James Whittaker is a technology executive with a career that spans academia, start-ups and top tech companies. His story starts in 1986 with the distinction of being the first computer science graduate to be hired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation where he worked to automate Agent's caseloads. He then entered graduate school at the University of Tennessee where he received his PhD in computer science in 1992.

Following academia, James worked as a freelance developer specializing in test automation. He worked in 13 different countries over a five year period, most notably for IBM, Ericsson, SAP, Cisco and Microsoft. During this time he performed seminal research in software quality and developer productivity and published dozens of papers, patents and conference presentations. In 1996 he joined the faculty at the Florida Institute of Technology where he continued his prolific publication record and won over $12m in sponsored research. James' work in Y2K testing and software security earned a number of best paper and presentation awards and in 2002 his security work was spun off by the university into a startup which was later acquired by Raytheon.

James' first stint at Microsoft was in Trustworthy Computing and then Visual Studio. In 2009 he joined Google as an engineering director and led teams working on Chrome, Chrome OS, Maps and Google+. He was also the keynote speaker for Google Developer Days. In 2012 James rejoined Microsoft as Distinguished Engineer to build the Bing AI Platform from which he recently retired. He now speaks widely on subjects pertaining to the future of man and machine.

James is known for being a creative and passionate leader and entertaining speaker and author. He regularly speaks to technical, marketing and advertising audiences to challenge people to think differently about the future--past events include ANA Disrupt at CES, IAB Engage UK, Advertising Week Europe, Digital Life Design, Business Insider Ignite, Pitch @The Palace, the CIO Summit and SXSW. Of his five technical books, Two are best-sellers and two have been Jolt Award finalists.