Speakers
CEO & Founder, Esusu Financial Inc.
Founder & Portfolio Manager, Irving Investors
Partner, Redpoint
Co-founder & President, Cityblock Health
Operating Partner, Fast Forward Venture Studio
CEO & Founder, CapWay
Angel Investor, Trail Run Capital
EVP & Chief Growth Officer, VOSKER
Director, Franklin Venture Partners
General Partner, M25
Co-founder and CEO, Wehype
Consultant, Egon Zehnder
Managing Partner, Fast Forward Venture Studio
Chief Marketing Officer, Cloudinary
CEO and Co-founder, Queenly
Managing Director, J.P. Morgan’s Middle Market Banking and Specialized Industries Business, J.P. Morgan
Partner, Mayfield
Founding Partner, LoftyInc Capital Management
Co-founder & CEO, Sila
Chief Executive Officer, Terray
Chief Product Officer, Reddit
CEO & Founder, Q-CTRL
Associate, Scout Ventures
Chief Strategy & Operations Officer (CSOO), OnlyFans
Partner, QED
Managing Director, General Catalyst
Founder & CEO, Remynt
Partner, NEA
Founder & Managing Partner, Stellation Capital
Venture Partner, Fast Forward Venture Studio
Co-founder & CEO, Rafay Systems
Co-founder and CEO, Vektor AI
Consultant, Egon Zehnder
Threat Analyst, Emsisoft
CEO & Cofounder, Spinwheel
Partner, Kleiner Perkins
Founder & CEO, Worthix
Managing Partner, Mayfield Fund
Partner, Sequoia Capital
Co-founder & CEO, Chief
Managing Director, General Catalyst
Co-founder & CEO, Rippling
Executive Director in the Office of Disability Inclusion, J.P. Morgan
Co-founder & CEO, Clubhouse
Head of Marketing, Monte Carlo
Founder & Managing Partner, a16z crypto
CEO & Executive Director, Stellar Development Foundation
CEO, All Raise
Co-founder & CEO, Fiveable
CEO & Co-founder, 7th Ave
CEO & Co-founder, Carbon
Co-founder & CEO, Alloy Automation
Co-founder & Managing Partner, BBG Ventures
Co-founder & Co-CEO, Brex
Head of Digital Investment Banking & Digital Private Markets, J.P. Morgan
Director, New and Emerging Business, LinkedIn
Co-founder & CEO, Metafy
SVP & General Manager, Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard
Co-founder & CEO, Figma
Venture Partner, Volition Capital
Partner, Anthemis
CEO, Fivetran
CEO, OnlyFans
CEO, Techstars
Co-founder and CEO, FROGED
Senior Reporter, Protocol
COO, Virtual Gurus
Co-founder & CEO, Ramp
Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
NBA 4 X Champion & Host, The Draymond Green Show
Founder & Managing Partner, Forerunner Ventures
CSO & Cofounder, BigHat
Venture Partner, Fin Capital
Partner, Mayfield Fund
Managing Director, Co-Head of Technology and Disruptive Commerce Group, JP Morgan Chase
Managing Director, YC Continuity, Y Combinator
Advisor, FTX
Brand Partner, Fabletics Men
Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Founder & CEO, Firstbase
Partner, Reach Capital
Co-founder and CEO, Zencargo
Founder, BRCK
Founding Managing Partner, Pear VC
President, Xsolla
Founder & CEO, Parthean
Partner, Base10 Partners
Founding Partner, Seven Seven Six
Chairman & CEO, MoneyGram
Senior Director, LinkedIn
CEO, TuSimple
President & CEO, The Aerospace Corporation
Head of Business Development, North America, Marqeta
CEO & Cofounder, ZaiNar
Founder & CEO, Securiti
Manager, Startups, LinkedIn
Partner, Forerunner Ventures
Host and Founder, Mobile Tech Podcast / Managing Editor, Pocketnow,
Managing Director Global Head of Alternative Investments, J.P. Morgan
Director, Growth, LinkedIn
Co-founder & Chief Brand Officer, Chief
Investor, Precursor Ventures
Chief Growth & Innovation Officer, Connection
Chief Data Architect, Analytics Data Platform, Autodesk
CEO, AngelList
SVP Growth Verticals, FIS
Co-founder & COO, Faire
Director of Communications, Samsung Next
Founder & CEO, Airbase
CEO & Cofounder, Stash
Head of Growth, DevRev, Inc.
COO, Uniswap Labs
CEO, Yahoo
VP of Product CDK Roadster, CDK Global
CEO & Cofounder, Alpha Medical
Co-founder and Co-CEO, Tiny Organics
Senior VP Talent & Culture, VOSKER
CEO & Co-Founder, Buoy Health
Founder & Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures
Chief Technology Officer, AT&T
General Partner, a16z
Director, Open Government Products, Open Government Products
Head of Community and Managing Partner, Dorm Room Fund
CEO & Cofounder, Otter.ai
CEO & Cofounder, Saga
CEO, Foursquare
Head of Portfolio Capital & Investments, Techstars
Founder, Chairman & CEO, Wonder Group
Head of Product, DevRev, Inc.
Consultant, Egon Zehnder
CEO & Co-founder, Chronosphere
Managing Partner, Kindred Ventures
Founder & CEO, 2Gether-International
General Partner, Coatue Management L.L.C.
Founder & CEO, Renegade Global
Co-founder, Boddle Learning
Managing Director – MM Specialized Industries Industry Verticals, J.P. Morgan
CIO & Head of Digital Technology and Innovation, Wells Fargo
Founder, This Week in Fintech; General Partner, The Fintech Fund,
Global Head of Industry Research, InterSystems
Co-founder & General Partner, Better Tomorrow Ventures
Senior Vice President, North America Digital Partnerships, Mastercard
Founder & CEO, Luta Security
Director, Commercial Systems Program Office, National Reconnaissance Office
General Partner, GV
Co-founder and CEO, BUX
Managing Partner, HartBeat Ventures, CEO, XPV Group
EVP, Head of Innovation, Wells Fargo
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Next Play Capital
General Manager, Customer Advisory Service, VOSKER
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Tusk Venture Partners
General Partner, Black Operator Ventures
Partner, Upfront Ventures
Partner, Index Ventures
CEO, Campfire
Talent Director, Sequoia
Managing Director, Kapor Capital
Founder & CEO, Next Step
Co-founder & CEO, WorkBoard
CEO & Cofounder, DevRev
Partner, Mayfield Fund
Chief Product Officer, Calendly
CEO & Cofounder, Ethena
Contributor,
VP of Product Management, Marqeta
Partner, Index Ventures
SVP of Strategic Payments Systems, Stride Bank
Vice President, Forgepoint Capital
Founder, CEO & Managing Partner, The Engine
CMO, Mayfield
CTO & Co-founder, Yugabyte
CEO, Apollo GraphQL
Founding & Managing Partner, Serena Ventures
Co-Founder & CEO, Crossing Minds
Founder and CEO, CIONIC
Chief People Officer, MURAL
President & Co-founder, HartBeat Ventures
Cofounder, Investor, Advisor, Nakoshi
Founder, Price Theory
Founder & Managing Partner, Leadout Capital
CEO & Cofounder, Cube
Co-founder and COO, Natrion
VP & GM of North America, Multiverse
Founder & CEO, Etalon
VP, Product Management, LinkedIn
Co-founder, Future Ventures
CEO and Co-founder, Lumos
Founding Managing Partner, Freestyle VC
Founder & CEO, Rivian
Founder & Managing Partner, Felicis
CEO & Co-founder, Chipper Cash
Founding Partner, Venturous Counsel, a Professional Corporation
CEO, alphaa.io
EVP and Chief Product and Technology Officer, CDK Global
Co-founder and CEO, Ribbon
Partner, Lux Capital
Chief Product Officer, FOXO Technologies
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Flourish Ventures
VP & Global Head, Crypto, Visa, Inc.
Founder, Chief Design Officer, Pronto Media Group
Lecturer in Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Co-founder & Executive Chairman, Animoca Brands
Founder, Couplet Coffee
Startup Acquisition: Pilots Lead, Amazon Web Services
Co-founder and CTO, Nylas
Security Researcher, Project Zero, Google
Director of Product Management, Pricing & Data, Opendoor
CEO & Co-founder, Slingshot Aerospace
Founder & CEO, SYLVAIN
Co-founder & Partner, Pentas Ventures
Co-founder, Boddle Learning
Chief Revenue Officer, Chargeebee
Managing Partner, BoxGroup
Founding Managing Partner, Plexo Capital
Founding Partner & CEO, 500 Global
Portfolio Manager, Global Technology Strategy, T. Rowe Price
CEO & Cofounder, Bumpa
Partner, Khosla Ventures
Vice President, Games, Netflix
Co-founder & CEO, Curated
Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets, J.P. Morgan
Head of Product, Alloy
General Partner, Engine Ventures
Senior Manager, North American Digital Sales, Mambu
Founding & Managing Partner, Serena Ventures
Partner, Accel
Startup Coach & Fractional Founder, Fundable Startups
General Partner, SOSV & CTO, IndieBio, SOSV
CEO, Polygon Studios
SVP Venture Investments, FIS Impact Ventures, FIS
Co-founder, Solana & CEO, Solana Labs
Head of Partnerships, Checkout.com
Vice President, Talent, Gusto
Co-Founder & General Partner, Hustle Fund
Web3 Angel Investor & Product Lead, Defi Pulse
CEO & Co-Founder, Altschool
CTO and Co-founder, Queenly
Co-founder &President, Lyft
Principal, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Amazon Web Services, AWS
Co-founder & CEO, Firehawk Aerospace
Co-founder & CEO, UrbanKisaan
Senior Director, Equity Strategy, Secfi
Founder & Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures
Development Partner, Commerce Ventures
CEO, Interchecks
Founder & Managing Partner, Stellation Capital
Abbey grew up in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, and came to the United States when he was 17 years old. His personal experiences inspired Abbey and his co-founder to start Esusu, a financial technology company that helps low- to moderate-income households use their on-time rent payments to build credit. Prior to Esusu, he created a global social venture which provided affordable access to clean water for over 250,000 people in eight emerging countries. In addition, he founded data analytics company Open Aid Initiative which was acquired in 2014. Abbey’s early career includes roles at Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Beyond Esusu, Abbey serves as a Queen’s Young Leader and member of the Royal Commonwealth Society. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Business Management and earned his M.P.A. from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. In 2020, Abbey was recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 list. In 2021, he was selected by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.
Jeremy Abelson is the founder and lead portfolio manager of Irving Investors.
Medha Agarwal is a former founder and an early-stage investor at Redpoint Ventures, working with entrepreneurs focused on fintech, marketplaces and the future of work.
Dr. Toyin Ajayi is co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, a tech-enabled, value-based healthcare provider for Medicaid, dually-eligible and lower-income Medicare beneficiaries in underserved communities. Cityblock’s model of care meets individuals where they are, delivering highly personalized medical care, behavioral health care, and social services to members in neighborhoods where it’s needed most. Prior to Cityblock, Dr. Ajayi served as Chief Medical Officer of Commonwealth Care Alliance, a nationally renowned integrated health plan and care delivery system for individuals eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. In this role, she led clinical operations, spearheaded care delivery innovations, and oversaw multi-disciplinary teams of clinicians, community health workers and administrators. Dr. Ajayi received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and her medical degree, with Distinction in Clinical Practice, from King’s College London School of Medicine. Board certified in Family Medicine, Dr. Ajayi completed her residency training at Boston Medical Center and continues to practice primary care with a focus on patients with chronic, complex and end-of-life needs. She has published and spoken extensively about her work in caring for populations with complex needs, including at TEDMED, NCQA, and HLTH, and in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Omolara Ajele is co-founder and operating partner at Fast Forward, a venture studio and fund focused on unlocking prosperity in Africa. At Fast Forward, she supports portfolio companies with strategy on GTM and scaling. She was employee no. 10 at Jumia (NYSE:JMIA) where she led partnerships for Nigeria and later was founding MD of Jumia Pay. Lara bagged her MBA at MIT and has also worked at Facebook and Charles Schwab in product and program management roles.
Sheena Allen is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and creative architect. She was born in Terry, MS, and is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, where she received a dual degree in Psychology (B.S.) and Film (B.A.). In 2011 during her senior year in college, Sheena started her first tech company, Sheena Allen Apps, and bootstrapped the startup to generate millions of mobile app downloads. In 2019, she started executing on her second tech startup, CapWay, which gave Sheena the title of the youngest female in America to own and operate a digital bank. The fintech company focuses on creating economic access and opportunities for all through inclusive financial products and services, including banking, content, payments, and more. In 2016, Sheena made her film premiere in She Started It, a documentary that follows five women around on their startup journey. In 2022, Sheena starred in a second, this time solo and short documentary, created by Google for their Black Women in Tech series. In addition to film, Sheena has also released a print book titled The Starting Guide about her early journey in tech, being a non-technical founder, and business 101 tips.
Allison is a founder and helper for startups. Previously, she was co-founder & COO at Fast and Head of Product Operations for the Money Team at Uber. She started at Uber in 2014 and served in a range of Product, Ops, Strategy, and Leadership roles at the company, helping it scale from 2k to 26,000+ employees. Prior to Uber, Allison was a strategy consultant at PwC. Allison started investing in the stock market in 2012 and is a self-taught public equity investor. Through angel investing, Allison is able to combine her love of investing with her passion for coaching and mentoring young startups.
Danny is the EVP, Chief Growth Officer as well as one of the co-founders and board members of VOSKER. An experienced business developer, his corporate development and interpersonal skills has led to significant growth opportunities across various technological sector. Pulling knowledge and strength from over ten years of experience as a specialist business developer and go-to-market strategist, Danny’s truest passion and values lies in pursuing bold ideas whilst supporting and leading disruptive technologies throughout the globe. Admired for expressing a genuine commitment to changing the world, Danny Angers exhibits a great rigour around decision-making, all whilst creating a diverse and inclusive tech environment. Danny’s impressive professional career has, therefore, often been described as witnessing a humble man with not-so-humble strategies. Watching this self-made serial entrepreneur move, create, disrupt and reinvent the tech industry is that of true wonder and magic. Danny’s deep devotion to the unrelenting growth and power of technology not only makes him a VOSKER asset but an industry veteran whose renowned actions will continue to speak volumes – on both a local and global scale.
Sara Araghi
Director, Franklin Venture PartnersSara Araghi is a director of Franklin Venture Partners, the firm’s specialized investment team that invests in private opportunities, focusing on mid- and late-stage companies it believes are poised for transformative impacts across multiple industries. In addition Ms. Araghi is a vice president, research analyst and portfolio manager for Franklin Equity Group. She specializes in the equity research and analysis of the softline and specialty retail industries and serves as Consumer Sector team leader. She is a portfolio manager on the Franklin Growth Opportunities Fund and FTIF Franklin U.S. Opportunities Fund (SICAV), as well as related portfolios. Ms. Araghi earned her B.S. in business administration and graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder and member of the CFA Society of San Francisco and CFA Institute. Ms. Araghi was recognized by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business for 2021.
As a general partner at M25, Mike has managed over 100 investments in early-stage companies. Outside of his responsibilities at M25, Mike is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 24) and a national board member of BLCK VC, leading initiatives in the Midwest to connect, engage, empower, and advance Black venture investors. Prior to M25, Mike founded The Anvil, a co-working space and startup incubator on Purdue University’s campus, where he helped launch the first Purdue startup to be accepted to Y Combinator, and many more that have gone on to raise venture capital and get acquired. Mike lives in Chicago with his wife, Erikka, and in his free time, he enjoys making wine, eating sushi, following Chicago sports, and traveling.
Robin Åström
Co-founder and CEO, WehypeRobin Åström is CEO and Co-Founder of Swedish startup Wehype, the influencer marketing platform and agency that connects leading brands, such as EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft and McDonald’s, with billions of gamers worldwide.
Anna Auerbach, based in New York, is a core member of Egon Zehnder’s Technology and Digital practice. Anna is an experienced advisor, founder, and operator. She works across advisory and search work, and has a particular focus on the intersection of product, technology and marketing for high-growth companies. Anna is also active in the firm’s HR officers practice. Prior to joining Egon Zehnder, Anna was the Cofounder and CEO of Werk, which pioneered Saas analytics for people policies and benefits. Werk’s software and data insights were featured in HBR, Fast Company, WSJ, Bloomberg, and other publications. Earlier in her career, Anna worked in consulting. She began her career at McKinsey & Co., where she focused on technology, media and telecommunications work. She then worked at two specialty consulting firms, leading one as the Chief Operating Officer. Anna earned a BA in economics and psychology from Brandeis University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Opeyemi is a General Partner of Fast Forward, a venture studio and fund focused on unlocking prosperity for Africa. As an entrepreneur, he previously founded Moneymie, a crypto to fiat infra service, Jobberman, the largest online recruitment platform in Africa backed by Tiger Global; and Whogohost, a web hosting company in Nigeria.
Saranya Babu
Chief Marketing Officer, CloudinarySaranya Babu is the Chief Marketing Officer for Cloudinary, the media experience cloud company for many of the world’s top brands. Saranya is a seasoned B2B marketing leader previously leading the marketing team at Wrike (acquired by Citrix in 2021) and Instapage, where she implemented, built and scaled sophisticated cross-functional marketing strategies. She has experience working in bootstrapped, VC funded, Private Equity owned, and public companies with proven success achieving 2X – 10X growth in revenue and valuation. She is a recipient of the 2021 Silicon Valley Women of Influence award and shortlisted in the 2020 B&T Women in Media award.
Trisha Bantigue
CEO and Co-founder, QueenlyTrisha Bantigue is the CEO and co-founder of Queenly, the leading online marketplace for the formalwear industry. She was recently featured on the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 as the main cover for the Art & Style category. Trisha was an emancipated youth who fought her way to survive in order to attain her college degree from UC Berkeley. Prior to founding Queenly, she has worked at some of the most successful tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Uber.
Leyonna Barba
Managing Director, J.P. Morgan’s Middle Market Banking and Specialized Industries Business, J.P. MorganLeyonna M. Barba is a Managing Director in J.P. Morgan’s Middle Market Banking and Specialized Industries business, leading the New York Technology & Disruptive Commerce (TDC) practice that serves high-growth, disruptive companies in the innovation economy. Advising clients at every stage in their growth profile, early to late stage, Leyonna is a skilled professional in an array of solutions ranging from operational optimizations, cash management, international growth and debt financing. Leyonna was named to Crain’s New York Business’ 2022 Notable Diverse Leaders in Banking & Finance. Prior to working in TDC, Leyonna spent more than 15 years in the investment and corporate banking practices at J.P. Morgan. She started her career in Debt Capital Markets advising clients on capital structure, M&A financing, leverage recapitalization and liability management. Leyonna earned a M.B.A. from Columbia University and a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and Accounting from Washington University in St. Louis. She is an active member of the New York Alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Rajeev Batra is an experienced investor and former enterprise software entrepreneur and executive. He helps lead Mayfield’s enterprise practice, focusing on Cloud and SaaS, and engages deeply with entrepreneurs on company building from the earliest stages. He has had a front-row seat to the trend of SaaS growing from systems of record to systems of engagement/action, by partnering with the founders of industry leading companies such as Marketo, Outreach, ServiceMax, SmartRecruiters, Crunchbase, Skilljar and WideOrbit. Rajeev holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, where he serves on the Board of Visitors of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Idris “Afropreneur” Bello is a Founding Partner at Loftyinc Capital Management, an Africa focused venture fund with a stellar pre-seed and seed portfolio including Andela, Flutterwave, RelianceHMO, Trella, Chefaa, Early in his career, he worked with Chevron, ExxonMobil, the Clinton Foundation Health Access Initiative. A first class honors graduate of Computer Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, he has an M.Sc in Computer Science & Data Mining from the University of Houston; an MBA from Rice University and an M.Sc in Global Health Science from the University of Oxford, where he was a 2011 recipient of The Lord Weidenfeld Scholarship. Listed among CNN’s Top Ten African Technology Voices, he is a Singularity University Impact Fellow, Harambean Fellow, , MIT Global Start-up Fellow, SAP Ashoka Global Changemakers Award Winner, and a Nigeria Leadership Initiative Future Leader. He spends most of his time between Houston, Lagos, Cairo, and airport lounges.
Gene Berdichevsky is the CEO and Co-Founder of next-generation battery materials company, Sila. Under his leadership, Sila has become the first to industrialize and deliver in-market a new type of lithium-ion chemistry through the launch of WHOOP 4.0, which demonstrated an increase in energy density without compromising cycle life, power safety, or other performance parameters. Thanks to investments by blue-chip companies, including Mercedes and Daimler, Sila is working to scale up its science for the electrification of everything: consumer electronics, electric vehicles, electrified flight, and evolution of our power grid to greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Prior to co-founding Sila, Gene was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors where he served as Principal Engineer on the Roadster battery, leading the development of the world’s first, safe, mass-produced, automotive lithium-ion battery system. Gene holds two degrees from Stanford University; an MS in Engineering with a focus on energy and materials, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He has co-authored 42 patents and 4 academic publications.
Jacob is a distinguished inventor at the intersection of nanotechnology and synthetic chemistry. Prior to joining Terray full-time, he ran an NIH-funded lab at City of Hope, where he was an associate professor. He has more than 40 publications, 20 patents and over 11 thousand citations associated with his work. He was named one of the “Rising Stars and Young Nanoarchitects in Materials Science” by the Royal Society of Chemistry and was nominated for the Kabiller Young Investigator Award in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine. Jacob received his PhD in organometallic chemistry from CalTech where he studied with Nobel Laureate Bob Grubbs. Jacob completed his postdoctoral training at MIT and Rice University focusing on synthetic chemistry and nanotechnology, and received a BA in chemistry from Harvard University (magna cum laude).
Before joining Reddit, Pali held senior leadership roles for more than ten years at Google. He recently led a nearly thousand-person team of engineers, product managers, user experience designers, and researchers across a high-growth product suite. Pali was also the vice-president of product management and led Google’s payment products globally. Before Google, Bhat held leadership positions at SAP Labs and McKinsey & Co.
Michael J. Biercuk is the CEO and Founder of Q-CTRL, a quantum technology company focused on making quantum tech useful through quantum control infrastructure software. Q-CTRL is backed by global VCs including Airbus Ventures, InQTel, DCVC, Sierra Ventures, and Horizons Ventures, and works with leading quantum hardware providers including IBM and Rigetti. Michael is also a Professor of Quantum Physics and Quantum Technology at the University of Sydney and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and his Masters and PhD from Harvard University. He held a research fellowship in the Ion Storage Group at NIST Boulder, and has served as a full-time technical consultant to DARPA, helping to steer government investments in quantum information and advanced computer architectures. Michael is a SXSW and TEDx speaking alumnus and a multi-time Australian Museum Eureka Prize nominee and winner.
At Scout, Jacqueline is focused on tackling the toughest problems through mindset and innovation. She’s passionate about generating maximal value creation and impact through web3/blockchain infrastructure. She helps source, diligence, and execute deals as well as support current portfolio companies and investor relations. Jacqueline graduated from the United States Naval Academy and went on the lead forward deployed teams as one of the few women in the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community. She continuously trained and built small unit teams for “no fail” missions that required coordination with federal agencies, foreign dignitaries and local authorities to conduct global operations out of the Middle East and Africa. Prior to Scout, she spent two years at JP Morgan working closely with founders and helped build out their early stage Technology and Disruptive Commerce practice. Jacqueline lives in NYC.
Keily is proud to serve as Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at OnlyFans. She is responsible for formulating, driving and communicating OnlyFans’ strategic initiatives and future goals to users, commercial partners, and other key stakeholders. Keily’s background is in law, operational strategy, and government affairs.
Laura Bock is a partner at QED and focuses on U.S. fintech investments. Prior to QED, Laura spent time advising financial institutions on growth, product, operations and strategy as a consultant at management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. Her work focused on banks, insurers and payment companies across North America. Laura also spent time at the World Economic Forum, where she led an initiative focused on bringing better financial infrastructure to emerging economies. Laura lives in New York City. Outside of work, she enjoys pickleball, board games and live music. Laura studied biophysics and biochemistry at Princeton University.
Niko Bonatsos is a managing director at General Catalyst Partners.
Gwyneth J. Borden is a seasoned public policy professional, who has worked in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and for organizations ranging from the U.S. Senate to IBM to startups to trade associations. Gwyneth has a breadth of expertise, having worked in various industries, from IT to hospitality to manufacturing. Gwyneth is the founder and CEO of Remynt, which empowers consumers to rebuild their credit while resolving debt. A civic leader, Gwyneth serves as Chair of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees the transportation infrastructure and network in San Francisco. Gwyneth is also an Advisor to The Third Place, a YC-backed business subscription startup that enables independent businesses to capture recurring income and deepen customer loyalty. Gwyneth also serves on the nonprofit boards of SFFILM and The Edible Schoolyard Project.
Ann Bordetsky joined NEA as a Partner in 2021 and focuses on consumer and enterprise technologies with particular focus on the future of work, commerce and platforms. Ann has helped to build some of Silicon Valley’s most iconic technology companies in a variety of business, strategy and operating executive roles and has been a leading force in catalyzing diversity in tech as an operator, angel investor and advisor to January Ventures. Prior to NEA, Ann served as Chief Operating Officer of Rival Inc, a modern enterprise platform for live event commerce acquired by Live Nation/Ticketmaster in 2020, and an active operator angel investing in early stage saas, marketplace and consumer digital startups. She was previously Director of Business Development & Strategic initiatives at Uber, leading growth initiatives, strategic partnerships and new vertical formation. Prior to Uber, Ann was the Head of Commerce and Consumer Product Business Development at Twitter and held a variety of business development and GTM roles at pioneering early-stage marketplace and mobility startups (Wheelz and Better Place). Before joining the world of Tech and Silicon Valley startups, Ann served in government engagement and federal policy roles in DC at one of the nation’s top environmental think tanks. Ann holds an MBA from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, policy and management from the University of California, Berkeley.
Peter A Boyce II
Founder & Managing Partner, Stellation CapitalPeter A. Boyce II is the Founder & Managing Partner of Stellation Capital, an early stage venture capital firm headquartered in Brooklyn. Prior to this, Peter spent eight years as a Partner at General Catalyst, an $8B venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures. In addition to his work at GC, he co-founded & advises Rough Draft Ventures: a funding platform to support technology entrepreneurship on university campuses. Peter is a graduate of Harvard University, earning a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and a Secondary in Computer Science. He grew up in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He is proud to be a Ron Brown Scholar. Outside of his time investing, Peter serves as a non-profit board member to support communities he is passionate about: The Shed, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The New Museum, NEW INC, Code Nation, and the Harvard College Fund. He serves as a Rock Venture Capital Partner at Harvard Business School, Program Advisor for the HBS MS/MBA Program, and an MIT Sandbox Board Member.
Jake Bright is a writer, author and advisor with a focus on global business, politics, and technology.
From 2017 to 2020, he was a contributing writer and advisor at TechCrunch where he published on Africa, mobility and politics. Bright helped spearhead consistent Africa coverage and co-produce the first Startup Battlefield competitions in Africa and Africa focused programming on the Disrupt San Francisco mainstage.
Bright’s first book, The Next Africa (Macmillan 2015), forecast the rise of Africa’s venture backed startup scene. Prior to this he worked in international finance and as a speechwriter in Washington, DC. Bright continues to contribute occasional guest pieces at TechCrunch.
Haseeb Budhani
Co-founder & CEO, Rafay SystemsHaseeb Budhani is the CEO and co-founder of Rafay Systems, which he co-founded in October of 2016. Prior to Rafay, Haseeb spent at a year at Akamai Technologies as the company’s Vice President of Enterprise Strategy. Akamai acquired Haseeb’s previous company, Soha Systems, in October 2016. Haseeb co-founded Soha in the second half of 2013 and served as the company’s CEO. Prior to Soha, Haseeb served as the Chief Product Officer for Infineta Systems, where he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of the company’s product marketing, marketing communications, and partner management activities. Prior to Infineta, Haseeb served as Vice President for NET’s Broadband Technology Group, spearheading the group’s product marketing, program management, and business development functions. Previously, Haseeb held senior product management, marketing, and engineering roles at Personal IT, Citrix Systems, Orbital Data, IP Infusion, and Oblix. Haseeb holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.
Anna Buldakova
Co-founder and CEO, Vektor AIAnna Buldakova is a co-founder and CEO of Vektor AI, a career development platform. Previously she was a Product Lead for AI products at Facebook, and a PM at Intercom, Yandex and various startups. Anna is also a product advisor for companies developing AI products.
Kristen Burke, based in Atlanta, is active in Egon Zehnder’s Consumer, Digital, and Technology practices. She applies deep insights gained from her own management and entrepreneurial experience to support clients, while focusing on founders, marketing and product officers. Kristen is especially passionate about and experienced in innovation, emerging technologies, and digital transformation. Prior to joining Egon Zehnder, Kristen spent more than 10 years at Georgia Pacific Consumer Products in various management roles, most recently as the Director of Innovation leading Smart Home IoT & Digital Experimentation. Earlier she worked as a Senior Consultant at Kalypso focusing on innovation. Kristen launched her career as a Sales Specialist at AstraZeneca.
Brett is a Vancouver Island-based Threat Analyst with cybersecurity company Emsisoft. Emsisoft is a partner in Europol’s No More Ransom project, has been involved in some of the most high profile ransomware incidents of recent years and has helped both companies and individuals avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom demands.
Tomas Campos is the CEO of Spinwheel, an intelligent consumer debt platform that helps Americans see, understand, and act on their debt in their favorite apps and services. For over 16 years, Tomas has been a noteworthy entrepreneur, and executive across payments, retail, consumer, and Saas businesses. He sold his previous company to Westfield Inc. and served as their SVP of product. Before Westfield, Tomas was the global general manager of the $1.5 billion digital payments division at Blackhawk Network Inc.
Annie Case is a partner at Kleiner Perkins where she focuses on investments in consumer, healthcare and marketplaces. Before joining Kleiner Perkins, Annie worked in product and business operations roles at Uber. While at Uber, she supported the SVP of Operations and helped scale the UberEats business to new markets internationally. Annie started her career as a consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco, where she worked with clients in the technology, private equity, and education practices. Annie graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Human Biology and an M.S. Management Science & Engineering. She was also a member of the Stanford Women’s Soccer team.
Guilherme Cerqueira is the founder and CEO of Worthix, an Atlanta-based technology startup. He has +20 years of experience in Marketing Research, is a serial entrepreneur, and is a member of multiple accelerators and associations, such as 500startups, ATDC, ESOMAR, and Endeavor. Cerqueira majored in Psychology and has multiple degrees and certifications from renowned international institutions such as ENSEAD, Standford, and Harvard Business School.
Navin Chaddha is managing partner at Mayfield, an early-stage venture capital firm with a 50+ year track record.
Josephine Chen is a Partner on the early stage team at Sequoia, where she works with seed and Series A companies in enterprise software, fintech, and crypto. She works with companies such as Found, Magic Eden, Benchling, and Anrok. Prior to Sequoia, Josephine worked at Emergence Capital and McKinsey.
Carolyn Childers
Co-founder & CEO, ChiefCarolyn Childers is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chief, the private network built to drive more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is an experienced leader and operator, having successfully scaled several early-stage businesses. Prior to founding Chief, Carolyn was SVP of Operations at Handy, then led the launch of Soap.com and acted as GM through its acquisition by Amazon. Carolyn was named to Inc.’s Female Founders 100 List.
Quentin Clark, managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst, focuses on investing in enterprise software and platforms that are transforming the workplace. He has made investments in Aviatrix, Eightfold, Glean, Lessen, Neon, Percent, TripleBlind and several yet to be announced companies. He was an early investor into and is on the boards of Coda, Commure, Minio and ThoughtSpot. Prior to joining GC, Quentin was CTO at Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX), where he led the company’s engineering, product, design, and growth teams. Prior to Dropbox, he was CTO at SAP, and previously spent two decades with Microsoft leading the entire family of data products. Quentin received a BS at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Parker Conrad is a three-time entrepreneur leading his latest venture as Co-Founder and CEO of Rippling, the first way for businesses to manage all of their HR, IT, and Finance—payroll, benefits, computers, apps, corporate cards, expenses, and more—in one global workforce platform. Formerly he was Co-Founder and CEO of Zenefits and SigFig.
As global program manager in the Office of Disability Inclusion, Beth works closely with senior leaders across the firm to develop and execute strategies, processes, tools and resources to better support employees with disabilities, those who care for disabled family members and small business founders with disabilities. Her work is aimed at removing barriers and changing culture – helping to shape a work- and marketplace where individuals with disabilities are viewed as leaders. Beth joined JPMorgan Chase’s Diversity & Inclusion team in 2010, where she led the establishment of the Office of Disability Inclusion. She transitioned to the Office once it was formally launched in June 2016. Beth was also the liaison for the Access Ability Business Resource Group during this time. She serves on the Corporate Advisory Board for Disability:IN. An advocate for people with disabilities throughout her life, Beth draws on her lived experiences with neurodiversity and mental health. She lives outside of Atlanta, GA and is the mom of four children, all with special needs – including triplets who were adopted from the foster care system. Beth received a Master’s degree in Comparative Political Science, with a concentration in Public Policy and Social Movements, from the University of Kentucky and a Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
Paul is the CEO and co-founder of Clubhouse, a social network based on voice. Prior to Clubhouse, Paul was the CEO and founder of Highlight (a location-based social network acquired by Pinterest), an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Benchmark, and part of the early team at Metaweb (a graph search startup acquired by Google). Paul holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He lives just outside San Francisco with his wife and three young kids.
Daniel Day
Head of Marketing, Monte CarloDaniel Day is currently Head of Marketing at Monte Carlo, the Data Observability Platform built to accelerate the world’s adoption of data by reducing data downtime. Before joining Monte Carlo, Daniel helped to build and scale Marketing, ABM, and Demand Generation functions at several fast-growing bay area startup companies in the data and AI space including Snowflake, Scale AI and Rollbar. Daniel is passionate about building data-driven and data-enabled marketing teams and creating better marketing experiences through the use of data.
The Stellar Development Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source public blockchain that allows money to be tokenized and transferred anywhere in the world.
Mandela is the CEO of All Raise, a non-profit on a mission to accelerate the success of female and nonbinary investors, founders, and operators in tech. Mandela’s career in the tech industry began when she dropped out of her PhD program at the age of 25 to start her own company and became one of the first Black women to raise capital in Silicon Valley. Before All Raise, Mandela was the Founder and CEO of Founder Gym, the top training program teaching underrepresented founders how to raise venture capital. She was also the founding Portfolio Services Director at Kapor Capital and the Global Director of Startup Weekend Education (acq. by Techstars). Mandela is an active angel investor, limited partner, Sequoia Capital Scout, and an inaugural member of First Round Capital’s Angel Track program. Mandela has appeared on more than 150 stages and in more than 100 publications and was recognized as one of Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women, a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee, and LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Venture Capital and Startups. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Intercultural Communications from Pepperdine University, a Masters Degree in Education and Administration & Policy, and was a PhD candidate in Urban Schooling at UCLA.
Amanda DoAmaral is an educator, activist, and co-founder of Fiveable – a social productivity platform for students. She spent a half a decade teaching high school history in Oakland, CA, where her passion for creating equitable educational opportunities was ignited. Amanda has been a vocal advocate for inclusive history curriculum and is active within the Milwaukee tech community.
Brylan Donaldson is the Cofounder and CEO of 7th Ave, the digital HQ for creators on the user-owned web and is backed by MaC Ventures, Twitter and Backstage Capital. Prior to 7th Ave, Brylan worked in product and partnership roles at Affirm, Blavity and Bleacher Report. He is also the co-founder of Gifts To Our People (GTOP), a generative NFT art collection project rooted in the collective experiences of the Black Diaspora community.
Ngozi Dozie is the Co-founder of Carbon, a leading neobank in Africa with more than 2 million customers. He previously founded Kaizen Venture Partners and. Ngozi Dozie had his MBA at Wharton and holds degrees from Oxford and Imperial College.
Sara Du is CEO & cofounder of Alloy Automation, a no-code automation platform for ecommerce. Brands use Alloy to connect the different apps they use across marketing and logistics in order to move data and automate actions across their full tech stack. SaaS companies also leverage Alloy’s white-labeled solution, Forge, to reduce repetitive integration work and get connected to the world of ecommerce data. Founded in 2019, Alloy is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Y Combinator, and a group of unicorn founders from the likes of Attentive, Klaviyo, Shippo, & more. Prior to starting Alloy, Sara spent on year of undergrad at Harvard before leaving to work at Snapchat as an engineer, and then at Wish as a designer. She is originally from Atlanta and currently resides in NYC. Outside of her primary work, she enjoys foreign films and angel invests in commerce and developer tools startups.
Nisha Dua is a Managing Partner at BBG Ventures, which she co-founded in 2014. BBGV is an NYC-based, early-stage fund leading investments in companies built by female and diverse founders that are solving the needs of consumers, workers and employers. BBGV invests in big categories that require new thinking such as Health & Wellbeing; The Future of Work & Ed; FinTech; Climate; and solutions for Overlooked Consumers. At BBGV Nisha has invested in over 100 female-led start-ups including Spring Health, Real, Fiveable, KiwiCo, Blueland and The Mom Project. Nisha has spent over a decade working in media, tech, strategy and law. She was the General Manager of AOL’s millennial site, Cambio, which she grew 4X in less than a year. She founded BUILT BY GIRLS, a software platform which has connected over 20,000 girls or non-binary talent with professionals in technology. Nisha was previously Chief of Staff for the AOL Brand Group, working on strategy, operations and special projects. She cut her teeth as a management consultant for Bain & Company and an M&A lawyer at Australian law firm Blake Dawson.
Henrique Dubugras is the founder Brex, the billion-dollar corporate credit provider for startups.
Michael Elanjian
Head of Digital Investment Banking & Digital Private Markets, J.P. MorganMichael Elanjian is Head of Digital Investment Banking & Digital Private Markets at J.P. Morgan. In this firmwide role, he builds new digital businesses and capabilities for J.P. Morgan’s clients. Michael is also the founder of Capital Connect, a platform that provides fundraising, networking, and data to founders and investors. After it was acquired by J.P. Morgan in 2022, Global Shares, which offers cap table and share plan services to private and public companies, is also part of Michael’s organization. Previously, Michael was the Head of Digital Innovation for the Corporate & Investment Bank where he drove the business’ digital strategy, FinTech investments and acquisitions, as well as created J.P. Morgan’s product incubation effort, AreaX. Michael is a member of J.P. Morgan’s Global Investment Banking Management Team, Wealth Management Solutions Management Team, CIB Digital & Platform Services Leadership Team, and the Global Private Bank Executive Committee. Before joining J.P. Morgan in April 2018, Michael spent 9 years at Goldman Sachs. There he led a team that developed and implemented the strategy that guided the firm’s market structure and financial technology investments, for both internal and client facing initiatives. Michael graduated Summa Cum Laude from Babson College, with majors in Finance, Computational Finance and Entrepreneurship.
Leading the New + Emerging Business org within LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Tom Eschbacher has built out a 25-person group dedicated specifically to helping startups achieve their demand gen goals. Each half, the LinkedIn Marketing for Startups team partners with ~800 VC-backed B2B startups to build an ROI-positive channel strategy. Tom has been at LinkedIn since 2016. Prior to that, he worked in ad sales at Vevo, Shazam and the National Basketball Association. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young sons.
Josh Fabian’s vision for the future wasn’t always so clear. At age 16, he dropped out of high school and moved out determined to make it on his own. To support his young family, Josh bootstrapped his way to a career as a web designer, eventually becoming Lead Designer at Groupon. He then founded Kitsu, an anime social curation community with over 1 million users. Like many with an entrepreneurial spirit, he didn’t stop there. When his kids started playing Pokémon competitively, Josh hired one of the best players in the world to coach them at a shockingly low rate of $20 per hour. After learning that this world-champion gamer also had to manage a full-time job to survive, the idea for Metafy was born. As the first platform built by gamers for gamers, Josh and his co-founder launched Metafy to enable the best players in the world to make a living doing what they love.
Johanna Faries
SVP & General Manager, Call of Duty, Activision BlizzardJohanna is SVP/General Manager of Activision Blizzard Call of Duty franchise, responsible for overseeing the direction of the mega-popular, multi-billion dollar blockbuster IP. Prior to joining Activision, Johanna spent 12 years working for the NFL.
Dylan Field is the co-founder and chief executive of Figma, a cross-platform design and collaboration tool. Before starting Figma, Dylan interned at LinkedIn, Flipboard, and O’Reilly Media.
Jenny Fleiss is an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, founding two scaled digitally native businesses from scratch: Rent the Runway and Jetblack. She joined Volition Capital in 2021 as the Company’s first Venture Partner, where she’ll focus on Internet applications, e-commerce, digital health, and next-generation consumer brands.
Ruth Foxe Blader is a Partner at Anthemis and thought leader in fintech and insurtech. At Anthemis, Ruth leads strategic investment efforts across Europe and North America. Ruth specializes in technology-enabled business models, insurance technology, risk transfer, early stage investing, product strategy and digital transformation. Prior to joining Anthemis, Ruth worked for Allianz SE, where she spearheaded leading digital innovation efforts. She was a founding member of the AllianzX team, where she led investments in startups including Lemonade, MoneyFarm, Argus Cyber Security and SimpleSurance. A New Jersey native, Ruth has spent the last decade between New York, London and Paris. In 2018 and 2019, Ruth was recognized for her outstanding contribution to the global financial technology ecosystem and listed among the Women in Fintech Powerlist by Innovate Finance. She currently serves on the boards of Axle, Demex, Hokodo, Hometree, Kaiko, Proportunity and Stable.
George Fraser is the CEO and co-founder of Fivetran. George founded the company with COO Taylor Brown in 2012 after completing the prestigious Y-Combinator accelerator program. Now trusted by more than 5,000 customers, Fivetran enables data teams to centralize and transform data from hundreds of SaaS and on-prem data sources into cloud destinations. Fast-moving startups and the world’s largest companies use Fivetran to improve operations and accelerate analytics.
Amrapali (Ami) Gan is the CEO at OnlyFans, the subscription social platform revolutionizing creator and fan connections. Gan is responsible for day-to-day leadership responsibilities and work closely with the creator community to help them maximize control over their content. In her former role as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Gan has worked closely with OnlyFans to make it the platform that it is today. Prior to joining OnlyFans, Gan worked in rapid growth companies and fast-moving consumer industries. She was with unicorn Quest Nutrition as the Head of Brand Communications, where Ami helped them through a rapid growth period, and for Red Bull Media House focusing on Activation & Communications. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Marketing, helping launch and rebrand the first cannabis restaurant in the U.S.
Maëlle Gavet is the CEO of Techstars and was previously a senior executive at numerous large tech companies around the world.
Emily G.-Cebrián Lombán
Co-founder and CEO, FROGEDEmily is the Co-Founder and CEO of FROGED, a Product Success Platform designed to connect and evolve the entire Customer Lifecycle. She has an extensive background in business development within software, industrial construction, energy, retail, civil construction and has managed multinational and multidisciplinary teams having lived in Brazil, Malaysia, France and Spain. Prior to starting FROGED she spent seven years in Brazil, working as MD at Abencor Brasil, responsible for the Brazilian and Colombian markets and hitting more than 20M USD turnover per year and always very connected to R&D and new lines of BD.
Tomio Geron writes about technology, venture capital and startups for WSJ Pro Venture Capital and The Wall Street Journal from the Journal’s San Francisco bureau. Previously he worked at a startup company. Prior to that, he was a staff reporter at Forbes magazine, covering technology and venture capital, and also edited the Midas List of top technology investors. Before that he was a reporter at Dow Jones, writing for VentureWire and contributing to WSJ.com. He received a William R. Clabby Dow Jones Newswires award. He has also worked at newspapers covering crime, courts, health and other topics. Email him at tomio.geron at wsj.com or follow him on Twitter at @tomiogeron.
Margaret Glover-Campbell
COO, Virtual GurusAs Chief Operating Officer for Virtual Gurus, Margaret Glover-Campbell’s mission is to create meaningful employment for under-represented individuals. Margaret focuses on balancing people and automation to scale the organization and ensure stakeholders on both sides of the marketplace experience exceptional service. Margaret’s career began in advertising and design. Drawn to her tech startup clients who were defining and building new industries, she eventually made the move client-side to be more hands-on in the building. Since then, Margaret has worked primarily in startup and scale-up environments, always being drawn back to the excitement of starting something new, creating and building products and industries that are on the brink of breaking into modern lives. Margaret is passionate about empowering women to succeed in the tech sector and is a proud ally to the 2SLGBTQIA+ and First Nations communities.
Eric is the co-founder and CEO of Ramp (http://ramp.com), the only finance automation platform that helps businesses spend less time and money. He previously co-founded Paribus, a digital tool that automates price protection and shipping guarantees at online retailers (acq. in 2016 by Capital One). Eric is an active New York-based angel investor. He graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics and East Asian Studies, and was raised in Las Vegas.
Jennifer Stisa Granick
Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive surveillance and powerful digital technology. As the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, she litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights. Granick is the author of the book American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, published by Cambridge Press and winner of the 2016 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
Draymond Green is a professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Green, who plays primarily at the power forward and point forward positions, is a four-time NBA champion, a four-time NBA All-Star, a two-time member of the All-NBA Team, a five-time member of the All-Defensive Team and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. In 2017, he won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year and led the league in steals. Green grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, and he played college basketball for Michigan State University, where he led the Spartans to two Final Four appearances. Green also led the team to a Big Ten Tournament championship in 2012. Throughout his four-year college career, Green earned conference and national honors, including Big Ten Conference Sixth Man of the Year as a sophomore and consensus All-American and NABC National Player of the Year honors as a senior. He was drafted 35th overall in the 2012 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors and later played a key role on the Warriors’ 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022 championship teams. Green’s off-the-court career rose to new heights as he was the first ever active NBA player to sign a broadcasting deal with TNT in 2022. His podcast, “The Draymond Green Show,” has grown into a massive hit with A-List guests and real-talk from Green. Also, he regularly appears as talent, a guest on a variety of programs, a voice over artist, and as an executive producer of multiple entertainment endeavors. Green starts in Prime Video’s “The Sessions: Draymond Green,” “Throwing Bones,” and TNT’s “Opening Night.”
Combining a unique and unconventional blend of professional history and acquired investment experience, Kirsten launched San Francisco-based Forerunner in 2010. Kirsten has led efforts to raise over $2.3B from leading institutional investors and has invested in more than 100 companies. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of portfolio companies like Faire, Glossier, Ritual, The Yes, Prose, Hims & Hers, and Curated. She is also on the Board at Nordstrom, Inc (NYSE: JWN). Kirsten has been honored in Time’s 100 Most Influential People, named a Top 20 Venture Capitalists by The New York Times in 2018 & 2017, included on Forbes’ Midas List for the past 6 years, in addition to being named among the magazine’s World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.
A pioneer of deep learning applied to life science problems, Peyton has developed computational, statistical, and AI/ML techniques to model, understand, and optimize biological sequences in academia and industry. Peyton was an inaugural Schmidt Science Fellow, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute, a scientific founder of Valis, and holds a PhD from Stanford University (Accel Innovation Scholar), an MPhil in Computational Biology from Cambridge University (Herchel Smith Scholar), and a BA in Applied Math from Harvard
Alka is a tech entrepreneur, venture investor, and former fortune 500 exec with experience in digital transformation, fintech, identity, and marketplaces. She has been at the beginning of some of the most significant disruptions and platforms including blockchain, payments, ecommerce, mobile, and search at both early stage and public companies. Alka has operated and built revenue in B2B and B2C market across more ten countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America building an understanding of internationalization and localization success strategies and tactics. She currently serves on the board of directors for MoneyGram (Nasdaq: MGI,) National Bank Holding Corporation (Nyse: NBHC,) and Digital Frontiers (Vice Chair.) She is also a Venture Partner at Fin Capital, a $1.2B fintech B2B focused global fund and Co- Founder & former President of GlobaliD, a venture-backed identity platform leveraging the blockchain. She has held senior management and product roles at eBay/PayPal, Retrevo (Acq. BN,) and Lycos (Acq.: TEF.) Alka has a commitment to democratization of access and empowering populations via technology. She holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. (cum laude) from Case Western Reserve University.
Arvind Gupta co-leads Mayfield’s engineering biology practice and is founder and venture adviser at IndieBio. He is the co-author of “Decoding the World,” published by Hachette.
Dan Hardman
Managing Director, Co-Head of Technology and Disruptive Commerce Group, JP Morgan ChaseDan is the Co-head of the West Coast for JP Morgan’s Technology and Disruptive Commerce Group based in San Francisco. Dan joined JP Morgan after 9 years with Silicon Valley Bank where he worked with software and consumer internet companies in the Bay Area. He’s worked with hundreds of companies from Series A through IPO and beyond.
Anu Hariharan is managing director of YC Continuity. She led Y Combinator’s later-stage investments in Brex, Convoy, Faire, OpenSea, Groww, Gusto, Whatnot, Instacart, Monzo, Rappi, Boom and Vouch, and sits on the boards of Brex, Convoy, Faire, Groww, Gusto, Monzo, Vouch, RevenueCat, and Whatnot. Previously, she was an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she worked with the management teams of companies including Airbnb, Instacart, Medium, OfferUp, and Udacity. Before that, Anu was a principal in BCG’s private equity practice, and a senior software engineer at Qualcomm. Anu has an MS in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Wharton.
Brett Harrison is former President of FTX US, a US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange. In less than a year under Brett’s tenure FTX US has become the 3rd largest crypto exchange in the US by valuation. Prior to joining FTX US, Brett was Head of Semi-Systematic Technology at Citadel Securities, where he managed technology for the firm’s Options, ETF, OTC, and ADR trading globally. He spent the majority of his career at Jane Street, where he led the firm’s algorithmic trading system development. He previously worked at Headlands Technologies as a senior software developer. Brett received his M.S. and B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard.
Emmy & Grammy nominated Kevin Hart was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he launched his career as a comedian during an amateur night at a local comedy club. Over the years Hart has become Hollywood’s box office powerhouse, opening eleven films at number one at the box office and grossing more than in $4.23 billion global revenue. Hart has also become a successful Entrepreneur; he is Chairman of HARTBEAT; a global, multi-platform media company creating entertainment at the intersection of comedy and culture with a mission to keep the world laughing together. The next generation media company unites Hartbeat Productions’ best-in-class TV & film production capabilities with Laugh Out Loud’s expansive distribution network, along with its marketing, sales, experiential, branded content, digital and social capabilities. Hart is also the Founder of HartBeat Ventures. Hart continues to develop, star, and produce feature films, television, and podcasts via HARTBEAT for his various partners which include Netflix, Peacock, Sirius XM and Audible. Hart is currently touring nationally with his eighth hour of stand-up material; the tour is titled “The Reality Check” Tour. Kevin is a New York Times Best Selling author twice over and his first Audible original, “The Decision,” was nominated for an Audie award for “Best Original Audiobook in 2021.” Kevin is a founding partner the premium tequila brand Gran Coramino, and plant based quick serve restaurant Hart House. Kevin’s brand partnerships include Fabletics Men, Chase J.P Morgan, Hydrow, NutraBolt, Sam’s Club, Old Spice, Brüush, Tommy John and Therabody.
Tess Hatch hopes to travel to space. In the meantime, she is a venture investor at Bessemer Venture Partners who invests in frontier tech.
Chris Herd is the Founder & CEO of Firstbase. Firstbase is an all-in-one provisioning platform for remote teams. Their platform lets companies set up, supply, maintain, manage and retrieve all the physical equipment remote workers need to do great work at home as a monthly subscription.
Jomayra is a Partner at Reach Capital, an early-stage venture firm focused on investing in education technology and the future of work. She started her career as an operator at an ed tech startup called BloomBoard and eventually started a career in venture capital first at Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ family office. Before Reach Capital, she was at Cowboy Ventures, where spent a lot of her time working with consumer internet and marketplace companies. At Cowboy and Emerson Collective, Jomayra championed investments in Contra, Career Karma, Handshake, Guild Education, and other companies.
Alex Hersham
Co-founder and CEO, ZencargoAlex Hersham is Co-founder and CEO of Zencargo, the digital freight forwarder enabling organisations, from FTSE 100 businesses to fast-growing startups, to make smarter decisions through a real-time overview of their supply chain. Based in London, Zencargo is relied upon by companies like Vivienne Westwood, Swoon Furniture, Farfetch, and Soho Home. In May 2021 Zencargo raised £30M in Series B financing, enabling the company to significantly grow its team and further expand internationally. Zencargo has to date raised a total of £42M, and is targeting revenues of £100m for 2021, and over £200m for 2022.
Erik Hersman is the CEO of BRCK, which creates rugged wireless WiFi devices designed and engineered in Kenya for use throughout the emerging markets. BRCK has a free public WiFi network called Moja that sits on top of the BRCK hardware that creates an affordable model for internet in emerging markets. In 2010 Erik founded the iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the technology community, bringing together entrepreneurs, hackers, designers and the investment community. He is also a co-founder of Ushahidi, the free and open source software for crowdsourcing crisis information, and also established afrigadget.com and whiteafrican.com as key online communities promoting creative solutions entrepreneurship and development challenges across Africa. He is also a general partner in the Savannah Fund, and sits on the boards of Gearbox, Akirachix, the Kijabe Forest Trust, PopTech, and the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI).
Mar is Pear’s Founding Managing Partner. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Mar developed a groundbreaking technique of optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Since then, she has accrued over 13 years of founder experience, co-founding three startups in mobile/ecommerce, enterprise software and semiconductor industries and has registered 14 separate patents. As Pear’s co-founder and managing partner, Mar brings operational and technical expertise to the Investment Team. She is in currently a Lecturer for Stanford University, teaching Lean Launchpad, one of the premier entrepreneurship classes at Stanford. Prior to that, she was a Consulting Professor at Stanford teaching the introductory course in Analog Circuit Design for nearly a decade. Mar serves on the board of trustees of Harvey Mudd College and the Advisory Board of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a founder of Equity Summit, the premier conference for connecting URM Venture Capital GPs to LPs, and an initial founding member of All Raise. She has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35, named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company, awarded the Digital Automation Conference’s Marie R. Pistil Achievement Award, and recognized on the Forbes Midas List in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Chris Hewish, President of Xsolla, is an award-winning and well-respected Interactive Executive and Studio Head with experience driving operations and go-to-market strategies across all segments of the video game industry. Having directly designed and produced over 50 games generating more than $1B in sales, Chris displays a rare and successful combination of creative and business acumen in an ever-changing industry. An avid gamer, Chris leveraged that passion into a successful career making games.
Arman Hezarkhani is the Founder and CEO of Parthean, the modern way to learn about and manage personal finances. Parthean personalizes learning by integrating with a user’s financial accounts, building tools to help them manage those accounts, and delivering custom micro-courses right when the user needs them. Before Parthean, Arman founded Ahez Inc, a marketing agency that specialized in technical education campaigns. Ahez Inc worked with clients like Google Cloud, Android, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to teach over 1M people. He’s also served as an Adjunct Professor at CMU, teaching a popular full-stack web development course, and an Engineering Intern at Google, where he gave one of the most popular tech talks in the company’s history. Arman holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jamison Hill joined Base10 as a partner to lead the Advancement Initiative after spending seven years at Bain Capital Ventures, leading growth investments into marketplace businesses Cameo and Wonolo and working with leading software companies, FourKites and ShipBob, and fintech companies, Finix and Flywire. Prior to Bain Capital Ventures, Jamison was an early employee at Bonobos, the first digitally native men’s apparel brand, building out the brand’s analytical capabilities across finance, retail, and marketing. Jamison started his career as a management consultant at Bain & Company in Boston, advising clients on growth strategy and digital transformation. Jamison graduated from Harvard with a degree in History and Literature and wrote his honors thesis on the representation of racial violence in early photography. He was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016 and Venture Capital Journal’s Rising Stars in 2021. He currently serves on the board of Hope In a Box, a program that supports educators in building LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms.
Katelin Holloway
Founding Partner, Seven Seven SixKatelin is Founding Partner at Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, managing the firm’s operations and actively investing in early stage tech companies. Having spent her early career at Pixar Animation Studios, she parlayed her culture-building skills to tech, dedicating over a decade to developing teams as a senior executive at some of the internet’s most influential startups, including Klout and Reddit. As an investor, Katelin is committed to helping founders and the broader venture ecosystem evolve their diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging practices. She is passionate about funding and supporting the people-first companies that will shape the next chapter of technology, with a keen eye on Web3, HealthTech, ClimateTech, and the delicate balance that enables us to thrive.
Alex Holmes is chairman and CEO of MoneyGram International, the global leader in the evolution of digital P2P payments.
Leading Advertising Teams in the U.S. for LinkedIn Ads focused on Startups and early advertisers. Passionate About coaching, mentoring & learning.
Dr. Xiaodi Hou co-founded TuSimple in San Diego, California in 2015 after earning a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Xiaodi serves as the CEO of TuSimple and is a world-renowned expert in AI and machine learning and holds more than 30 patents in the field of autonomous vehicles. In the field of computer vision, Xiaodi has developed leading theories in computational models for visual saliency. Xiaodi also serves as a member of the Forbes technology council and as the reviewer of more than ten major computer vision journals and conferences.
Steve Isakowitz is a recognized leader across the government, commercial, space and technology sectors, who has worked tirelessly throughout his career on behalf of the public good in space. He currently serves as President and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, a leading architect for the nation’s space programs, where he heads up efforts to outpace threats to the country’s national security while nurturing innovative technologies to further a new era of space commercialization and exploration. With his guidance, Aerospace’s national workforce of more than 4,600 employees provides objective technical expertise and thought leadership to solve the hardest problems in space and assure mission success for space systems and space vehicles. Over the course of his more than 30-year career, Isakowitz has made impactful contributions across a number of prominent roles, including at Virgin Galactic, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Kevin Issadore is Marqeta’s Head of Business Development for North America, overseeing the company’s customer acquisition and sales strategy. He previously led sales for Marqeta’s rapidly growing enterprise and digital banking segment after joining the company in June 2020. Prior to Marqeta, he was a sales director at Quid, and started his career at FactSet, serving various roles in business development and sales during his seven years at the company. Kevin holds a BA with honors from University of Vermont.
Daniel is a serial entrepreneur and early stage investor. Daniel is currently CEO and Co-Founder of ZaiNar. ZaiNar is a Positioning, Navigation, and Timing company building solutions that power smarter supply chains and advance modern technology. ZaiNar is the leading location technology that can track the real time location of any device that emits a radio signal on a known protocol to within a meter in 3D. ZaiNar is compatible with Rel 16 of 5G and powers real time positioning of all connected 5G devices without retrofitting or battery drain including phones, cars, drones, and loT devices. ZaiNar is backed by leading VCs and Strategics including Future Ventures, Softbank, AME Cloud, Samsung, and others. Daniel is also a Co-Founder and General Partner in Magic City. Magic City is a seed fund focused on investing brilliant founders with defensible tech, unique insights, and billion+ dollar TAMs. We predominantly invest in Stanford Graduate students who are pursuing their startup full time. Daniel is also an advisor to multiple startups and is an active mentor in StartX, Alchemist, and Plug & Play Accelerators. Daniel holds an MBA from Stanford University.
Rehan Jalil is currently the CEO of Securiti. He was the SVP and GM for Cloud Security at Symantec, leading research and development for Cloud Security Products. Rehan came into Symantec with $4.7B acquisition of Bluecoat, where he ran cloud security. He came into BlueCoat via the $280M acquisition of Elastica, that he founded and ran as CEO. Elastica innovated CASB and drove it to become an important security category. Prior to that, he was the founder and chief executive officer of WiChours, an innovator in deep packet inspection centered packet core, which was used to deploy some of the earliest 4G networks. WiChorus was acquired by Tellabs for $180M. Previously, he was Chief Architect at Aperto and helped innovate multicore processors at Sun Microsystems. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur finalist in 2010 and Top 25 Disruptor in 2015. He holds an AMP from Harvard Business School, an MSEE from Purdue University and a BS from NED University.
As LinkedIn Marketing’s first-ever startups specialist, Ruby has deep expertise helping high-growth companies design productive marketing strategies. Now leading a team within the LinkedIn Marketing for Startups group, she also focuses on partnering with Venture Capital firms to enable their portfolio companies to adopt best-in-class demand generation and sales & marketing approaches. Ruby lives in San Francisco with her husband, and enjoys surfing and yoga.
Nicole is Partner at Forerunner. She pays close attention to entrepreneurs with unbridled, around-the-clock passion for whatever they’re building. Armed with a background in Psychology, she loves to dig into the consumer psyche to uncover why we do what we do, the way we interact with the world, and identify what drives consumer behavior. Nicole originally joined the Forerunner team late 2013 as an Investment Analyst and team member #3. Her investments include Calibrate, CoProcure, Dutch, Nécessaire, Neighborhood Goods, The Expert, Thingtesting, and Stadium Goods (exited). Prior to Forerunner, Nicole worked with SapientNitro, a leading brand and digital strategy consultancy where she supported Fortune 500 retailers on their global retail strategies. Nicole graduated cum laude from Princeton University and was named Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital in 2016.
Myriam Joire (aka. tnkgrl) was born wearing combat boots and holding a keyboard. Moments later she picked up a soldering iron. She’s been stomping, typing, and hacking ever since. After spending years being a code-monkey in the video game industry, she joined Engadget as Senior Mobile Editor and later Pebble as Chief Evangelist. Today she’s the Managing Editor at Pocketnow, and the host of the Mobile Tech Podcast. She also advises companies on product and media strategy and speaks at conferences. In the past, she’s written for TechRadar, HotHardware, GeekSpin, and other major publications. She splits her time between San Francisco, CA and Vancouver, BC.
Kristin Kallergis
Managing Director Global Head of Alternative Investments, J.P. MorganKristin Kallergis Rowland is the Global Head of Alternative Investments for J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, overseeing $140 billion in assets under supervision with some of the leading private equity, private credit, real estate, and hedge fund firms globally. Kristin and her team are responsible for advising private clients, family offices, and endowments & foundations on alternative investments portfolios. Kristin has been with the firm since 2008 and joined the Alternative Investments team in 2013. Kristin relocated to New York in late 2017 after spending four years in London as the Head of Alternative Investments for Europe and the Middle East. Prior to relocating to London, Kristin spent three years in New York where she worked closely with the Global Investments Leadership team, the Global Head of Capital Markets Solutions and the U.S. Head of Investments to execute strategic initiatives designed to grow the business. Kristin began her career as a Credit Analyst in the Chicago Private Bank office, working with both private clients and the clients of the Special Credits Workout Group. Kristin holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Kristin was the captain of her Division I Women’s Golf Team at the University of Illinois. She currently lives in Greenwich, CT with her husband and daughter.
A LinkedIn veteran of 12 years, Kate O’Leary Kamel has helped its Marketing Solutions evolve and scale to a multi-billion dollar business. She has previously created go-to-market plans for emerging industries like healthcare and travel and currently leads a sales organization supporting LinkedIn’s fastest-growing customers. Chief among them are Series B+ startups and SaaS companies. Kate is a Detroit native residing in the Bay Area with her husband and nearly 1-year old son.
Lindsay Kaplan is the Co-Founder of Chief, the private network built to drive more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is an award-winning startup marketer and brand strategist who previously served as VP of Communications and Brand at Casper. Lindsay was named a New YorkTimes DealBook Groundbreaker and one of Business Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs in the World.
Ayanna is an Operations and Finance professional with over 5 years of experience working for Investment Banks. Prior to joining Precursor, Ayanna worked at Credit Suisse as a COO in the IT department and later as a COO within Prime Services. Ayanna, also, spent time working at Bank of Montreal in the Financial Sponsors Group. Ayanna graduated from Baruch College with a Bachelors in Finance.
As Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, Jamal Khan leads multiple teams across several areas, including: internal efficiencies and automation; new products and services; brand equity, demand generation, and digital engagement; and data and eCommerce. Khan also oversees all aspects of Connection’s international operations. Khan is an industry expert with years of engineering expertise in the areas of Trading Systems, eCommerce, and Cyber Security. He is a Guest Lecturer at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, on the subject of Artificial Intelligence. He is also an inventor of six approved patents related to human-machine interface design, data orchestration, and machine learning, and has been actively involved in technology startups as both an investor and mentor. Mr. Khan joined Connection through the company’s 2016 acquisition of GlobalServe Inc., where he served as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to GlobalServe, Mr. Khan worked in leadership capacities at Instinet, VeriSign, Arpatech, and Merck Medco.
Mark is an experienced technology leader with a demonstrated history of success in the information technology and software engineering services industry. He is skilled in internet scale data management, data analytics/business intelligence, data and software architecture, and cloud computing.
Avlok Kohli is the CEO of AngelList. Prior to AngelList, Avlok founded and sold two companies; FastBite a food delivery company that was acquired by Square in 2015 and Fairy a provider of high-frequency house-cleaning services.
A 30-year Fintech veteran, Kevin has had a key role helping startups and enterprise firms drive growth and client loyalty, with his firm principles of servant leadership. Kevin started his career in financial services, but quickly pivoted to lead sales at a niche data and analytics provider, playing a key role in developing its first web-based client portals. This led to the company’s acquisition by Thomson Reuters, where Kevin went on to continue to deliver growth in sales and leadership positions in New York and London. After this Kevin went back to his startup roots, helping firms both develop go-to-market strategies, expand into new markets, and grow globally, and was a key member of a founder led company’s team leading to their eventual acquisition in 2015. In his current role, Kevin leads FIS’ Global Vertical Market teams focusing on Fintech and Healthcare firms, helping them achieve scale, add adjacent capabilities, and lower operating expense.
Jeff Kolovson
Co-founder & COO, FaireJeff Kolovson is the co-founder and Chief Operations Officer of Faire. A founding partner of Faire, Jeff rejoined the company as COO after a period leading growth and operations at Opendoor. Prior to co-founding Faire, Jeff held various leadership roles at Square, where he worked in product, business development, marketing, analytics and business operations. In college, Jeff launched Evolving Vox, a furniture rental company, which he sold for a profit after two years of operations. He holds a B.A. in economics and political science from Dartmouth College.
Emily leads communications at Samsung Next and advises portfolio companies on their communications and PR strategies across media, content, and social. A firm believer in the power of communications to create value for any organization, Emily is energized by the process of discovery in developing the clearest and sharpest stories. Prior to Next, Emily led agency teams consulting to a mix of Fortune 500 companies and early stage technology startups.
Thejo realized he needed to move to the epicenter of the tech startup world after his first company’s software thrived in India but ultimately failed to break through globally. So Thejo chose to pick himself up and go again and his decision to move to the United States, get a master’s degree from UC Berkeley, then start another company in 2011 proved to be the right one. Automatic, which he co-founded, was sold to SiriusXM for $110 million. Thejo’s experience at Automatic revealed that widespread inefficiencies of accounting and finance in small to midsize companies can actually curtail a company’s growth. The most inefficient area he saw was non-payroll spend – no one had designed a fully articulated, consolidated software solution to fix this broken process. So he did; he started Airbase. Airbase was founded in 2017, and so far has raised $101 million in venture funding from leading VC firms including Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, First Round Capital – and from others, including the former CFO of Netsuite and co-founder of Okta, Airbase has gone on to become the world’s leading spend management platform.
Brandon Krieg is the CEO/co-founder of Stash, an industry-leading investing and banking app empowering everyday Americans to invest and build long-term wealth. Today, Stash has more than 2M active subscribers and 6M customers and is experiencing record growth, surpassing $100M in revenue in the past year. Stash’s customer-centric platform, rooted in a personalized experience with advice and education, has helped customers save nearly $3 billion to date—all via regular and automatic deposits of just $31 at a time on average. Stash has awarded more than 59 million fractional shares to customers who use its one-of-a-kind Stash Stock-Back® Card.
Madhukar is a product strategist and has been running product management and product marketing teams for the last 14+ years. His areas of expertise include product building and creation of and managing businesses around zero touch digital customer journeys aka PLG experiences. Based in the Silicon Valley, Madhukar has worked with several technology startups like Zuora, Redis and large enterprises like Oracle and HP. In the last 10 years he has also been writing in technology journals and speaking at several industry events and is also a guest lecturer at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Mary-Catherine Lader
COO, Uniswap LabsMary-Catherine (MC) Lader is the Chief Operating Officer of Uniswap Labs, a developer of foundational web3-based products and applications. In this role, she oversees the company’s growth efforts, strategic initiatives, and operations. Previously, she held various leadership roles at BlackRock, including as the Global Head of the firm’s digital sustainability business, Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s digital wealth business, and leader of the firm’s strategic fintech investments and blockchain activities. MC began her career as an investor in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group. She received her J.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, respectively, and her B.A. at Brown University.
As CEO of Yahoo, Jim Lanzone oversees a global media and tech company that reaches nearly 900 million people around the world and is the third largest property on the Internet. He is focused on delivering trusted products, content and tech across finance, sports, news, gaming and e-commerce. Yahoo also provides a full-stack platform for businesses to amplify growth and drive more meaningful connections across advertising, search and media. Jim draws from over 20 years of leadership and entrepreneurial experience in the technology and media space, driving growth and innovation. He is the former CEO of Tinder, the world’s most popular app for meeting new people. Tinder has been downloaded by more than 400 million people and is available in 190 countries and 40+ languages. Prior to Tinder, Jim spent a decade as President and CEO of CBS Interactive, a top 10 global Internet company with brands ranging from CBS All Access to CNET. He joined CBS Interactive in 2011 when CBS Corporation purchased Cicker Media, an Internet video search and programming guide, where he was founder and CEO. Before founding Clicker, Jim served as CEO of Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), a top 10 consumer Internet property and leading search engine owned by IAC/InterActiveC Jim resides in Northern California with his wife and three children. He holds a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D./M.B.A. from Emory University.
Dave Latham has spent the last 20 years building software to improve the consumer experience around car buying. He has lead product, design and engineering organizations for multiple automotive SaaS businesses from high-growth startups to large public companies. Dave was an early product leader at Jumpstart Automotive Group (acquired by Hearst) where he ran digital products for legendary publications Car and Driver and Road & Track. He ran user experience and greenfield product development at online car marketplace TrueCar both in its pre- and post-IPO lifecycle. Most recently he ran product development for Roadster — a leader in omnichannel commerce for car dealers — which was acquired by CDK Global in June of 2021.
Gloria is the co-founder and CEO of Alpha Medical, with a mission to improve access to women’s healthcare needs. She has over a decade of experience in data science and machine learning, ranging from small startups to public companies like LinkedIn and Google. She is a consulting faculty at Stanford Engineering. She has an MS and PhD from Stanford, and a BS from UCLA.
Sofia Laurell
Co-founder and Co-CEO, Tiny OrganicsSofia Laurell is the Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Tiny Organics, an early childhood nutrition, and wellness company that introduces babies and toddlers to their first 100 flavors via organic, plant-based, fresh-frozen meals.
Mélanie Lavoie is one of very few VP’s who has been able to navigate the ins and outs of a pandemic-stricken economy with exceptional precision and charm. She has not only weathered the current storm but actively reshaped the future resilience and profitability of VOSKER. Witnessing her ability to straddle both the company’s economic and talent-based needs is truly that of pure genius as Lavoie set up numerous communication processes – all within her first week at VOSKER. She created a groundbreaking training program for leaders within the company and had an active hand in over 200 hires and integrations. The organizational agility that Lavoie possesses has quickly become the holy grail to which many refer when discovering how to respond to rapidly changing markets. Mélanie not only understands corporate ambitions but concisely turns those goals into tangible wins for VOSKER. She is further recognized for her transformational leadership based, among other things, on her ability to listen, and communicate with impact, her collaborative approach, and her passion for talent development. Mélanie Lavoie is living proof that leaning into uncertainty and the threats of instability will yield rare skills and allow you to access immense power which makes for better employees, leaders, and executives.
Since founding Buoy out of Harvard Innovation Labs in 2014, Andrew has led the company through two successful funding rounds, raising over $67 million, with prominent healthcare investors including Optum, Cigna, Humana, WR Hambrecht + Co., and F-Prime. In 2020, Andrew was named by Business Insider as one of 30 healthcare leaders under 40 to watch, a Digital Innovator by Employee Benefits News, one of Boston Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 leaders, and recognized as a TEDMED Hive Innovator. Andrew holds a doctorate of medicine from Harvard Medical School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College.
Aileen is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. She partners at the earliest stages with enterprise and consumer-oriented startup teams to build products customers love, and to help teams build aspirational companies. She has over two decades of experience starting at seed stage and staying involved for many years beyond.
Jeremy Legg, Chief Technology Officer – AT&T oversees the technology organizations for Business, Consumer, Data & Analytics, IT & Cloud, Network Architecture & AT&T Labs, Security and New Product Development. Jeremy’s AT&T Technology Services (ATS) organization is helping AT&T modernize its legacy IT infrastructure and migrate as much of it as possible to the cloud while retiring outdated systems. In addition, Jeremy’s team also includes business and consumer technology platforms as well as experts developing new products and services built on AT&T’s leading-edge 5G and fiber connectivity. Prior to joining AT&T in June 2020, Jeremy was executive vice president and CTO for WarnerMedia, responsible for all technology strategy, development and operations, as well as the technology development of the video streaming platform HBO Max.
Peter Levine is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz where he focuses on enterprise investing. Peter joined Citrix in 2007 through its $500 million acquisition of XenSource where he served as CEO. Prior to XenSource, Peter was a general partner at the Mayfield Fund. Before Mayfield, he was an early employee of VERITAS Software. During his 11-year tenure with the company, he helped to grow the organization to over 5,000 employees and more than $1.5 billion in revenue. Peter holds a BS in Engineering from Boston University and attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Peter serves on the board of Alluxio Inc., Apollo, D2iQ, DigitalOcean ($DOCN), Labelbox, Mixpanel, People.ai, PlanetScale, Shield AI, and Udacity. Additionally, he led the firm’s investment in Figma and GitHub (acquired by Microsoft). He is also on the Dean’s Advisory board for the MIT School of Engineering.
Hongyi Li
Director, Open Government Products, Open Government ProductsHongyi leads an experimental team of engineers, designers, and product managers who build technology for the public good. Projects they’ve worked on include Parking.sg – an app to replace parking coupons, Go.gov.sg – the official government link shortener used to help fight phishing, and RedeemSG – a digital voucher system used for the latest CDC Voucher programme. Amidst Covid-19, he has also led the team to rapidly develop systems to support testing, quarantine, and vaccination rollout nation-wide. He believes in working on real problems, building for the user, and pushing for change.
Melissa Li
Head of Community and Managing Partner, Dorm Room FundMelissa Li is a 19-year-old tech investor and startup mentor, passionate about growing information and network access for underrepresented young founders. Melissa is Head of Community and Managing Partner at Dorm Room Fund, the original student-run venture fund focused on backing university-based founders in their earliest days. In her role, Melissa has delivered education that demystifies the fundraising process for student entrepreneurs in emerging tech hub cities. She’s excited to witness how narrowing information asymmetries will transform the landscape of venture-backed businesses over the next decade. Outside of Dorm Room Fund, Melissa is concentrated on early-stage investments in web3 and the next phase of the internet economy. Previously, Melissa has previously advised founders building Gen-Z consumer products on community and growth. She continues to mentor pre-seed cohorts including Founder Institute, Envision Accelerator and the DayOne Fellowship, where she helps teams find more confidence in their storytelling skills, fundraising approach and execution.
Sam Liang is the Founder and CEO of Otter.ai, based in Mountain View, California. Otter.ai is the world’s leading meeting transcription and team collaboration tool. Teams connect Otter to their calendars and video conferencing apps to capture, store and even collaborate using their notes from every meeting. The company is backed by early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom and Tesla. Before Otter, he was the CEO and co-founder of Alohar Mobile which created the first mobile location context platform. Before that, Sam was the lead on Google’s Map Location Platform and API team. Previously, Sam was the CEO and Co-Founder of Alohar Mobile Inc in Palo Alto, California, which created world’s first mobile location context platform. Alohar was later successfully acquired by Alibaba. Before that, Sam was the lead of Google Map Location Platform & API for four years. Sam got his Ph.D in EE from Stanford University, specialized in large scale distributed Internet systems.
Rebecca is co-founder and CEO at Saga, a protocol for launching the next 1000 chains in the multiverse. Prior to Saga, she was a co-founder, Advisor and former COO at Skuchain, a currency agnostic blockchain for global trade and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer for 2019. She is currently Advisor to Sommelier Protocol, where she is designing their DAO to optimize for governance, platform growth & regulatory compliance. She was a member of President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, advising on China, technology and Asia economic policy. She also served on Secretary Clinton’s foreign policy team for her 2016 presidential campaign, responsible for Asia trade and economic policy. Prior to Skuchain, Rebecca was Director of Business Development and Head of Asia at Globality, Inc., a Softbank-backed B2B unicorn for AI-powered procurement of professional services.
Prior to becoming CEO of Foursquare, Gary was MD of Raine, leading the technology practice with a focus on advisory assignments and principal investments in consumer internet, enterprise software and emerging technology.
Kevin Liu is head of portfolio capital at Techstars and helps manage the global investment portfolio of over 2500 companies. As of 2022, Techstars has $1B in AUM in investment funds, 50 Accelerator programs, and Techstars portfolio companies have gone on to raise more than $21B in venture capital. In addition to Techstars, Kevin is a pre-seed and seed investor in over 40 companies including Retool, Vise, Culture Biosciences, Causal, Certn, Seldon, and Level. Kevin is based in San Francisco.
Marc Lore is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Wonder Group, a company that’s reinventing the at-home dining experience. Wonder is led by a team of proven entrepreneurs, some of the world’s greatest chefs and culinary experts, talented innovators from every area of the business, and backed by top-tier venture capitalists. Lore is also the newest NBA owner having purchased the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx in 2021 with his friend and business partner, Alex Rodriguez. Lore is the lead and largest investor in Archer, an aerospace company building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft focused on improving mobility in cities. He is also Co-Founder and investor of Wizard, a company transforming e-commerce with conversational AI, and Mojo, a sports stock market, where fans can use their knowledge to invest in sports like never before. Telosa is Lore’s legacy project – a city he is building from scratch to test a new model for society, called Equitism. The city will eventually house five million residents and plans to set the global standard for urban living and expand human potential by becoming a blueprint for future generations. Prior to this, Lore started and sold four companies, most recently, Jet.com which was acquired by Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Until 2021, Lore served as the president and CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce. Lore was also the co-founder and CEO of Quidsi, the parent company of e-commerce websites Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, and more. The company was sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. He graduated from Bucknell University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in business management and economics.
Michael Machado leads the global Product team at DevRev and is based out of Palo Alto, California. Previously, Michael led multiple product teams at Salesforce having joined in 2016 after the acquisition of MetaMind. At Salesforce Michael founded its Applied AI Research team and the Einstein product portfolio across Einstein Chatbots, Einstein Language & Vision, Einstein Voice Assistant, and Voice App Services. Before joining DevRev, he created Salesforce Anywhere, as the product lead at Quip, which helped spearhead his passion for combining AI, collaboration, and design to build transformative end user experiences.
Karena Man, based in San Francisco, leads the Data practice and the West Coast Tech Officers practice. Her clients call upon her deep expertise in technology infrastructure, software development, cybersecurity, and ML/AI in recruiting and assessing engineering leadership talent, active in the Firm’s Sports Practice, as well as on developing and scaling up capabilities in emerging technologies. Before becoming a consultant with Egon Zehnder, Karena was a leader in Facebook’s engineering executive search team. Prior to that she recruited engineering leaders, CTOs, and CIOs as an Engagement Leader for the firm. Previously, she was part of the IT practice at Bain and Company, working on IT optimization and transformation, IT cost reduction, and technology road map assignments for clients across all industries. Before that, she was IT Project Manager at an insurance company based in San Francisco. Karena began her career in technology as an analyst in the electronics and high-tech practice of Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Karena earned a BA in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and is currently studying for an MA in government at Harvard University. Married with two children, she roots for the San Francisco Giants, enjoys international travel, and volunteers with organizations that serve homeless children.
Martin is a technologist with a history of solving problems at the largest scale in the world and is passionate about helping enterprises use cloud native observability and open source technologies to succeed on their cloud native journey. He’s now the Co-Founder & CEO of Chronosphere, a Series C startup with $255M in funding, backed by Greylock, Lux Capital, General Atlantic, Addition, and Founders Fund. He was previously at Uber, where he led the development and SRE teams that created and operated M3. Previously, he worked at AWS, Microsoft, and Google. He and his family are based in the Seattle area, and he enjoys playing soccer and eating meat pies in his spare time.
Kanyi is a Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures, an early stage venture fund investing in mission-driven technology companies at the earliest stages. He focuses his investment and formation work in theme areas including fintech, health and wellness, e-commerce, supply-chain, and climate tech. Over the last 10 years in venture, has led and participated in over 50 investments including Cloudtrucks, Goldfinch, Tala, Upstart, Just, Outschool, Mural, Earnest, Kano (Stem Player), Hellosign and more. He previously served as a Partner at Collaborative Fund, where he served on boards including Spruce, True Link, Camino Financial, Hopscotch, and Buffer. As an entrepreneur and operator, Kanyi is a co-founder at Heartbeat Health, and early in his career before venture ran growth at One Block Off the Grid (acquired by $NRG) and was an early employee at Doostang (acquired by Universum Global). Kanyi has also served as a Lecturer and Adjunct at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, a curriculum adapted from his time as a student at Stanford University, where he studied Philosophy.
At the age of 18, Diego Mariscal started “Limitless Prepa Tec” a disability education program for students in Monterrey Mexico. To this day, Limitless continues to be one of the largest youth-led programs in Monterrey Mexico, working to educate students about disabilities. In 2015, Diego founded 2Gether-International (2GI) a not-for-profit accelerator that supports entrepreneurs with disabilities and moves us closer to a world where disability is recognized and valued as an asset for business and entrepreneurship. In his role as CEO and Chief Disabled Officer, Diego has collaborated with multinational organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, and corporate companies like Google, Blackboard and McKinsey to help them better understand disability as an asset for startups. In 2017, Diego became the first entrepreneur with a disability, from the US delegation, to participate in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Hyderabad, India. Diego also received the Global Leadership in Equitable Development Award from the World Trade Credit & Risk Summit in Washington, DC. Born with Cerebral Palsy in New Orleans but raised in Monterrey, Mexico, Diego also represented Nuevo Leon in the Mexican National Paralympics from 2004-2009.
Caryn Marooney is general partner at Coatue Management and sits on the boards of Zendesk and Elastic. In prior roles she oversaw communications for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus and co-founded The OutCast Agency, which served clients like Salesforce.com and Amazon.
Amy Jo is the author of New York Times best-seller Renegades Write the Rules, host of the top-ranked Why Not Now? Podcast and an angel investor. She was named the third most powerful woman on Twitter by Forbes. She has worked closely with world-renowned brands such as Hilton Worldwide, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Nike, Shaquille O’Neal and many others.
Edna Martinson is the co-founder of Boddle Learning— a gamified learning platform that helps K-6 teachers deliver engaging and adaptive math practice & assessments using gameplay and AI. Boddle’s award winning platform has served over 2.5million+ students and supports thousands of classrooms across the US. Originally from Ghana, West Africa, Edna came to the US to pursue her Bachelors of Science in International Business at the age of 16. She also holds an MBA from the University of Missouri— Kansas City. A Forbes Next 1000 recipient, Edna has always been a big believer in the importance of education and a solid foundation at a young age, and this passion to help young kids succeed academically has fueled her passion for the edtech space. Her bold and visionary leadership stems from a strong background in building business relationships, executing on growth hacking strategies, and building strong teams.
Alton McDowell
Managing Director – MM Specialized Industries Industry Verticals, J.P. MorganAlton has been with J.P. Morgan for over 20 years and was recently announced the Co-Head of the Technology & Disruptive Commerce Group in the Middle Market Specialized Industries (MMBSI). Previously, he was a Managing Director in the Financial Institutions Group (FIG) in Corporate Client Banking & Specialized Industries (CCBSI). In his role as the Co-Head of the Technology & Disruptive Commerce Group, he is responsible for defining and shaping a national group that is dedicated to serving early stage companies, particularly those with steep growth trajectories and disruptive product and service offerings in categories such as software, semiconductors, food, health and wellness, home and lifestyle and apparel. Prior to joining CCBSI, Alton was a Managing Director in the Debt Capital Markets (DCM) group, leading a banking team focused on the Diversified Industrials, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Paper & Packaging sectors. Alton also worked in the Telecom Media and Technology group as a Media banker working on M&A, IPO and High Yield transactions. Outside the firm, Alton is a current board member of Mission Squash, which brings the game of squash to inner city middle school students in Houston and aims to help each student reach their academic, athletic and personal potential. Previously, he was a board member of The Harlem School of the Arts and a mentor with Student Sponsor Partners, which provides financial support and mentorship to New York City high school students. Alton graduated from the University of Houston and received an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City.
Chintan Mehta is the Chief Information Officer and head of Digital Technology and Innovation for Wells Fargo. He is also a member of the Wells Fargo Technology executive leadership team. Chintan is responsible for building an effective and efficient customer feedback led digital ecosystem of experiences and capabilities, which are safe, secure, resilient, and highly responsive. He and his team continue to evolve Wells Fargo’s digital platforms and enhance integration of the innovation pipeline into our customer-facing capabilities. As a visionary leader, Chintan looks at things from the customer’s perspective and develops creative long-term strategies to reinvent what their banking looks like and how they will bank into the future – focusing on Smart Content Management, Robotics & Intelligent Automation, Distributed Ledger Technology, Advanced Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computing.
Nik Milanovic is a fintech and financial inclusion enthusiast, with a decade of work across mobile payments, online lending, credit and microfinance. The opinions expressed in his articles do not reflect those of his employer(s).
Neal Moawed is the Global Head of Industry Research at InterSystems. He received his MBA in Health Sector Management from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and has over 10 years of experience in healthcare technology.
Sheel is a co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund investing in fintech companies globally. His own startup experience includes 2 successful fintech exits — a payments company and a high-stakes auction company — and he’s GP of the 500 Fintech fund. He formerly worked as a financial services consultant at BCG and started his fintech career at the non-profit p2p lender, Kiva.
Tim Montgomery is senior vice president, North America Digital Partnerships at Mastercard. In his role, Tim leads a team working with digital players and fintechs large and small to engage, innovate and accelerate digital payments at scale. Through a consultative approach, Tim and his team work hand-in-hand with its partners in the U.S. and around the globe – from e-commerce marketplaces to neobanks to crypto exchanges to enablers and more – to build best-in-class solutions tapping Mastercard technology and services. Tim joined Mastercard in 2010 and has held several roles across the organization. He has spent the majority of his career focusing on elevating and accelerating digital partners, in turn innovating for the future of commerce. Tim lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter. He holds a B.S. in Finance & International Business from New York University. When he is not working you can find him outside either hiking, trail running or mountain biking.
With more than 20 years of professional cybersecurity experience, Katie Moussouris has a unique and unparalleled perspective on security research, incident response, vulnerability disclosure, and bug bounty programs. Katie currently serves as the founder and CEO of Luta Security. During her tenure with Microsoft, Katie’s work included industry-leading initiatives such as starting Microsoft Vulnerability Research, which formalized multiparty vulnerability and supply chain vulnerability coordination across hardware and software as well as launching Microsoft’s first bug bounty program. Katie is the co-author and co-editor of ISO 29147 (vulnerability disclosure) and ISO 30111 (vulnerability handling processes). Working with the U.S. Department of Defense, Katie led the launch of the U.S. government’s first bug bounty program, “Hack the Pentagon.” She also worked with the State Department to help renegotiate the Wassenaar Arrangement, specifically changing the export control language to include technical exemptions for vulnerability disclosure and incident response. She serves in three advisory roles for the U.S. government as a member of the Cyber Safety Review Board, the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, and the Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee. Katie is also a cybersecurity fellow at New America and the National Security Institute.
Pete Muend
Director, Commercial Systems Program Office, National Reconnaissance OfficeMr. Pete Muend is the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office’s Commercial Systems Program Office (CSPO) where he leads the NRO’s strategy for full integration of multiple commercial imagery sources. Prior to establishing CSPO, Mr. Muend served as the NRO’s director for the Commercial GEOINT Activity (CGA), a joint initiative between the NRO and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) established to position both agencies to take full advantage of existing and emerging commercial GEOINT capabilities. Prior to CGA, Mr. Muend was the Assistant Deputy Director of the National Intelligence for Acquisition where he was responsible for overseeing Major Systems Acquisitions across the Intelligence Community. Mr. Muend also served as the NRO Chief of Staff and in a number of other positions within the NRO and Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
GV General Partner Dave Munichiello leads the firm’s digital investing team, spanning its consumer, enterprise, and frontier practice areas. He prioritizes time spent building long-term relationships with technologists who peak in curiosity, drive, and vision. Dave is himself deeply curious about data platforms, data science, developer tools, infrastructure, and enterprise software. His investments include Bugsnag (sold to SmartBear), Cockroach, CoreOS (sold to RedHat), DeterminedAI (sold to HPE), GitLab (IPO Nasdaq: GTLB), Jet.com (sold to Walmart), Lattice.io (sold to Apple), Modular, Pixie (sold to NewRelic), Plaid, RedPanda, SambaNova, Segment (sold to Twilio), Slack (IPO, then sold to Salesforce), Snorkel, Upbound, and Wonder. Before GV, Dave built and led enterprise software product, sales, and operations teams for highly-technical products under pressure in rapidly-changing markets. As an early executive at Kiva Systems, he helped grow its enterprise-enabling robotics and software platform from pre-PMF to $120 million in annual revenue before it was purchased by Amazon and became Amazon Robotics. Dave is a combat veteran and former paratrooper who served as a Captain in the U.S. military’s most elite units before his startup career. Dave’s military leadership roles ranged from running an Air Force technology organization; to serving as an Aide de Camp to the Four Star General running U.S. and NATO Air Forces; to deploying with elite special operations teams worldwide, ensuring they were enabled by the world’s most advanced technologies. Dave holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. from Emory University in mathematics and computer science.
Yorick Naeff
Co-founder and CEO, BUXYorick Naeff is the CEO and co-founder of one of Europe’s fastest growing neobrokers, BUX, headquartered in Amsterdam and backed by prominent international Venture Capital firms such as Prosus Ventures and Tencent. From day one, Yorick was responsible for the mobile broker’s operations and during this time he designed a business made to scale at a fast pace. Thanks to his expertise, BUX is the only neobroker that has expanded to 7 different European markets.
Tashi Nakanishi is the Managing Partner of HartBeat Ventures and CEO of XPV Group. Prior to HartBeat and XPV, Mr. Nakanishi founded and served as Managing Partner of Dreamers VC, an early-stage venture capital fund, alongside Keisuke Honda and Will Smith. In 2016, he launched KSK Angel Fund with Keisuke Honda, creating the category of influencer Angel investor in Japan, which led to investments in Makuake (seed) and Kyash (series A).
Madhu Narasimhan is Executive Vice President and head of Innovation, R&D and Operations. Madhu oversees teams that deliver customer-centric digital products and services, along with the foundational business infrastructure and management routines to enable a high performing SDI organization. Her team is also responsible for leading enterprise-wide innovation initiatives and research and development that will enable growth and drive better customer experiences. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Narasimhan led virtual channels and analytics for Kaiser Permanente Care Delivery. She previously worked at fintech startup organizations as the head of engineering and architecture. She has led product, technology and implementation to deliver cross-channel, integrated technologies and experiences. Based in the Bay Area, Narasimhan is passionate about mentoring and promoting women in technology. She also actively volunteers to promote science awareness and inspiration in elementary schools and is a founding member of the non-profit Bay Area Elementary Science Olympiad Foundation established in 2007.
Ryan Nece
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Next Play CapitalAs a Super Bowl champion, entrepreneur, media personality, and seasoned tech investor—Ryan Nece has cultivated a unique community of professional athletes, GPs, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors. To leverage this powerful ecosystem, he co-founded Next Play Capital in 2014. With $500M in assets under management, Next Play Capital invests in top-tier funds and venture-backed companies across consumer, fintech, and IT/SaaS verticals—including Hippo, Brandless, ByteDance (TikTok), Flexport, Hims, Impossible Foods, Peloton, Rubrik, and Walker & Co.
Thomas Nguyen-Lien is not only a name that easily rolls off the tongue but it’s a name that will soon become the gold standard for global customer care. Holding the title of General Manager – Customer Advisory Service at VOSKER, Thomas has been instrumental in revolutionising traditional consumer-centric philanthropies. He has not only optimised existing customer pillars but implemented highly successful processes within his department which have allowed them to efficiently utilise the power of the technology to better serve all customers on any given platform. By progressively articulating a more comprehensive vision for the institution via bold, strategic and inspirational actions, one would describe his movements as simply pioneering. The focal point for all of Thomas’s strategies has been to ensure that the needs, wishes and desires of all consumers are not only met but greatly exceeded. In order to flesh out this notion, Thomas has actively customized all company metrics and led all internal consumer-facing hypergrowth in terms of calls and requests. He continues to improve all processes while teaching his teams to deliver with excellence. His rejection of top-down mandates and adoration for collaborative efforts ensures that success is a shared commodity amongst his peers and coworkers. By highlighting the increasing gap between clients and organisations and easily correcting these missteps, Thomas is VOSKER’s secret weapon when it comes to satisfying both the needs of the business and those of their audience in an authentic and reliable manner – no matter the industry or environment.
Jordan Nof is a Co-founder and Managing Partner at Tusk Venture Partners L.P. and is a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He has led many of the firm’s investments including Lemonade, Bird, Coinbase, Alma, Sunday, and Wheel. He currently serves on the board of directors of Alma, Sunday, and Wheel. Prior to Tusk Venture Partners, Jordan spent six years as a Director at Blackstone, where he focused on the development of the firm’s corporate venture capital portfolio. During that time, Jordan focused on investing in early-stage technology companies that could accelerate operations across Blackstone and the firm’s underlying portfolio companies. Before joining Blackstone, Jordan spent four years in the institutional investment management division at AllianceBernstein. During that time, he worked with many of the firm’s largest global institutional sub-advisory relationships. Jordan received an M.B.A. from Rollins Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of Florida State University where he received a B.S. in Finance. He is based out of the firm’s New York office.
James Norman is a serial entrepreneur who at age 16 built his first online company. His current venture, Pilotly, is the first market research platform built for creative content, servicing Amazon, NBCUniversal and others. Outside of media, he’s passionate about social equity, which led him to co-found Black Operator Ventures, the first seed fund for and by Black founders. James earned his BSE in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan. He’s a founding partner at Transparent Collective, the non-profit that accelerated the most Black tech founders to funding, and a Board Advisor at Zoo Labs music accelerator.
Kara Nortman is a partner at Upfront Ventures.
Bryan joined Index in 2018 and focuses on enterprise investments with an emphasis on design. He is particularly interested in the consumerization of enterprise and the use of design to improve the approachability of highly technical products. He is one of the hosts of Index Venture’s new podcast series “Hands On.” Bryan began his career at Palantir Technologies, where he worked as an engineer and product manager on work that spanned federated search, data ingestion, data collaboration, and access control. Following Palantir, Bryan worked as product manager at MemSQL, where he focused on deployability and user interfaces. Bryan graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in computer science, focusing on artificial intelligence.
Joshua Ogundu is the co-founder and CEO of Campfire, a photo-sharing app that lets you tell the story behind the pictures you have taken or give your thoughts on the ones you have seen on the internet. Before Campfire, Ogundu worked at TikTok as a lead on the global product operations team across Trust & Safety and TikTok For Good. Prior to that he worked across communication and media in product management.
Janine O'Neill
Talent Director, SequoiaJanine is a Talent Director at Sequoia, where she leads executive recruiting across GTM functions for portfolio companies and supports founders in their journey to scale their organizations. Her work includes identifying and introducing independent board members to late stage pre-IPO companies. Prior to Sequoia, Janine was Head of People at Mellon Capital and also spent eight years at Blackrock in multiple roles, leading global investment recruiting and HR for iShares. Early in her career she learned executive search at Spencer Stuart recruiting executives for a variety of functions and industries. She has an undergraduate degree from Vassar College and a MBA from University of California Berkeley Haas. Janine is a certified integral coach from NVW, focused on helping leaders develop. She enjoys spending quality time with her husband, two children, and labrador, as well as traveling, skiing and grounding herself in nature and friendship.
Uriridiakoghene “Ulili” Onovakpuri is a Partner at Kapor Capital, an early stage, social impact venture capital firm that invests in gap-closing startups. At Kapor Capital, she leads healthcare and people operations practice as well as the firm’s Summer Associate program. Prior to her role at Kapor, Ulili served as Director of Global Programs at Village Capital, a global accelerator program and venture capital firm. While at Village Capital she worked side by side with entrepreneurs from around the world helping them grow their ideas into marketable businesses. Ulili received her MBA with a concentration in Health Sector Management from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is a native San Franciscan and a proud UC Berkeley Alum.
Shirin Oreizy
Founder & CEO, Next StepShirin is the founder and CEO of Next Step, an award-winning Behavioral Design Agency based in San Francisco. She’s also a guest lecturer at Stanford University and NYU. Her work applying Behavioral Science in marketing & product is regularly featured on Forbes, INC and has helped both early stage startups as well as established tech giants like GitHub & Credit Karma increase demand for their products. She has a degree in engineering from UC Berkeley, as well as accreditations in Behavioral Science and Positive Psychology from Duke.
Deidre Paknad is the CEO and co-founder of WorkBoard, the leading Strategy Execution Platform powering the digital operating rhythm for companies around the globe. Deidre has founded and led three tech companies, a high-growth business as an executive at IBM, and has 17 patents granted/pending in her name. She has been twice recognized with the Computer World Smithsonian Award. At WorkBoard, Deidre works with senior leadership at some of the world’s largest companies, including AstraZeneca, Ford, Humana, Walmart, and Zendesk to clarify, align, and drive strategic priorities with greater speed and agility. WorkBoard ranked No.162 on the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list and number 6 on the list of companies led by female CEOs.
Dheeraj Pandey is the founder and former CEO of Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX), a global leader in enterprise cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and a current board member of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE). Dheeraj founded Nutanix in 2009 and helped it grow from $0 to $1.8 Billion in revenue with 17,000+ customers and over 6,000 employees by 2020 when he stepped down to found his latest venture – DevRev. Nutanix was one of the largest tech IPOs when it debuted on Wall Street in 2016.
Ursheet is a Partner at Mayfield and invests in Human & Planetary Health and Infrastructure Software. His investments in human & planetary health include Mammoth Biosciences (CRISPR), Mission Bio (Single Cell Sequencing, Oncology), Qventus (Healthcare AI), Endpoint Health (Precision Immunology), Mirvie (predict and prevent pregnancy complications for moms and babies), GraphWear (Continuous Non-invasive Glucose Monitoring), Chemix (AI-powered next gen EV battery technologies) and Foodsmart (reverse metabolic disease). His investments in the enterprise sector include Versa Networks (Security and SD-WAN), Qwiet (Application Security), Rancher Labs (Cloud Computing platform acquired by SUSE), CloudGenix (SD-WAN platform acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and Netsil (Application Observability platform acquired by Nutanix). Prior to Mayfield, Ursheet had an operating career as a repeat entrepreneur and executive at Cisco and Microsoft. Ursheet was co-founder & CEO of StorSimple – the leading cloud-integrated storage company that was acquired by Microsoft in 2012. Ursheet holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Bachelors in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, from which he received the Young Alumni Achiever award in 2015.
Annie Pearl is the Chief Product Officer at Calendly, where she oversees the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Caledly’s product. Annie is responsible for leading and scaling the product management and UX teams to deliver best-in-class scheduling experiences for users. Annie brings nearly 15 years of experience at startups and enterprise organizations, most recently as Chief Product Officer at Glassdoor overseeing the product, UX, and content moderation teams. Before that, she led Enterprise Product Management teams at Box both before and after the company’s IPO. Earlier in her career, she was the VP of Product and a founding member of Xpert Financial. She is a Board Member of WorkRamp, Well Health, and holds several advisory roles. Annie has a Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts from Claremont McKenna College. She is a recipient of the 2019 San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.
Roxanne Petraeus is the CEO and co-founder of Ethena, a compliance training platform for modern teams, and she is a former Army combat veteran.
Vieje Piauwasdy is the director of equity strategy at Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees.
Archana Prasad is a VP of Product Management, leading banking and global money movement products that enable digital banking and embedded finance experiences at Marqeta. She is a thought leader in the payments and financial services industry with over 17 years of experience in building payments, banking and money-movement products at global scale. Her prior experience includes Visa, Silicon Valley Bank, Capital One and Capgemini Financial Services.
Erin is an early-stage technology investor focused on enterprise software and AI, with an emphasis on data, infrastructure, security, and automation. She is especially interested in products and technologies that increase resilience, foster collaboration and creativity, and support data-driven decision making throughout organizations. Before joining Index, Erin was Head of Product for Palantir’s data analytics and machine learning platform. She holds an MSc from Oxford in Mathematics and Computer Science, where she focused on applications of algebraic topology to machine learning and computer science, and a BS in Engineering from Stanford University.
Chelsea Puckett is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Payments Systems at Stride Bank, National Association. In her 10+ years at Stride Bank, she has been a dynamic leader and passionate innovator in her role directing the Payments Division and Operations department. She has been a linchpin in the implementation and scaling of strategic FinTech partnerships through which the Bank increased transaction volume by more than 50x and deposits by 3x in just two years’ time. Chelsea specializes in real-time payments, NACHA, platform banking, FinTech partnerships, relationship management, debit/credit/prepaid card processing, and operational efficiencies. Chelsea graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern Oklahoma State University. In addition to her role at Stride, she serves as an advisor on the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City 10J Payments Advisory Group (JPAG).
Connie Qian is a vice president at Forgepoint Capital. She focuses on early-stage enterprise software companies in security and adjacent sectors, including AI/ML, infrastructure software, and fintech.
Katie Rae is the founding CEO & Managing Partner of The Engine, a venture capital firm spun out of MIT with more than $670M assets under management. The Engine invests in early- stage companies solving the world’s biggest problems through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering and leadership. She has served in this role since March 2017. Katie serves as a Board Member at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, Via Separations, Lilac Solutions, Boston Metal, Sublime Systems and VEIR. She founded Project 11 Ventures in 2014 and served as Managing Director. Prior to that, Katie held leadership roles at Techstars Boston, serving as Managing Director from 2011-2014 and Chairman until 2016. She has advised hundreds of founders and invested in more than 100 companies at the earliest stages of formation. Key investments include Flywire, Pillpack (acquired by Amazon for $1 billion), Bevi, GrabCad, and Synack. Katie founded Equity Summit in 2018, an annual event bringing together female and underrepresented minority fund managers and world leading Limited Partners. She serves as the organization’s President. In addition to her extensive investing career, Katie has more than fifteen years of experience in senior management and product positions at Microsoft, Eons, AltaVista, RagingBull, Zip2, and Mirror Worlds. She holds an MBA from Yale University and a BA in Biology from Oberlin College.
Kamini Ramani’s mission is to deliver on the Mayfield brand promise to entrepreneurs and to provide a range of support to portfolio companies. Prior to Mayfield, she was a messaging and corporate communications counselor to the leaders of emerging and established technology companies in Silicon Valley for three decades. These included companies from the client-server and internet waves, with a highlight of providing public relations counsel to Steve Jobs at NeXT in 1995. She holds a Masters in Communications from Stanford University, a Masters in English Literature from Yale University, and a Bachelors in English Literature from Bombay University.
Karthik was one of the original database engineers at Facebook responsible for building distributed databases including Cassandra and HBase. He is an Apache HBase committer, and also an early contributor to Cassandra, before it was open-sourced by Facebook. He is currently the co-founder and CTO of the company behind YugabyteDB, a fully open-source distributed SQL database for building cloud-native and geo-distributed applications.
Geoff Schmidt is the co-founder and CEO of Apollo GraphQL, the leader in open source and commercial GraphQL technologies. The company has raised more than $170 million to build toward its mission of helping app developers help the world. Apollo’s open-source GraphQL client, server, and gateway are downloaded more than 17 million times per month and used in production by more than 30 percent of the Fortune 500. Prior to Apollo, Geoff was the co-founder of Meteor Development Group, the company that developed Meteor.js, an open-source framework for building and deploying web, mobile, and desktop applications in Javascript or TypeScript. At the time, Meteor.js was one of the most popular open source projects in the world, and is still the easiest and fastest way to build full-stack JavaScript apps. Geoff also created Monument, an affordable live/work art event space in downtown San Francisco.
Alison Rapaport Stillman is a Founding General Partner at Serena Ventures, overseeing portfolio management and sourcing new investments. In addition to growing the reach and impact of the SV portfolio, Alison is the person founders turn to when they need pointed advice, detailed feedback, and tough love. She holds a BS from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a CFA charterholder.
Alexandre Robicquet is co-founder and CEO of Crossing Minds, an AI-powered recommendation platform for e-commerce and content. An experienced Stanford AI scholar, he holds three Master’s degrees in mathematics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Jeremiah Robison
Founder and CEO, CIONICJeremiah Robison is the Founder and CEO of CIONIC, an innovative company that builds lightweight and durable bionic clothing driven by powerful algorithms that adapt in real time to each individual’s mobility needs. He started the company in 2018 after his daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and he was frustrated at the lack of effective technology available to help improve her mobility. Four years later, CIONIC introduced the breakthrough, FDA-cleared Cionic Neural Sleeve, the first product to combine sensing, analysis and augmentation into a wearable garment. Prior to CIONIC, Jeremiah spent twenty years at the intersection of data, algorithms, and the human body, driving innovation in sensing and machine learning at Apple, Openwave Systems, Slide, and Jawbone. Jeremiah has a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Adriana Roche is the Chief People Officer at MURAL, a collaborative intelligence company employing a global team of 900+ working remotely across 29 countries. She leads a team responsible for recruiting, growth, and team member development as the company continues its strategic expansion plans. She most recently served as Vice President of People and Places at Segment in San Francisco where she led a team who, over the course of nearly five years, grew the company’s headcount by 10x and earned multiple awards for best companies to work. Previously, Roche held recruiting positions at Google, Salesforce.com and Dropbox demonstrating her extensive experience in managing distributed SaaS teams undergoing a steep growth curve. She is fluent in English, Spanish and French and holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Psychology from NYU.
Robert Roman
President & Co-founder, HartBeat VenturesRobert Roman is the Co-Founder of HartBeat Ventures. Over the years Mr. Roman has invested in notable companies such as AirBnB, Hydrow, and Beyond Meat. Mr. Roman is known as a leading financial advisor in the entertainment and sports industries. His holistic service model is focused on creating and maintaining efficiencies within his clients’ finances. Robert has over 20 years of experience in wealth management providing financial services to families through multi-generational forward-thinking solutions. In 2011 he founded Legacy Private Client Group where he built a platform that facilitated holistic solutions. Legacy PCG quickly became one of the fastest growing wealth management firms in California and the US. In 2016 he partnered with MGO to plug in the infrastructure he built as a Registered Investment Advisor IA to further develop his holistic vision and service model.
Who is Aaron Ronquillo? Like many entrepreneurs, I am juggling a lot of things – maybe too many things. I am primarily a sales & business development executive, advisor, investor, and a co-founder of a subscription base merch company called Nakoshi.com. I am also working on a mobile app stealth startup with a mission in enabling local restaurants with a tool to create a predictable revenue stream to ensure they maximize their resources. In addition, I enjoy paying it forward through local volunteering, mentoring, & sponsorship. Most importantly, in my spare time (weekends) I make sure this is well spent making memories with my wife and daughters.
Andy Rooks
Founder, Price TheoryAndy Rooks is the founder of Price Theory, a tool that helps business find their optimal price and pricing strategy. Previous positions include Chief Growth Officer at CorralData, and Chief Marketing Officer of Just Salad, where he specialized in product positioning and go-to-market strategy. He also led startup growth workshops through his consulting company, Theory Marketing Partners. Andy received an MBA from NYU Stern and is an active mentor at NYC-based accelerators (ERA, Antler).
Ali Rosenthal is the Managing Partner of Leadout Capital, which she founded in 2018. Leadout is an early stage venture capital firm backing founders with world-class customer expertise who build software-solutions for underserved, and large end markets. Ali was a founding member of the Facebook mobile team. Her operating career includes executive roles in consumer software, social, mobile and fintech companies including Wealthfront, as VP of Strategic Partnerships. Ali began her career at Goldman Sachs (M&A) and worked in growth equity at General Atlantic. From 2012-2013, she was an EIR with Greylock, and has been angel investing since 2011. From 2011-2019, Ali was an independent director at AutoNation. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she teaches a course in entrepreneurship. She was a professional cyclist from 2009-2011 and lives in the Bay Area with her family.
Christina is a two-decade finance veteran, most recently a venture-backed CFO, building finance teams in high growth environments. Before her stints at Rent the Runway, Criteo, and Eyeview, Christina ran global Finance at GE and served as a Finance Transformation leader at Deloitte Consulting managing large scale technology projects for the Office of the CFO. After growing frustrated with the manual nature of FP&A and from an implementation of a leading solution gone wrong, Christina set out to build the next generation of FP&A technology. Founded in 2018, Cube now serves hundreds of Finance teams around the globe, helping companies graduate from numbers to narrative in record time.
Thomas Rouffiac
Co-founder and COO, NatrionThomas Rouffiac is the cofounder and COO of EV battery component leader Natrion. Having founded multiple startups, he leverages his experience and network to maximize Natrion’s efficiency, lead its capital raising efforts, and handle day-to-day operations. Thomas’s passion for renewable energy and entrepreneurship started when working under Laura di Bonaventura for the new sustainable initiatives and solar roof installations in 2016. He studied Finance, Computer Science, and Mathematics at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.
Sophie Ruddock is VP, GM North America at Multiverse, a tech startup focused on high-quality education and training through professional apprenticeships.
Kristina Rudzinskaya
Founder & CEO, EtalonKristina is the CEO of Etalon, a Marin-based posture apparel company. In addition, she is a STOTT-certified Pilates instructor and leader of the Elpha women’s community in San Francisco.
Gyanda Sachdeva is Vice President of Product Management at LinkedIn, where she leads the development of the company’s advertising solutions. She previously oversaw the company’s Premium, Commerce, Marketplace, and Small Business product efforts. She is an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow and the co-founder of LinkedIn’s Women in Product Organization, which empowers women to build careers in Product Management, User Design, Business Development, Editorial and Content Creation. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Gyanda spent her early career in Investment Banking at Thomas Weisel Partners and Merrill Lynch. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and a master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. She lives in Mountain View, CA.
Maryanna Saenko is an early-stage venture capitalist with an interest in robotics, quantum computing, blockchain, aerospace, and the future of food. Previously she was at Khosla Ventures, and prior to that at DFJ, where she worked with Steve Jurvetson (Co-Founder of Future Ventures) to focus on frontier technology investments. She was also an investment partner at Airbus Ventures where she led a series of venture investments strategically aligned with Airbus’ future-of-aerospace initiatives. Before Airbus, Maryanna was a consultant at Lux Research and a research engineer at Cabot Corporation. Maryanna graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in BioMedical Engineering and a BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering.
Andrej Safundzic
CEO and Co-founder, LumosAndrej Safundzic is the CEO and co-founder of Lumos. Before starting Lumos and doing his MBA and MSCS at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy Fellow, Andrej sold a government startup to the German White House after successfully pitching it in front of Chancellor Merkel and her whole cabinet personally. He is originally from Croatia and Germany and loves reading fiction!
David Samuel is an experienced executive, serial entrepreneur, and Internet pioneer in software & media. Today, Dave is co-founder of Freestyle.vc, a seed stage venture capital firm, with over $565M under management & investments in over 150 startups. Freestyle has led the seeds in Airtable, Patreon, Betterup, Narvar and Snapdocs. Prior to Freestyle, in 2004, Dave co-founded Crackle, an Internet video platform, acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006. In 1996, he founded Spinner, the first Internet radio service, acquired by AOL for $320 million in 1999. Dave graduated from MIT with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and enjoys wakeboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking and lives in Marin with his wife & 5 teenagers.
RJ started Rivian to combine his love for cars with his desire to leave the world better for the generations who inherit it. He is unrelenting in his mission to build an organization focused on collaboration, products created with thoughtfulness and a future that is as exciting as it is carbon neutral. As founder and CEO, RJ began with no capital, no team, no partnerships and no roadmap. He has since led the company to develop its vertically integrated technology platforms, built a multi-program development organization, established key partnerships, and developed the strategic and tactical plans to establish market leadership in both the consumer and commercial markets. RJ graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before obtaining his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
An original super angel turned multi-stage investor, Aydin has been named on the Forbes Midas List for the past ten years (2014-2023) as well as the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists list for four consecutive years (2016-2019). Before starting Felicis, he was the first product manager at Google and helped launch their first ten international sites. He received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University, an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School, and a master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Aydin currently sits on the Graduate Board of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Chipper Cash is a venture-capital-backed Financial technology company that builds software to enable free and instant cross border peer-to-peer money transfers; as well as solutions for businesses and merchants to process online and in-store payments.
Aravinda is the Founding Partner of Venturous Counsel, a uniquely mission-driven firm dedicated to exclusively representing underestimated startups and investors who are also committed to prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in their own organizations, as well as assisting such business to find the right legal partner, to help level the playing field for these startups and investors in terms of access to quality legal counsel. As a part of that work, she actively maintains and expands her network of diverse-led law firms and diverse attorneys to whom she can refer startups and investors needing the right legal partner. To this end, she has initiated a series of Diversity Referral events, organized to give diverse lawyers in various specialty areas the opportunity to showcase their practices to other attorneys, particularly those in large law firms, in-house and government positions, to broaden networks and facilitate community support across the board. She is the chair of the Solo/Small Firms committee of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. She also participates in various technology and legal forums that focus on women and women of color, advising accelerators with diverse cohorts and judging startup pitch events at UC Hastings. Aravinda has been named a Super Lawyers Rising Star every year since 2015. She was previously a Partner at Silicon Legal Strategy in San Francisco, before which, she was a corporate associate in the startup practice of Hogan Lovells in Palo Alto. She started her career in Orrick’s Emerging Companies Group in Menlo Park. Aravinda received her law degree with distinction from Stanford University Law School and her undergraduate degree with honors in Language and Mind from New York University. She has represented a broad range of startups, entrepreneurs, venture capital firms and public companies, working directly with high-level executives and directors, advising companies and investors in various equity financing structures, M&A transactions, licensing and strategic partnerships, as well as day-to-day counseling. She has worked with companies from formation through financing rounds to acquisition or public offering and been primarily responsible for SEC reporting obligations thereafter.
Manuela Seve
CEO, alphaa.ioManuela Seve is co-founder and CEO of Alpha’a & alphaa.io through which she is changing the way we think of asset ownership by connecting the physical and digital realms via: blockchain certification, licensing and dropshipping. She has been in the tech and art sector for the past 8 years successfully raising funds from industry leaders such as: Metaprop vc, EOS VC, Chingona Ventures, Gaingels among other funds. With a background in finance, Manuela worked as an equity analyst at Gávea Investments, one of Brazil’s most reputable investment management firms.
Mahesh Shah is responsible for driving product innovation, research and development, building and testing, as well as outlining a roadmap for existing and future portfolios at CDK Global. Prior to CDK Global, Mahesh was the general manager and vice president, Acquisition and Divestiture, IT Consulting Services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Mahesh held various roles throughout his 16-year tenure at HPE including chief information officer, Enterprise Services and Software and vice president, Product R&D and IT as well as several other executive roles in IT automation and cloud engineering. Mahesh earned his Bachelor of Commerce degree, specializing in management information systems from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and his Master of Business Administration degree from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He also serves on the board of advisors for several technology startups.
Shaival Shah
Co-founder and CEO, RibbonShaival Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Ribbon, a real estate software company simplifying the home buying process. Shaival’s passion for creating a level playing field for buyers, sellers and realtors combined with his own personal experiences in the home-buying process led him to create Ribbon in 2017. Prior to creating Ribbon, Shaival was SVP, Platform at Managed By Q, a workplace management platform.
Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital, where she invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods. Her investments span stages and sectors, and include women’s health (Maven Clinic, Alife, Gameto, Adyn), digital health infrastructure (SteadyMD, H1, AllStripes, Everly Health), health equity (Waymark, Galileo, Miga), foodtech (Shiru), and fintech (Mos, Ramp, Neo.tax). Above all, she seeks out extraordinary, mission-driven founders. Prior to Lux, Deena was a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), led product partnerships at Google for health, search, and AI/ML, and directed social impact investments at Google.org. Deena also served as a Presidential Management Fellow at The U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Deena self-funded her undergraduate degree at Harvard (Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) and MA at Georgetown through a variety of merit scholarships and side hustles, including co-founding her first company while in college. She is currently a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Board Director for the National Venture Capital Association, a member of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Kauffman Fellows, Aspen Finance Fellows, The Council on Foreign Relations, and All Raise. Deena is a frequent speaker and commentator and has been featured in print and television on Bloomberg, CNBC and NBC, in print in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Techcrunch, Marie Claire, STAT, and more, and has delivered keynote addresses at major industry conferences. She was named a “Top 30 Under 40 in Healthcare” by Business Insider, “Top Senior Women to Watch in Venture Capital” by the Wall Street Journal, and “Top 50 in Digital Health” by Rock Health.
Erin Sharoni is the chief product officer (CPO) of FOXO Technologies Inc., a technology startup using the science of AI and epigenetics to reinvent the life insurance industry. Erin has more than 15 years of experience building products and brands in molecular health, media and finance. Prior to joining FOXO, she served at InsideTracker as a creative director. Erin’s previous television career as a television host and journalist included roles on NBC Sports Network, CNBC, CBS Sports and Showtime. She also sat on Ray Dalio’s Core Management Team at Bridgewater as a management associate. Her multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving is driven by a lifelong commitment to the intersection of science and art, and she is passionate about disruptive technology that improves the human experience. She holds a Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies. Additionally, Erin holds a master’s degree in biology from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree with honors in studio art from Wesleyan University. She is currently a Master of Bioethics degree candidate at Harvard Medical School.
Emmalyn is a co-founder and managing partner of Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global venture capital firm that invests in mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working towards a fair financial system. Emm leads the firm’s US investment team. Her current portfolio of disruptive fintech companies includes Brigit, Chime, Clerkie, Cushion.ai, EarnUp, Jetty, Kin, Mantl, Propel, Skipify, Steady, TrueBiz and Unit. Emm is an industry thought leader and advocate for transforming the US financial system to help create better financial health. She is a believer in working with marginalized communities and leads her firm’s DEIJ+ efforts. Emm has 23 years of tech investing experience from her roles as a Partner at Omidyar Network and a Venture Partner with Oak Investment Partners. She started her career as a tech investment banker with Morgan Stanley. Emm holds an MBA degree from Wharton and a BA degree from UC-Berkeley where she graduated summa cum laude.
Cuy Sheffield
VP & Global Head, Crypto, Visa, Inc.Cuy Sheffield is the VP and Global Head of Visa’s Crypto team. Leading the global crypto product team within the product organization. Cuy is a fellow at the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute, a co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies and a member of the advisory group for the Digital Dollar Project. Before Visa, Cuy worked on business development and partnerships for TrialPay, a fintech startup that Visa acquired in 2015.
Ash Shehryar is Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Pronto, a SaaS video creation tool that uses AI to enable users to create videos quickly and economically. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Ash was an award-winning creative director for several global marketing agencies. Her data-driven creative solutions resulted in 66 award-winning campaigns. Inspired by the consistently overlapping lines of marketing and technology, Ash is a distinctive leader with an original perspective, particularly on the user experience. She infuses the conceptual with the scientific, delivering real connections between audiences and brands while cultivating collaborative relationships with her clients and her team. Ash is passionate about what “could be” and immerses herself in technologies like AI, Blockchain, and AR/VR. Her time spent living in four countries, speaking three different languages, translates into a heightened understanding of diverse, global audiences.
Robert Siegel is a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a general partner at XSeed Capital.
A veteran technology entrepreneur/investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain and gaming with the mission to deliver digital property rights to the world’s gamers and Internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies, and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open metaverse. Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first free web page and email provider in Asia. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s messaging unit to IBM, and pivoted Outblaze to become an incubator of projects and companies to develop digital entertainment services and products. Yat is a director for TurnOut Ventures, a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment that brought to prominence the hugely popular emoticon character Tuzki. In 2017 he set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool digital lab for skills not emphasized by most education systems, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology. Since 2018, Yat has been an early advocate for the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the gaming industry, which will allow gamers to enjoy true ownership of their own game assets, data, and, consequently, time. With a clear vision of the potential of decentralized apps and assets, Yat quickly steered Animoca Brands, at the time an established game developer and publisher, to focus on blockchain technology and NFTs. Since 2018, Animoca Brands has launched a series of NFT-centric products and invested in over 100 blockchain-related companies, developing one of the largest blockchain portfolios in the world.
Gefen Skolnick is a first generation immigrant, proud queer woman, and coffee lover. She started Couplet in order to bring the love and joy of great-tasting, specialty coffee to the masses. Couplet’s goal is to make more coffee fun and approachable by skipping the pretentiousness of specialty coffee and getting right to delicious coffee. Not only has Gefen worked as the co-director of technology for the largest women’s hackathon in the U.S., but she also built her own apps and participated in multiple fellowship programs. She became a lead partner at a venture fund backed by the founders of Tesla, Reddit, and Twitch before creating her own coffee brand and locking in funding using just Twitter. And did we mention that she did all this by the age of 23! Gefen had planned to bootstrap her company – funding from Twitter was never in question. As fate would have it, however, her persistence to advocate for underrepresented minorities helped her grab the attention of not one but 30 angel investors pre launch. When the brand’s first check came from Jen Rubio, it pushed Gefen to work on Couplet Coffee full-time directly after graduating college. Her passion for being an advocate stems from seeing first hand how community college graduates are extremely under-resourced. Through Twitter, Gefen built a community for underrepresented founders that reached 1,000 members in days, currently at almost 3,000.
Rachel Sonnenberg
Startup Acquisition: Pilots Lead, Amazon Web ServicesRachel leads the Pilot Program for the AWS Investment Team to design and test experiments that assess enhancements to drive startup acquisition. Rachel’s focus at AWS is on Seed -Series B startups and AWS Venture Capital partners. Prior to Amazon, Rachel led investment and operational verticals as Chief of Staff at Kindred Ventures, a seed stage venture capital fund. Prior to Kindred, Rachel was an early employee at Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, a growth stage team – partnering with their Accelerator and Series A teams and building out the Growth Stage program from inception. Previously, Rachel worked at North Run Capital, a Boston-based long short event driven hedge fund. Rachel began her investment career at Audax Group, a private equity firm focusing on middle market companies with an emphasis on add-on acquisitions.
Christine Spang is the Co-Founder and CTO of Nylas where she leads Nylas’ technical strategy and the development and delivery of cutting-edge productivity-driven products and experiences for software developers and technical teams. As a female founder and CTO, Christine is a strong advocate of diversity within the developer and broader tech communities through organizations such as Lesbians Who Tech, Dev Color, and Women Who Code. Christine holds a degree in computer science from MIT.
Maddie Stone
Security Researcher, Project Zero, GoogleMaddie Stone is a Security Researcher on Google Project Zero where she focuses on 0-day exploits actively used in-the-wild. Previously, she was a reverse engineer and team lead on the Android Security team, focusing predominantly on pre-installed and off-Google Play malware. Maddie holds a Bachelors of Science, with a double major in Computer Science and Russian, and a Masters of Science in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University.
Sam Stone
Director of Product Management, Pricing & Data, OpendoorSam is passionate about building products at the intersection of finance and machine learning. He is currently the Director of Product Management, Pricing & Machine Learning Products. Sam played an integral part in developing the Opendoor Valuation Model (OVM) which is a core piece of pricing infrastructure. In addition, Sam has helped develop many downstream pricing applications including home offers, how Opendoor values its portfolio and assesses risk and what decisions to make when reselling a home. Prior to Opendoor, he was a co-founder and product manager at Ansaro, a SaaS startup using data science and machine learning to help companies improve hiring decisions. Sam holds degrees in Math and International Relations from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard.
Melanie Stricklan combined her military experience and indomitable spirit to co-found Slingshot Aerospace in 2017, a company that is empowering organizations with decision intelligence technologies for space. Today, she is the company’s Chief Executive Officer where she leads the strategic vision, product development, and growth strategy. Having proudly served in the United States Air Force for 21 years, Melanie possesses a unique blend of leadership and technical expertise that enables her to create and execute winning business and product strategies. Melanie holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and a Master of Science in Space Operations Management from Webster University. She was named the 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year for El Segundo, California, and one of Inc. Magazines 2019 Top 100 Female Founders in the United States. She is a champion for STEM initiatives and enjoys inspiring youth to challenge themselves and pursue their dreams.
Alain Sylvain
Founder & CEO, SYLVAINAlain is the Founder and CEO of SYLVAIN, a strategy and design consultancy that provokes progress for companies, people and society at large. Clients include Masterclass, Google, American Express, Spotify, Airbnb, Blackrock, Amazon, Diageo, GM, the NBA, UBER, New York Times, Nike, Apple and others. Founded in 2010, the company is headquartered in NYC, with offices in Amsterdam and Richmond, VA.
Emir Talu
Co-founder & Partner, Pentas VenturesAs a first-generation American born in Los Angeles, Emir Talu grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. After launching his first company Oprena, an interactive media studio at 24 years old, Emir joined Reshape Ventures in NYC as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. His time in Reshape landed him a Founding Team role at Blank Street, a small-format coffee chain with 40+ locations backed by VC’s such as Base10, General Catalyst, Left Lane Capital and more. During his time at Blank Street, Emir focused on analyzing the shifting consumer trends and how to position the brand’s products and services based on the next generation’s needs. Given his passion for empowering the next generation, Emir co-founded Pentas Ventures— an early stage venture capital fund based in NYC that invests in consumer tech products and platforms built for Gen-Z. Since its launch in July 2021, Pentas Ventures invested in 20+ companies alongside VC’s such as Sequoia, First Round Capital, Greycroft, GV, Forerunner and more. Besides Venture Capital, Emir is a big fan of music and co-founded the music business podcast ‘Came a Long Way’ which hosted label execs from Def Jam, Atlantic Records, Roc Nation, Epic Records, Warner Records, Columbia Records to name a few.
Clarence Tan is a co-founder of Boddle Learning — a kids gaming platform that makes learning seriously fun both in and outside the classroom that is used by over 2.5 million kids. Clarence has more than 10 years of experience designing games and UX in the kids and learning space, and is also a speaker on classroom gamification at educational conferences such as ISTE, KCPT(PBS), SXSWEDU, and LearnFest. He has dedicated his work to creating engaging experiences that improve student outcomes in the K-12 space.
For more than two decades, Adam Tesan has led growth and revenue operations at public and private companies and possesses a unique talent for driving high growth in SaaS and Digital Marketing businesses. He is directly responsible for maximizing all of Chargebee’s revenue streams, including sales strategies, customer success and partnerships.
David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, an NYC-based seed stage venture capital firm that has invested in over 400 seed-stage startups, including Plaid, Ro, PillPack, Ramp, Amplitude, Airtable, Flatiron Health, Stripe, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Flexport, Classpass, Vine, GroupMe and more. David is the Chairman of GoodDog, a marketplace to find pets online. He is the co-founder of TechStars NYC and serves on the board of Friends of Hudson River Park. He is a Rock Fellow at Harvard Business School and on the Entrepreneur Board at New York University. David is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and New York University Law School. David lives in NYC with his wife Zara and three kids and three dogs.
Lo is the Founding Managing Partner of Plexo Capital, which he incubated and spun out from GV (Google Ventures), based on a strategy to increase access to early-stage deal flow. Plexo Capital invests in emerging seed-stage VCs (led by diverse managers) and invests directly into companies sourced from the portfolios of VCs where Plexo Capital has an investment. Investors in Plexo Capital funds include Alphabet/Google, Intel Capital, Cisco Investments, RBC, Southern New Hampshire University, Home Depot, Hearst Corporation, Hampton University Endowment, JIMCO + Ford Foundation. His expertise includes investing into areas such as enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, financial technology, marketplaces, e-commerce, gaming + technology enabled consumer. In addition to managing Plexo Capital, Lo is a CNBC Contributor providing his expertise on financial markets and technology companies on a regular basis. Prior to founding Plexo Capital, Lo was a Partner on the investing team at GV, where he focused on marketplaces, mobile, and consumer products. Lo received his M.B.A from the Haas School of Business (University of California at Berkeley), where he completed the Management of Technology program, a joint curriculum program with the College of Engineering. Lo received his B.S from Hampton University in Virginia.
Christine Tsai is the CEO and founding partner of 500 Global.
Alan Tu
Portfolio Manager, Global Technology Strategy, T. Rowe PriceAlan Tu is a portfolio manager for the Global Technology Strategy at T. Rowe Price. The fund invests in private and public companies across the technology landscape, with key areas of focusing including enterprise software, consumer internet, semiconductors, and fintech. Prior to joining T. Rowe Price, Alan received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth and his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Alan is a Northern California native and enjoys being with nature and pickle ball.
Kelvin is the Co-founder & CEO of Bumpa which is billed as the Shopify of Africa and backed by Fast Forward Venture Studio, Google Black Founders Fund, Plug and Play, Sahil Lavigna and Base 10. Previously he founded Consonance – a 7000+ software developer community and managed programs at Co-creation Hub in Lagos Nigeria, which was the first incubator/accelerator in Nigeria.
Sandhya is a Partner at Khosla Ventures and invests in founders who are tackling hard, unsolved problems through the use of AI/ML. She was an early investor in One Concern, LunchClub.ai, Helm.ai, Forethought.ai, Fireflies.ai and Groq. Before becoming a VC, Sandhya was both an entrepreneur and an executive. She was the Head of Corporate Development and Vice President of Product at Skype, reporting to the CEO, post the spinout from eBay. Sandhya led the team that built an entirely new data-driven product business for Skype from pre-revenue to $100M that laid the foundation for the company’s eventual sale to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. Sandhya began her technology career as the first product manager at Andiamo Systems, a leading data center startup that was acquired by Cisco for $1.5 billion. Sandhya holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University.
In his current role, Mike is focused on bringing great games to Netflix members since Netflix started providing games as part of members’ subscriptions in Nov 2021. That means working with internal studios and external developers to create and deliver games in a variety of genres that can be enjoyed by Netflix members around the world. Most recently, Mike served as Vice President of Content for Facebook Reality Labs (now Meta), overseeing Oculus Studios as well as the teams bringing second and third party AR/VR games and apps to Oculus VR headsets Oculus Quest and Quest II. Prior to Facebook, Mike worked at large and small companies, in roles ranging from game production to running studio organizations to overseeing large businesses. Mike ran most of EA’s mobile gaming studios as SVP, EA Mobile, and was President of Studios at Kabam after joining that company through the acquisition of his mobile game start-up TapZen. He was also Chief Creative Officer and Co-President of Games for Zynga, after leading EA’s Los Angeles Studio working on RTS and FPS games.
Eduardo Vivas is the Co-Founder and CEO of Curated, a place where Real Experts help you find exactly what you’re looking for by providing unbiased advice and product recommendations — for free. Curated is supported by leading investors such as Forerunner Ventures, Greylock Partners and Alphabet’s CapitalG,. Previously, he served as LinkedIn’s Head of Talent Solutions following the acquisition of his startup, Bright. Eddie also serves on the board of AppLovin and still has not finished high school.
Lucy Wang
Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets, J.P. MorganLucy Wang is an Managing Director in the Technology Equity Capital Markets (ECM) group based in San Francisco. Lucy provides equity capital raising advisory services for global Tech clients accessing the U.S. market. She has led more than 150 Technology IPOs and follow-ons in the 15 years at J.P. Morgan representing $100bn raised. In her current role, she is responsible for the origination and execution of IPOs and follow-on offerings for companies in all verticals within Technology and has a focus in Enterprise Software, having led 45 Software IPOs in the last 6 years. Lucy began her career at J.P. Morgan in 2007 in Technology Investment Banking Group. Lucy received her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Bachelor of Art in International Relations from the University of Southern California.
Parilee Edison Wang is the Head of Product at Alloy, the identity platform for fraud and risk decisions. She has spent the last 15 years working in product and fintech, driven by the opportunity to help solve interesting problems without obvious answers. Prior to Alloy, Parilee led product at Bread and was a part of the product team at OnDeck. Parilee received her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University in 2008 and a master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School in 2013.
Milo Werner
General Partner, Engine VenturesMilo Werner is a General Partner at The Engine. She serves as a Board Member for Mori, Atlantic Quantum and Foundation Alloy. Previously, she was at Ajax Strategies where she was a Partner, leading mid-stage investments across energy, transportation, agriculture and industrial applications. Milo joined Tesla in 2007, at a critical stage in the company’s trajectory, where she led New Production Introduction, launching Model S powertrain (battery, drive unit, and all the stuff in between), dual motor, drivers assist and, most importantly, Model X. The company grew from 200 to 12,000 during her tenure. In addition to Tesla, Milo ran New Product Introduction at Fitbit, launching four factories in China and transitioning the company to fully automated production, and led engineering and product for micro-grid company Zola, a startup providing distributed energy to over a million families in Sub Saharan Africa. Milo earned a B.S. in Geology and Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of Vermont, as well as a MS in Civil Engineering and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She sits on the boards of the UVM College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, AxelHire, Infinitum Electric and is a Board Observer for Lime.
Ted Westhelle is the Senior Manager, North American Digital Sales for Mambu. His goal is to provide data-driven strategy, sales processes, and enablement to the organization. Ted is a driven and self-directed business development executive with comprehensive accomplishments leading sales, marketing, product development, investment services, innovation and cross-functional teams to ensure success and achieved goals. Known as an innovative thinker with strong marketing, research, analysis, technology and strategic planning acumen, he has demonstrated success developing and seamlessly executing plans in fast-paced organizations. His expertise includes managing multi-million dollar sales goals and advising C-level executives and investors.
As a world-class athlete, businesswoman, philanthropist and mother, Serena Williams knows what it takes to win. She has persevered to become one of the top tennis players in history with 23 Grand Slam titles. Serena began actively investing nine years ago when she saw the impact that startups had on everyday lives; in building Serena Ventures, she has been able to multiply that effort with over $110M in investment capital.
Rich Wong joined Accel as a partner in 2006. Rich led Accel’s investments and currently serves on the Boards of Atlassian (TEAM), UiPath (PATH), Checkr, Instabug, Pyn, Process St, Middesk, and Qwilt. Rich also served on the National Venture Capital Association Board of Directors. Rich previously led Accel’s investments in AirWatch (acquired by VMware), Angry Birds/Rovio (ROVIO.HE), MoPub (acquired by Twitter), AdMob (acquired by Google), Dealer.com (acquired by Cox), Osmo (acquired by BYJUs), Parature (acquired by Microsoft), ServiceChannel (acquired by Fortive), Sunrun (RUN), SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft), and 3LM (acquired by Motorola). Rich previously worked as an operator as EVP/GM of Products for mobile pioneer, Openwave Systems and CMO of Covad Communications. Rich started his career as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble and at McKinsey.
Sam Wong
Startup Coach & Fractional Founder, Fundable StartupsSam is CEO of FundableStartups.com, a startup training academy that also provides idea validation and pitch development services to help entrepreneurs build healthy, fundable companies BEFORE they start fundraising. Sam served as CEO, CTO, or technical VP for five startups, resulting in three acquisitions and has also advised two other startups that were acquired. Sam is the author of 21 Secrets of Successful Startups, a book about startup execution. Sam has been featured in Fortune Magazine, served as a pitch judge dozens of times, and has spoken at conferences including TechCrunch Disrupt, The Lean Startup Conference, The Houston Tech Rodeo, and San Diego Startup Week.
Pae is a General Partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, where she is responsible for portfolio management and technical oversight. Pae has invested in high risk solutions to intractable problems in both government and corporate contexts. She applies rigorous science and engineering to transform emerging technologies into solutions for national defense, humanity, and the planet. She is especially passionate about bridging engineered materials and systems to biology. Prior to joining IndieBio, Pae served as the Scientific Director of Telefónica’s moonshot factory – Alpha (Barcelona), Science Director at the US Office of Naval Research – Global (Singapore), and technical consultant at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She holds degrees in Electrical Engineering from Duke (PhD) and Princeton (BS).
Ryan Wyatt is Chief Executive Officer of Polygon Studios, leading the business team working to help advance the Polygon ecosystems across our various products. Prior to Polygon, Ryan spent almost 8 years at Google, where he created and built YouTube’s gaming vertical into the video platform’s second-biggest business. A 14-year game industry veteran, Ryan ran tournament operations at Major League Gaming and built Machinima’s partnership network, helping transform esports into a global phenomenon. Ryan joined YouTube as the Global Head of Gaming at 27. A New York Times Best Selling Author, Ryan was named to Forbes 30 under 30, The Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Rising Executives 35 and Under, and Fortune’s 40 under 40 lists. When Ryan isn’t gaming or collecting NFTs, he enjoys spending time with his two sons and wife in San Diego, California.
Stephane leads all strategic investments and inorganic business building in innovative early-stage startups, venture capital firms, and venture studio partners at FIS. Prior to FIS, Stephane was most recently SVP of Global Retail Innovation at Mastercard where he built and led a function that deployed innovative new technology solutions across artificial intelligence, frictionless commerce, and virtual/augmented reality with leading merchants such as Dunkin, Circle K, Neiman Marcus, and Inspire Brands. He also founded and led MasterCard’s global early-stage startup engagement and strategic investment efforts including Start Path and Commerce. Innovated. Stephane has over 18 years in Fintech and Commerce with extensive experience enabling large corporates to innovate successfully and build deep strategic partnerships with early-stage startups.
Anatoly Yakovenko is the co-founder of Solana and CEO of Solana Labs. He has almost two decades of experience building high-performance operating systems, including leading OS development at Qualcomm and holding engineering roles at Dropbox and Mesosphere. Yakovenko has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Dmitriy Yakubov is the Head of Partnerships for Checkout.com, working with companies to establish the future direction for their business and solve challenging problems through payment innovation and partnership. With more than 15 years of experience in Business Development, Partnerships, Product Management and Strategy, he is building a strong ecosystem of network partners to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy.
Emil Yeargin is the vice president of talent at Gusto where he is working to transform the recruiting strategy and the candidate experience. Prior to joining Gusto, Emil served as the director of technical recruiting at Lyft. Before Lyft, Emil also led recruiting teams at Okta and Zenefits.
Elizabeth Yin is a founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, a pre-seed venture capital fund that invests in hilariously early software startups across the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia.
Guled is a product manager and angel investor who’s been involved in blockchain and web3 through its nascent stages. He’s led crypto products at Defi Pulse and Okcoin. Prior to crypto, Guled worked on projects focused space and national security.
Adewale Yusuf is a visual storyteller with a lifelong passion for technology, ecosystem building and democratizing opportunity. He is the cofounder and CEO of AltSchool, a college for in-demand skills. Previously he founded an African leading technology media platform, Techpoint Africa.
Kathy Zhou
CTO and Co-founder, QueenlyKathy is the CTO and technical co-founder of Queenly, a ML-driven search engine for formalwear. As a University of Pennsylvania Computer Science graduate and former full-stack engineer at Pinterest, she had single-handedly built and launched the Queenly iOS app, web app, Android app, and backend search and recommendations infrastructure. She has grown Queenly from an idea to platform which now boasts over half a million app downloads, and she is currently on the Forbes 30 Under 30 2022 list.
John Zimmer is the co-founder and President of Lyft. John’s mission is to improve people’s lives by creating transportation and cities that are more affordable, sustainable, and community-oriented. As the world shifts to transportation-as-a-service, Lyft is at the forefront of this massive societal change. Its transportation network includes the largest shared mobility network in the United States, with rideshare, bikes, scooters, car rentals, and transit. John first grew interested in transportation during a college class on sustainable cities, where he learned that cars remain parked 95% of the time. After graduating from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, John spent two years at Lehman Brothers. In 2008, he left Lehman to rideshare his way from New York to San Francisco, where he joined co-founder Logan Green to launch Zimride and eventually Lyft. John serves on the board of CuldeSac, the first car-free neighborhood in the United States. You can follow John on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Eric Zimmerman is part of the startup and venture capital business development team at Amazon Web Services (AWS) focusing on healthcare and life sciences. He also works in product management for open source, pre-competitive tools to make conducting science on AWS easier. Prior to AWS, Eric was a venture capitalist investing in biotech and healthcare companies.
Will Edwards is the co-founder and CEO of Firehawk Aerospace, a hybrid rocket engine design and manufacturing firm. Firehawk’s rocket engines are powered by their patented 3D printed rocket fuel. By 3D printing their fuel Firehawk can build rocket engines for space and defense applications that are lower cost, far safer, and can significantly outperform traditional solid rocket motors in terms of both fuel performance and with its ability to throttle. Will Edwards is from Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a graduate of the University of Arkansas. Prior to Firehawk he founded MetKnow, an HR software solution, in Santa Monica, California. Will was name Forbes 30 under 30 in 2021.
Vihari Kanukollu is the Co-Founder, An Ag-tech startup which aims to create solutions to the solve food security market possibilities for farmers. Featured in Forbes 30 under 30 & is Management Accountant by profession. His passion for farming, food security led to his interest in UrbanKissan
Vieje Piauwasdy
Senior Director, Equity Strategy, SecfiVieje Piauwasdy is the director of Equity Strategy at Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees.
Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies. Prior to founding Precursor Ventures, Charles was a Partner at SoftTech VC. In this role, he focused on identifying investment opportunities in mobile infrastructure, mobile applications, and marketplaces. In addition to his investment activities, he supports SoftTech portfolio companies on business and corporate development matters. He was also the CoFounder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games, an Android-focused mobile games startup based in San Francisco, CA. Prior to joining SoftTech VC and co-founding Bionic Panda Games, Charles Hudson was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business until the company was acquired by Zynga in February 2010. Prior to Serious Business, he was the Sr. Director for Business Development at Gaia Interactive, an online hangout and virtual world for teens. Prior to Gaia, Charles worked in New Business Development at Google and focused on new partnership opportunities for early stage products in the advertising, mobile, and ecommerce markets. Prior to joining Google, he was a Product Manager for IronPort Systems, a leading provider of antispam hardware appliances that was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million in 2007.
Ysbrant Marcelis has been an operating executive in the financial services and commerce industries for 15 years. Prior to joining Commerce Ventures, Ysbrant led enterprise strategy and business at Vantiv (now Worldpay). Prior to that, he led initiatives focused on mobile payments, global payments infrastructure, consumer digital and digital governance for Citigroup. He also brings advisory and consulting experience from his roots with Booz & Company where he advised clients across US, Europe and Middle East. Ysbrant was also a co-founder of OpenRevolution, created to expand access to financial services via mobile across 25 countries and 5 continents.
Dylan Massey is a co-founder and CEO of Interchecks, a payout platform focused on transaction speed and choice. Prior to Interchecks, Dylan was an analyst at Goldman Sachs where he managed risk for structured products, mortgage trading, commodity trading and digital finance. Dylan earned his BA in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2014.
Peter A. Boyce II is the Founder & Managing Partner of Stellation Capital, an early stage venture capital firm headquartered in Brooklyn. Prior to this, Peter spent eight years as a Partner at General Catalyst, an $8B venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures. In addition to his work at GC, he co-founded & advises Rough Draft Ventures: a funding platform to support technology entrepreneurship on university campuses. Peter is a graduate of Harvard University, earning a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and a Secondary in Computer Science. He grew up in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He is proud to be a Ron Brown Scholar. Outside of his time investing, Peter serves as a non-profit board member to support communities he is passionate about: The Shed, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The New Museum, NEW INC, Code Nation, and the Harvard College Fund. He serves as a Rock Venture Capital Partner at Harvard Business School, Program Advisor for the HBS MS/MBA Program, and an MIT Sandbox Board Member.
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