To commemorate its highly successful first year, we're partnering with Civic Hall who will host a celebratory NY Tech Meetup, spotlighting Civic Hall’s vibrant community and showcasing its members’ work. We'll feature amazing tech demos from the innovators at Civic Hall, raising our glasses to recognize and honor extraordinary achievements and contributions from the Civic Hall community, while looking forward to the exciting opportunities that lie ahead. 

When: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 5:30pm ET (Doors Open)
Where: Civic Hall Union Square, 124 E 14th Street (@Irving Place by Union Square)

Program 
5:30 PM: Doors Open

6:00 PM - 7:30 PM: Welcome and Tech Demos

7:30 PM - 8:00 PM: Community Recognition + Ask/Offer

8:00 PM - 9:30 PM: After Party & Networking

Register now—we can’t wait to celebrate with you!

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Demos By:

Dmitry Sagalovskiy, Founder & Co-CEO

Dmitry is passionate about writing good code, cutting no corners, and taking new approaches. He has over 18 years of experience as a software engineer and entrepreneur. Prior to working on Grist, Dmitry has worked at Google, and at Hudson River Trading LLC, a quantitative trading firm which he co-founded. He also co-founded New York Math Circle, a non-profit that offers students (and teachers) mathematics enrichment. Dmitry grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, studied at Brooklyn Technical High School in New York, and received his BA in Mathematics and MS in Computer Science from Harvard.

Paul Fitzpatrick, CTO

Paul received his Ph.D. in AI at MIT, with Rod Brooks. Paul is a co-founder of the Data Commons Co-op, and the creator of several popular open-source tools, such as the YARP robotics framework and the daff toolkit for comparing and merging tables. Prior to Grist, Paul was a senior researcher at Axon’s AI division, created through acquisition of an NYC-based computer vision start-up he worked at. He grew up on a small farm in Ireland and there were goats involved. He now lives in Montclair, NJ; there are fewer goats involved.

George Gevoian, Software Engineer

George is a software engineer with a passion for writing fast, intuitive web applications. Prior to joining Grist, he had worked at a meal kit startup in Ventura, CA and the Naval Air Warfare Center at Point Mugu, CA. He studied Computer Science at California State University Channel Islands, and currently resides in Simi Valley, CA.

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Peter Thum, CEO & Co-founder

I'm CEO and co-founder of Muse, the simplest site-builder and e-commerce platform for creators. Muse allows folks to sell digital products, courses, coaching, and member areas, all displayed on a beautiful website, landing page, or link-in-bio. It's so easy a 5 year old can do it in minutes by hand or using Muse AI to co-create.

As a founder, I've launched and scaled ventures across diverse industries—from founding Ethos Water, acquired by Starbucks, to transforming illegal firearms into jewelry and funding programs that protect at-risk children. My expertise spans strategy, capital-raising, team-building, branding, marketing, operations, and international work, always with a commitment to making a positive difference through entrepreneurship.

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Katie Moylan, Social Studies, Curriculum Director

Katie Moylan is the Social Studies Curriculum Director at Quill.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to leveraging AI to help students become stronger readers, writers, and critical thinkers. Prior to joining Quill, Katie spent 7 years as an English as a New Language (ENL) and Social Studies teacher in the NYC Department of Education; she has also created curriculum, assessments, and professional learning resources for a variety of public and private organizations. In her current role, Katie leads social studies content development and serves as a core member of Quill.org’s generative AI team.

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Girish Chhugani, Founder and CEO

Girish Chhugani is the founder and CEO of Stralto, Inc., a minority-owned company established in 2018 to simplify public sector governance through advanced, cloud-based solutions. Stralto’s latest offering, VerifyID.ai, is a secure, scalable, and user-centric identity verification platform, designed with a decentralized approach to empower both the citizens and government with greater control over data access and privacy.

Prior to Stralto, Girish spent over 12 years in senior technology roles within New York City government under the Bloomberg administration, establishing himself as a leader in smart city initiatives and digital transformation. He was instrumental in developing several influential systems, including NYC Open Data, Notify NYC, Business Express, NYC Scout, and the Citywide Event Management System—projects that helped reshape the city’s digital infrastructure.

Before leaving NYC Government, Girish served as the CIO of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery, where he led the development of the city’s first fully cloud-hosted case management system, setting a new standard for cloud adoption in government.

His pioneering work in public sector technology continues to drive Stralto’s mission of creating impactful digital solutions that support secure and efficient governance.

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Hall Charter, VP of Sales & Business Development

Hall originally hails from Australia where he worked for several large tech companies such as IBM and NTT. He is based in New York City, home of Transfr’s HQ. He was one of the first employees and has been hands-on in Transfr’s growth since 2019, starting with a single customer in Alabama to now working with clients in almost every state of the US. 

Hall leads a customer-facing team at Transfr to ensure the company remains a global industry leader within the mixed reality arena, blending education technology with workforce development and training across education, government and business & industry sectors, to build community ecosystems that provide upward mobility for job seekers and employees alike. 

Coming from a family deeply rooted in education, Hall is passionate about his work to help people across all demographics, from unemployed/underemployed, youth, veterans, incarcerated, special populations, and anyone who may face barriers to employment. Transfr focuses on high-wage, high-demand jobs that provide family sustaining wages.

He is an avid marathon runner, traveler, basketball fan and loves the outdoors. 

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Holly Diamond, Founder & CEO

Holly is the Founder and CEO of multiple ventures, including DHD Consulting, a diversity-focused recruiting firm, and Mr. Mista Oh, a Korean restaurant in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. With advanced degrees in psychology and social work, Holly has a deep understanding of organizational behavior and small business dynamics. A self-taught technologist, she brings a unique perspective to the labor market, drawing from her own experiences as a small business owner to address key industry pain points with innovative solutions. 

Bhargav Sutariya, Chief Product Officer

Bhargav is the Chief Product Officer with over 8 years of expertise in lean UX and product design, Bhargav previously founded Invints a Tech startup in India. Driven by a passion for solving customer challenges through intuitive design, he and Holly have collaborated for over two years, bringing a shared vision and strong leadership to propel WorkOnward toward success. Their combined experience makes them the ideal team to address unmet needs in the labor market.

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Jeff Paul, CEO & Founder

Jeffrey Paul is co-founder of Ziotag, a generative AI platform that makes streaming video accessible to everyone. He is an experienced technology executive with the vision and talent to build innovative and useful software solutions. Jeff is based in the metro New York City area and has worked for both large and small technology firms. 

In 2019, he co-founded Ziotag and envisioned an AI-based Enterprise B2B SaaS offering that would automatically make any online video or audio content instantly accessible to everyone including people with vision, hearing and learning disabilities.  

His approach uses the paradigm of chapters and a table of contents for each audio and video file. The application automatically creates an actionable table of contents around any piece of media to make it easy to discover, search, navigate, and share. Ziotag provides the user with an easy-to-navigate visual map of the thoughts, ideas, and concepts contained within the video. A Ziotagged video or audio file is infinitely searchable and easy to navigate by the concepts contained within.

In addition to being a sponsor for NY Tech Alliance, Ziotag is partners with industry leaders including Deepgram, Kaltura, 3Play Media, and others to deliver state-of-the-art solutions for their customers.

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About NY Tech Meetup

NYTM is a signature event of the NY Tech Alliance that has been a staple for the NYC tech ecosystem since 2004. It's the world’s largest meetup group of its kind with members who have a common interest in learning from and helping one another. At each event, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and their teams demo cutting edge and transformative tech, answer questions from attendees and network with all in a welcoming, fun-filled space. Since its creation, over 1,000 companies have participated and have been a driving force of innovation and job creation in NYC and the greater NY area.

This event is a perfect place to start if you are new to tech, to New York City, or to the New York tech ecosystem.  It’s all about meeting people and having a "front row seat" to learn of the latest innovations that address market opportunities.

About Civic Hall

In partnership with the City of New York, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, developer RAL, local elected officials, and community partners, The Fedcap Group opened Civic Hall’s Union Square location in November 2023.

Civic Hall’s Bernard Goldstein Center at Union Square is a collaborative innovation center that brings together civic-minded technologists, social entrepreneurs, government officials, and community leaders to develop technology solutions for the public good. Located in Union Square—the heart of New York City’s burgeoning tech sector, Civic Hall fosters a vibrant ecosystem of knowledge sharing and cooperative action. Civic Hall’s mission is to support and enable best-in-class programs that help close the digital skills divide and plan for the needs of tomorrow’s workforce. Civic Hall facilitates groundbreaking partnerships among high-impact organizations, civic and social innovators, workforce training partners, and New York’s employer ecosystem to work collectively to meet the educational and professional needs of all New Yorkers, especially those from communities too often left behind. Civic Hall also serves as a tech incubator and accelerator, support network for profit and nonprofit organizations and start-ups, and place to spur new innovations and ideas. For more information about membership, training, and event opportunities please visit civichall.org.