Healthcare’s must-attend virtual CX event

Steven Kotler is a New York Times–bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and founder and executive director of the Flow Research Collective. He is the author of sixteen books, including eleven bestsellers. His work has been nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 80 languages and appeared in over 100 publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, TIME, and the Harvard Business Review. His book Stealing Fire was named Best Business Book of the Year by both CNBC and Strategy + Business, and helped spark today’s psychedelic renaissance. His other titles—The Art of Impossible, The Rise of Superman, and Gnar Country—are considered foundational texts in the field of performance neuroscience. At various times, Kotler has been a staff writer or blogger for Forbes, Psychology Today, GQ, Bikini, Freeze, V-Life, Blue, and Penumbra. Kotler is the host of Flow Radio, a top-ten Apple iTunes science podcast regularly featured on “best-of” lists across the web. He has lectured globally, and has appeared on platforms including Fareed Zakaria GPS, NPR, CNBC, Big Think, and The Joe Rogan Experience.

Recognized as a pioneer in applied performance neuroscience, Kotler publishes peer- reviewed research on flow, altered states, creativity, intuition, and consciousness. He has been called “one of the world’s leading experts in ultimate human performance” by The New York Times. His training programs have reached individuals in 156 countries
and over 28 industries—including U.S. Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, and executive teams at Google, Meta, Microsoft, Audi, and Accenture. He is also known for radical self-experimentation: flying a MiG-17 fighter jet into G-LOC to explore the neurobiology of near-death experiences, free falling 150 feet into a circus net to study flow and time perception, and breaking upwards of 80 bones along the way. As an entrepreneur, Kotler has launched or helped found sixteen companies. He was instrumental in the creation of several media and tech firsts, including Buzznet (one of the first online magazines), Bikini (the first punk lad-mag), Freeze (the first freeskiing magazine), Maxim (the first men’s magazine to exceed a million subscribers), EcoHearth (an early green marketplace), and Transcape (the first biofeedback-based branching video game). In 2021, Forbes named the Flow Research Collective one of the fastest-growing companies in America. Kotler lives in a small town in the big mountains of northern Nevada, with his wife, author Joy Nicholson, and too many dogs.

Prashanth Cannanbilla is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience driving transformation, data engineering, and solution delivery across healthcare, finance, banking, and technology sectors. He currently serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Enterprise Delivery Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, where he leads enterprise-wide business transformation and customer-centric healthcare initiatives, both clinical and non-clinical, across the state.

Previously, Prashanth served as Head of Data and Analytics at Verily (an Alphabet company), focusing on reducing the burden of chronic conditions. He has also held senior leadership roles at BCBS Louisiana, FNB Corporation, and Highmark Inc., where he spearheaded enterprise data governance, strategic programs, and technology modernization.

Prashanth holds master’s degrees in computer science and business administration from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP), a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, and holds AHIP designations in Health Insurance and Managed Healthcare. He serves as Treasurer on the board of Hill CDC, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, and has contributed as an advisory board member for the University of Pittsburgh Computer Science Department and as a board member for Small Seeds Inc., supporting children and single mothers.

Dr. Matea Deliu is an academic General Practitioner and Clinical Lead for Digital Delivery at NHS South East London Integrated Care Board (public sector government body in the U.K.) where she also serves as Clinical Safety Officer. Drawing on a PhD in Health Informatics and more than a decade designing, evaluating, and scaling technology-enabled models of care, she modernises primary care, optimises pathways, and embeds safety-by-design from discovery through deployment. Her portfolio spans AI-driven population health analytics, virtual wards, remote-monitoring services, and the integration of decision-support within EPRs, delivering measurable gains in outcomes, equity, and operational efficiency across complex systems. She continues frontline practice with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust @home and in urgent care/ED, keeping innovation grounded in real clinical need.

Beyond the NHS, Matea is Director of Partnerships and System Transformation at KneuHealth, helping to build and scale a digital dementia platform combining cognitive assessment, longitudinal monitoring, and carer support. She is an Expert-in-Residence at London Business School and a trusted adviser to VC-backed start-ups and scale-ups. As a fractional Chief Medical Officer to early-stage companies, she shapes end-to-end go-to-market strategies—navigating UKCA/MHRA regulation, NICE HTA alignment, DTAC assurance, and ICB reimbursement—and leads multidisciplinary teams to move evidence-based products from pilot to population-level impact. Her work champions equitable, data-driven, clinically safe transformation at scale.

Further roles include being the Primary Care Advisor for the Responsible Ai UK Health And Social Care group, a supervisor for the NHS Clinical Fellowship in AI, and mentor for the NHS Innovation Accelerator.

Sam Sebastian is the leader for the North American regions business of Google Cloud. In this role he is responsible for scaling the Cloud and AI go to market functions for the region and for bringing Google’s technology and innovation to large enterprises across the US and Canada. Prior to this role Sam was the VP & Country Manager for the Cloud/AI business in Canada. Prior to Google, Sam was the President and CEO of Pelmorex Corp, one of the largest weather data multi-platform media companies in the world. Sam joined Pelmorex from Google, where he held many executive-level positions in the US and Canada, including VP & Country Manager for Canada. Prior to his first stint at Google, he was a General Manager and Senior Vice President at a large online classified business, Classified Ventures (cars.com, apartments.com), and started his career as a consultant with Arthur Andersen in Chicago.