Emotion By Design
Emotion by Design
Longevity × Technology × Human Experience
Friday, September 25, 2026 | 5:30–10:00 PM
ERIA Marina | San Francisco
What if living longer could also mean living better?
Emotion by Design brings together leaders across longevity, health, AI, technology, investment, creativity, and human experience to explore one central question:
How can what we design help people live longer, healthier, more meaningful lives?
Technology is rapidly expanding what is possible for human longevity. But lifespan alone is not the whole story. Trust, belonging, resilience, connection, curiosity, joy, and emotional well-being shape the quality of the years we live.
Emotion by Design explores what happens when we begin designing for both.
Through conversation, interactive play, somatic experiences, food, touch, music, movement, and community, the evening moves beyond talking about well-being and invites us to experience it.
This is not a conference. It is an experience.
The Conversation
Five perspectives come together to explore what helps humans—and the systems around us—thrive longer.
AJ Thomas — Founder & General Partner, Good Trouble Ventures
AJ Thomas is an investor, futurist, executive coach, and former leader at X, the Moonshot Factory, where she led work in global talent and human-experience design around teams building breakthrough technologies. Today, she is Founder & General Partner of Good Trouble Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing at the intersection of technology, entertainment, creativity, and cultural transformation.
She is also Founder & CEO of The Troublemaker Lab, where she works with founders and leaders on leadership, culture, and personal transformation. Her career has consistently explored the relationship between the technologies we build and the humans building them—making her perspective particularly relevant to a conversation about designing not only for innovation, but for meaningful human lives.
Max Gokhman, CFA — Head of AI & Digital Asset Solutions, Franklin Templeton
Max Gokhman sits at the frontier where artificial intelligence, investment, and the future of financial systemsconverge. As Head of AI & Digital Asset Solutions at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, he leads the development of AI-powered investment capabilities as well as work involving tokenized assets, crypto-native strategies, and the integration of digital assets into traditional portfolios.
Before taking on his current role, Max served as Deputy CIO at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, led global investment research, and previously served as President and CIO of AI-driven asset manager AlphaTrAI and Head of Asset Allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors. His academic background in both economics and psychology adds another dimension to his work at the intersection of machines, markets, and human decision-making.
At Emotion by Design, Max brings a critical question to the room: as AI becomes increasingly capable of making decisions for us, what should remain distinctly human?
Antonio Forenza, PhD — Founder & CEO, AWEAR
Antonio Forenza is an inventor, deep-tech entrepreneur, and engineer bringing neuroscience out of the laboratory and into everyday life. He is Founder & CEO of AWEAR, a wearable neurotechnology company developing ways for people to access and understand real-world brain data.
Before turning his attention to brain health, Antonio spent more than two decades developing communications technologies across 3G, 4G, 5G, and emerging networks. He co-founded Artemis Networks, led R&D at Rakuten Symphony, holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and is an inventor on more than 250 patents issued worldwide. His longstanding interest in neuroscience and mindfulness eventually led him from connecting machines to exploring something even more intimate: understanding the human brain.
Antonio embodies one of the central ideas behind Emotion by Design: technology doesn't only have to measure the world around us—it can help us understand the world within us.
Nicholas Sharp — Director, Community, Programs & Operations, The ThinkTank VC
Nicholas Sharp works at the intersection of community, venture, programming, and the relationships that allow entrepreneurial ecosystems to thrive. As Director of Community, Programs & Operations at The ThinkTank VC, he brings the community perspective into a conversation otherwise spanning investment, AI, neurotechnology, and human-centered innovation.
Carissa Karban — Co-Founder, Astrapuffs
Carissa Karban is a technologist, leadership strategist, coach, and co-founder of Astrapuffs, an emerging game world exploring what happens when humans and AI don't simply interact—but play, grow, and build relationships together.
Astrapuffs describes itself as the first shared world for humans and AI to play together. Its vision combines cozy multiplayer play, quests, puzzles, AI companions, and community, with a larger ambition: creating AI companions that can support human flourishing and eventually move with players across games and platforms.
Carissa brings an unusually human perspective to technology. Her background spans technology, organizational development, leadership, coaching, and community building, with graduate research focused on Jungian individuation as a model for leadership development. Her work repeatedly returns to belonging, growth, connection, and designing environments where people can become more fully themselves.
At Emotion by Design: Guests will step into the world of Astrapuffs and experience how AI, play, and companionship can be designed around connection rather than simply productivity.
PLAY · CONNECT · FLOURISH
Kaitlyn Vincent — Somatic Therapist | Bay Area Somatic Therapy
Kaitlyn Vincent is a somatic therapist whose work explores the relationship between safety, power, connection, emotion, and the nervous system. She holds a master's degree in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and has trained in Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Polyvagal Theory, parts-work, and Eastern mindfulness practices.
Her work is connected to Bay Area Somatic Therapy, a San Francisco 501(c)(3) nonprofit expanding access to somatic and trauma-informed mental health care. The organization offers therapy, accessible group programs, community education, and training for emerging somatic clinicians—with the belief that healing happens not only through thought, but through the body, relationships, and the nervous system.
That makes Kaitlyn's contribution especially aligned with Emotion by Design: instead of merely discussing emotion intellectually, she invites guests to experience what emotion, boundaries, connection, and regulation actually feel like in the body.
At Emotion by Design: Kaitlyn will facilitate interactive emotional and somatic games that turn concepts like boundaries, connection, nervous-system awareness, and relational experience into something guests can explore together.
FEEL · NOTICE · CONNECT
Lex crafts immersive, multi-layered soundscapes designed to move both the body and the inner landscape through the art of ecstatic and meditative dance. Weaving subtle minimal techno grooves, deep house rhythms, and evolving atmospheric textures, Lex creates a fluid, organic journey that invites dancers into states of presence, release, and connection.
Meet the Hosts
Samah Damanhoori — Founder & CEO, Blendbound Inc
Samah Damanhoori is a founder, storyteller, and creative leader exploring how technology can be designed around the emotional experience of being human. As Founder & CEO of Blendbound, she is building Folded: Inner Journey, an emotional sandbox game that replaces combat-driven progression with curiosity, connection, self-expression, and emotional discovery. Her career spans technology, entertainment, and storytelling, including work with Apple, Meta, HBO, and Genentech.
Her work asks a larger question that sits at the heart of Emotion by Design: if we can intentionally design technology to capture attention, can we also design it to help people feel more connected, understood, and alive?
Natalie Pan — Founder, Funding Breakthrough Lab
Natalie Pan is a founder, coach, technologist, and community builder focused on helping entrepreneurs access the knowledge, relationships, and confidence required to build companies. She founded Funding Breakthrough Lab, a nonprofit pre-accelerator that brings founders together with VCs, bankers, grant writers, mentors, and other experts to help them understand their funding options and build stronger businesses.
Her own journey—from engineering management into startups, coaching, psychology, and founder development—has shaped an approach that sees entrepreneurship as both a business challenge and a deeply human process. At Emotion by Design, Natalie brings the perspective that the people building our future need systems that support the human behind the company.
Tim Taylor — Kranz Consulting | Moderator
Tim Taylor is a business and finance leader whose career has moved across accounting, finance, partnerships, entrepreneurship, and high-growth companies. At Kranz Consulting, he works with founders and financial leaders navigating the complexities of growing businesses. His career includes KPMG, Charles Schwab, Wine.com, and finance leadership roles, and he holds an MBA from Wharton.
Tim has also coached CEOs on investor presentations, giving him an unusual ability to translate complex ideas into conversations people can actually engage with. As moderator of Emotion by Design, he brings together perspectives across investment, AI, health, entrepreneurship, and human experience—and pushes the conversation toward what those ideas mean in practice.
Vera Maslova — Founder, SCIENCEME
Vera Maslova is a cultural entrepreneur and strategic connector whose work bridges science, art, philosophy, business, and community. Through SCIENCEME, she has built an international educational platform connecting audiences with hundreds of experts across science, culture, entrepreneurship, and the arts. Her career includes producing hundreds of events and building partnerships with organizations including the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Mastercard, Nissan, and others.
Vera's work is rooted in the idea that knowledge becomes more powerful when disciplines stop existing in isolation. She brings that philosophy to Emotion by Design: connecting people and ideas that might rarely occupy the same room—and creating the conditions for unexpected conversations to emerge.
Pavel (Paul) Vinitsky, PhD — Founder & CEO, Synexis
Pavel Vinitsky is a serial entrepreneur, investor, strategist, and physicist with more than two decades of experience building and advising businesses across technology. He holds a PhD in quantum physics and is Founder & CEO of Synexis, an AI-native platform focused on decision-making infrastructure for private-market deals.
His career has crossed Web1, Web2, Web3, AI, venture, entrepreneurship—and even music—giving him an unusually multidisciplinary view of innovation. Today, much of his work focuses on improving how founders and investors discover one another, evaluate opportunities, and make decisions. At Emotion by Design, Pavel represents the intersection of science, capital, technology, and the systems we build around human ambition.
Thank You Sponsors
Hesam Jafari — Founder & CEO, Buzzable
Hesam Jafari is a founder and community builder who believes the most meaningful connections still happen in real life. He founded Buzzable to help event organizers not only fill rooms, but turn gatherings into communities that continue long after an event ends.
His journey began with small backyard gatherings in San Francisco called Firepit Fridays. What started with just a few people eventually grew into a community of thousands—and showed Hesam how powerful intentional spaces can be in transforming strangers into friends, collaborators, and even co-founders. That experience became the foundation for Buzzable.
Today, Buzzable helps organizers create and promote events, reach new audiences, manage RSVPs and ticketing, and build communities around shared interests. Hesam's larger mission is ambitious: helping create one billion meaningful real-world connections by 2030.
At Emotion by Design: Hesam and Buzzable are helping us bring the right people into the room—expanding our reach, inviting communities across industries, and helping turn one evening of connection into relationships that can continue beyond the event.