take responsibility for the quality of their code.

A prolific author, Kent has written 7 books on programming, including the influential Extreme Programming Explained, and has been a keynote speaker at major conferences including OOPSLA, RailsConf, QCon, JAOO, EclipseWorld, and SD Best Practices. Beck’s guidance and philosophy has left an indelible mark on how technology professionals approach, innovate, and deliver software.

Through innovation in programming technique, coaching, teaching, writing, and tool building Kent has pointed the way to more humane and more profitable programming. He lives in San Francisco and spends his time on programming, art, writing, poker, investing, and travel. His 8th book, “Tidy First?: A Daily Practice of Empirical Software Design”, is due out in October from O’Reilly.