The Investing in Quantum panel occurred during the Market Acceleration breakout track at Quantum World Congress 2024 featuring: Anca Albu, QAI Ventures; Katherine Hill Ritchie, TEDCO - The State of Maryland's Venture Capital Fund; Lene Oddershede, Novo Nordisk Foundation; and Jennifer Addie, VentureScope & MACH37 Cyber Accelerator.

Anca is the CMO and Head of VC Platform at QAI Ventures, a global ecosystem builder with offices in Basel, Switzerland, and Calgary, Canada. As a Quantum & AI-focused VC fund combined with accelerator programs, QAI Ventures supports the creation and growth of startups from lab to IPO. With extensive knowledge in ethical marketing and vast multicultural business acumen, Anca strives to create a more positive present and build a healthy future. In her former role as Managing Director of the Swiss ICT Investor Club (SICTIC), she built Switzerland's largest and most active angel investor network of more than 500 members. She was actively involved in developing the tech-entrepreneurial revolution that engulfed the world starting in 2010 as part of the core Startup Weekend team.

Katherine Hill Ritchie is the Senior Director of Venture Funds at TEDCO - The State of Maryland's Venture Capital Fund. Katherine has 23 years of finance and investment experience in venture capital, private equity and with family offices. She is a frequent speaker and content provider for investment and family office conferences. Katherine has worked for 8 family offices, and 4 Billionaires. Her work includes advising companies and funds on their strategy, investments, due diligence, operations, and fundraising. Her current roles: Senior Director of Venture Funds at TEDCO, Investment Committee at University Impact, and Head of Investment Committee for Beyond Impact, Fund II. She is an early-stage Angel Investor, board member of Citrine Angels, and likes to focus on technology and female and diverse founders. She has a MBA from Fordham University and spent 12 years of her career in NYC and 7 years in Geneva, Switzerland. She founded her consulting firm Private Capital Investments, LLC in 2009 to work with family offices, family-owned businesses, companies and funds.

Lene Oddershede is the Senior Vice President of Natural and Technical Sciences at the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Lene joined the Novo Nordisk Foundation in 2019 to establish and lead activities in the Nat-Tech area covering the natural- and technical sciences, this including activities relating to quantum technologies and artificial intelligence. She has a background as a Professor of physics, Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) at Copenhagen University (~20 years). Lene is a physicist, trained also in mathematics. She is an experimentalist and at the Niels Bohr Institute she constructed the first optical tweezers manipulation facility in Scandinavia. She is an expert in the interphase between quantum and the life sciences and is key designer of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme and of the Quantum Foundry. She has been the leader of several interdisciplinary large-scale research projects, including being center leader of a Grundforskningsfond Center of Excellence. She has received several research prizes, e.g., the Danish Optical Society prize for young investigators, the Silver Medal of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Elite Research Prize from the Danish Research Councils, the largest Danish public research prize. Lene Oddershede is a member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, and of the Global Future Council for quantum economy at the World Economic Forum (WEF). Education: PhD in physics from SDU, Odense, Denmark 1998.

Jennifer Addie is a professional innovation strategist, entrepreneur, and investor who facilitates organizations through all stages of innovation and acceleration, from startups to large enterprises across the public and private sectors. As COO and CWO of VentureScope and MACH37 Cyber Accelerator, she helps lead the consulting, investment, emerging tech scouting, training, accelerator operations and entrepreneurial wellbeing practices. Jennifer has also served as an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship and Lean Startup at seven universities, a Creative Problem Solving (CPS) facilitator, a certified instructional systems designer (CISD), and leader in entrepreneurial wellbeing with a BA in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Virginia as well as a Master of Science in Creativity and graduate certificate in Creativity and Change Leadership from the International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC).

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