Meet our Distinguished Guests
Below are the keynote speaker, judges, and panelists confirmed for DataFest 2026. These distinguished guests will guide discussions, provide industry insights, and evaluate team presentations throughout the event.
We’ll keep updating this page as we finalize the guests for the event.
Keynote speaker: Kaveh Safavi
Senior Executive Advisor / Investor / Educator
Kaveh Safavi is a healthcare strategist with extensive experience in digital health, growth strategy, and international expansion. He is a Partner at Guidon Partners, a firm that advises and co-invests in healthcare services companies, and a Health Senior Advisor at Accenture. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer in Health Enterprise Management at the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University).
He recently retired as a Senior Managing Director at Accenture for Global Health, where he helped providers, health insurers, and public health systems across the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific harness the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Prior to Accenture, he held leadership roles at Cisco, Thomson Reuters, UnitedHealthcare, and Alexian Brothers Health System.
Dr. Safavi brings more than three decades of leadership experience. Highlights include:
- Establishing one of the Midwest’s first electronic-health-record-enabled primary care practices
- Being named by The IT Services Report among the top 5 healthcare IT executives (2020 and 2025)
Dr. Safavi has published numerous papers and is frequently quoted on healthcare issues in major outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, The New York Times, Consumer Reports, U.S. News & World Report, Harvard Business Review, and The Economist.
Dr. Safavi earned an M.D. from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. He is board-certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and completed his residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He also serves on the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Board of Visitors (Northwestern University) and is a member of the Easterseals National Board of Directors.
Dr. Safavi is a lifelong Chicagoan.