Focused Funds Team

Bio: Dexter McAuley is currently a vice president of global business development at Morningstar, where he works collaboratively with clients to bring new solutions to the market, helping empower investor success. He’s been at Morningstar since an internship in 2010 and has worked as a client relationship manager and senior product manager prior to his current role. Dexter earned 4 varsity letters playing football at the University of Chicago where he received his B.A. in Public Policy in 2011. He also received an M.B.A. from Chicago Booth, in 2016, concentrating in entrepreneurship, general management, strategic management, and managerial and organizational behavior. Dexter currently serves on the Emerging Leaders Council of Bottom Line, an educational non-profit providing one-on-one support to first-generation college students from low-income communities across Chicago.

Bio: Lisa (U-M’16) is currently a supply chain analyst at Chevron Lubricants, where she supports the global leadership team on strategic initiatives and provides data insights. Prior to that, Lisa worked as a project manager using remedial technologies to address environmentally impacted properties at Chevron Environmental Management Co., and as a business analyst on a major capital project. She has also conducted due diligence for several startups as an intern for Sand Hill Angels. Lisa holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan and serves on the Alumni Board for San Francisco.

Bio: Adrian started his career with an investment management firm before transitioning to working for several startups over the past 6 years. Experienced in all things operations, he has implemented new systems, created new processes, lowered costs and much more at every startup he has had the privilege to help. Currently working in the senior healthcare industry, helping to grow and scale a new business line and team. Adrian holds a B.A. from Brigham Young University (’12).

Bio: Julie is growth oriented and result-driven with experience in management consulting, corporate development + strategy. She has a passion for VC investment and learning the hopes and dreams of startup companies. Julie is a futurist who currently works as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting. More recently, she was a fellow for the “Future of Work” series at Deloitte – interviewing startups and thought leaders in the Bay Area and building actionable frameworks for practitioners. She is thrilled about creating the unknown and preparing for the future. Prior to Deloitte Consulting, Julie was a Corporate Development and Strategy manager at Pitney Bowes that focused on the ecommerce space. During her three years there, she and her team completed ~$1 Billion transactions, including $475 Million acquisition of Newgistics in 2017. Julie went to Cornell Johnson School of Management for her MBA. She also received Master of Accounting from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona. In her spare time, she loves traveling, trying new food, and exercising.

Bio: Ted’s combined eight years of civic and military service fostered his passion for VC. His background, buttressed by a master’s in security and conflict as a Mitchell Scholar, believes in the necessity of bold innovation to address the most challenging problems plaguing the world today. A fervent adherent to the power of diversity and teams, he lauds AVG’s approach to VC for its commitment to expanding the VC community beyond its original stuffy beginnings and is grateful to join the AVG team.

Bio: James is an Enterprise Business Development Representative on the Marketing and Sales team at Addepar. Prior to joining Addepar, James was an Assistant Vice President and Equity Specialist on the Equity Capital Markets and Advisory team at Citi Private Bank. James provided coverage for ultra-high net worth clients on a broad range of listed equity solutions with a focus on idea generation, capital market issuance, and investment opportunities across global equities. Prior to joining the team, James participated in the Private Bank Rotational Analyst Program. He spent his first rotation as an Investments Analyst. His second rotation was as a Foreign Exchange and Commodities Sales Analyst. He then went to work on the Structured Products and OTC Derivatives. James lastly worked for the North America Managed Investment team. James holds a BS from Brigham Young University, is married with one daughter, and lives in Salt Lake City.

Bio: Lawrence (L.J.) is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Mastercard. At Mastercard, he is responsible for leading the strategic and agile development of one of the Mastercard’s legacy systems. While at Mastercard, L.J. completed his MBA at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to Mastercard L.J. played baseball at St. Louis University and William Woods University. In his spare time, he continues to enjoy athletic competition by playing basketball, cycling and golfing.

Bio: Assiatu has spent her career with finance and technology companies. She first joined Credit Suisse in New York City as an Investment Banking Analyst with the Global Industrials Group. She then moved to Johannesburg, South Africa where she worked as a Private Equity Associate with The Carlyle Group. In this role, Assiatu worked on a team investing in fast-growing businesses across various sectors. Following her time at Carlyle, Assiatu worked as a Strategy Advisor to Chinese ride sharing firm Didi Chuxing, where she advised the company on its acquisition of Taxify (now Bolt). She also worked on the Business Operations team at Skydio, a manufacturer of image-capturing consumer drones. Assiatu is currently an MBA student at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and previously studied Commerce at the University of Virginia.

Bio: Kristofer Jenk (CAS’14) is an FP&A Manager at Veriown Global, Inc., where he works to provide electricity via renewables to the 1.3 billion people without it in developing countries. Prior to Veriown, he worked as a statistical arbitrage analyst at FNY Capital Management. Kristofer received a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bio: Gabriel Weaver is a Research Scientist at the Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). As a Principal Investigator (PI) at UIUC, he develops methods to assess and improve the resilience of critical infrastructure systems, including shipping ports and the electrical power grid. His undergraduate degree in Classics and Mathematics from Holy Cross provided a deep understanding of the historical transmission of information throughout the history of Western civilization; his doctorate in Computer Security from Dartmouth College gave him the skills required to evaluate, develop, and adapt capabilities provided by modern information systems.

Bio: Kamal is the VP of Corp. Dev. & M&A at JSHeld LLC with over 15 years of professional experience in M&A & Corporate Development with primary responsibilities including strategic business planning &execution, deal sourcing, valuation, diligence, landscape analysis, pipeline development, deal negotiations, and integration. Additional experience includes business operations, project mgmt., and data analytics. Kamal holds an MBA from Cornell University, a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University.

Bio: Drew works as a Senior Enterprise Solution Architect in the Enterprise Architect practice at Infor. He’s lead architecture design and development teams providing enterprise business and software solutions for Fortune 100 companies, such as L3 Communications, Koch Industries, and Hertz. Previously, he worked on the Enterprise Manufacturing team implementing Infor ERP LN software solutions for tier one automotive suppliers and aerospace and defense suppliers to the DoD. Drew holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Bio: Jai is currently the Data Product Manager at Forge.AI and an Analyst at Rocana Venture Partners. He is passionate about productizing novel alternative datasets, building startup ecosystems, and investing in the potential of machine learning and rule-based automation (FinTech) as well as BFY foods (CPG). Previously, Jai served as the Senior Project Manager at Accrete.AI. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from New York University – Stern School of Business in Business, Political Economy, and Philosophy.

Bio: Oslene possesses 25+ years of experience supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs); serving in senior management roles at Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit, and educational organizations; as well as launching startups. Oslene’s professional skills include organizational development, strategic planning, fundraising, operations management, marketing and corporate finance. Oslene is currently co-founder of CGInform, a tech-enabled data analysis platform to help charter and private schools achieve their performance goals, and founder of the Guyana Economic Development Trust, a venture philanthropy initiative to provide capital and technical support to university based startups in the Caribbean.

Bio: Alex currently works as an investment banker at Barclays where he advises private equity clients in support of a variety of transactions across the Business Services, Healthcare, Consumer / Retail and Tech sectors. Prior to Barclays, Alex worked as a consultant at FactSet Research Systems, a financial technology data and analytics platform. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and emerging technology. Alex holds an MBA from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and a BA from Georgetown, where he was a four-year member of the varsity soccer team.

Bio: Anthony is a Business Strategist, Enterprise Architect, and Systems Engineer, currently with Raytheon where he leads Data Analytics, Digital Strategy & Transformation, Automation, Cyber, and Space projects. He was the Strategy Lead for a $2B cyber joint-venture formation between Raytheon and Saudi Aramco. Before Raytheon, Anthony was the CTO and Strategy VP for Global Energy, an oil and gas technology company with operations in Africa, and was a Shell-Oil appointed President and Board Director of subsidiary joint-ventures. While at Shell, Anthony led the strategy for a 1 year $71M USD turnaround of a $350M Shell Oil business unit, and was part of the team responsible for a new venture creation, Shell Midstream Partners, resulting in a $1B IPO. He earned his MS in Systems Engineering from The George Washington University and his MBA from IESE Business School in Spain.

Bio: Ezinne is currently a second-year MBA student at the Duke Fuqua School of Business. In between her 1st and 2nd year MBA program, she interned as a Summer Associate for Vertex Pharmaceuticals and worked on a range of projects across Data Science, Commercial Analytics, and Business Development – External Innovation. Prior to business school, Ezinne served as Biostatistician and Statistical Programmer for rare disease CRO, Precision for Medicine. She has a passion for solving challenging problems with quantitative approaches and possesses data analytic skills in SAS, R, Tableau, GIS, and SQL. Ezinne also holds a Master’s of Public Health degree in epidemiology from Emory University and Bachelor of Arts degree in Biological Science from SUNY at Buffalo.

Bio: Mark comes from a product development and technology background. He is the Director of Product at Wyze Labs, a smart home, AI, and IoT startup making accessible consumer technology. He leads the mobile app platform, digital products, content, and community growth. Previously, he was at Amazon Retail and Prime Video, focusing on user experiences and digital platforms. He pays it forward by being an advisor and a mentor for the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University advisory councils. Prior to this, he worked as Product Manager for Quixey and partnered with Alibaba, a mobile app search and discovery startup based in California. He started his career at Procter & Gamble leading data analytics.

Bio: Andrew has worked at the intersection of finance and technology for over a decade, specializing in trading technologies and machine learning applications. Andrew leverages his experience in management consulting from firms such as Oliver Wyman, Accenture, and Capco in his role as head of strategy and execution at Kadena, where he is responsible for multiple sales, delivery, strategy, and partnership initiatives. Andrew has a B.S. in Business Administration from Babson College (’09) and a M.S in Risk Management from New York University (’17).

Bio: Mike has 3 years of overall experience working in Technology Consulting and has quickly risen to become the Youngest Vice President at his current company. He prides himself on his Networking Capabilities and ability to Problem-Solve through complex issues related to personnel. In his free time, he is passionate about learning about emerging technologies and is currently studying towards a Master’s Degree in Information Systems/Predictive Analytics at Northwestern University.

Bio: Jim is an accomplished healthcare executive and physician. He serves as Senior Medical Director of Population Health for Moda Health. He leads value-based care and digital health initiatives. Previously, he served as Chief Medical Officer for the State of Oregon and has helped start several managed care plans. Jim has an MBA from the Oregon Health Sciences University and an MD degree from Indiana University. He is a board-certified radiologist who still practices part-time.

Bio: Louis is a finance and media consultant based in Chicago advising clients ranging from global tech & media companies to independent film productions. Previously, he was a Finance Director at STX Entertainment helping to build up financial operations at the mini-major studio. He also led production finance on films at Disney Animation Studios, working on films such as Zootopia and Moana. Louis holds an MBA from Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.

Bio: Namrata (Berkeley Haas ’19, Carnegie Mellon ’04) specializes in product development and management. She is the founder of Me-to-Her, a micro-donations B2B platform, and co-founder of ConferenceShare, a B2B2C conference event logistics sharing web service, both of which she took from idea to launch. Prior to working in startups, she worked in the industrial automation control systems industry on a range of firmware, middleware, visualization products. She has an interdisciplinary background in business, humanities, science, and software engineering.

Bio: Kevin is a graduate for the NYU Stern School of Business (Class of ’18) and a consultant for Pfizer with the Strategy and Consulting group. Prior to his role at Pfizer, he worked with Cornerstone Research working with key leaders at the company in strategy and finance. Kevin has also volunteered as a career mentor with Streetwise Partners, a non-profit organization that pairs business professionals with mentees who are unemployed/underemployed to help them to secure and maintain employment.

Bio: Joe holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Prior, he worked in management consulting at Ernst & Young in New York. He started his career in the economist program at the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund. Joe holds a BS from the University of California in San Diego.

Bio: Ryan is a budding venture capitalist who is trying to break into seed and Series-A investing with a focus on the Prime stream: general- and high-tech with an industry agnostic focus. He currently provides advisory services for two firms looking to invest in retail, software and technology. In previous positions, he has supported early-stage startups with consulting advisory services in strategy, marketing, customer experience and operations. In his day job, Ryan is a Digital Strategy consultant at IBM where he helps Fortune 500 companies in retail, CPG, electronics and software transform their businesses. His background includes 6 years in consulting, including 3 years as Co-Founder of and consultant in a still active international development firm offering startup / non-profit support. He is an MBA graduate from NYU Stern School of Business with a BS in Politics from Whitman College. He finds his passion helping others navigate ambiguous and chaotic environments while defining white space opportunities to support society and business.

Bio: Brian has passionately lived a career exemplifying his belief that creating a better world is best achieved by applying entrepreneurial energy to humanity’s great challenges. He has worked in numerous early and late-stage startups, including Liberate Technologies and FirstFuel Software, was Vice President of Energy Programs at the environmental nonprofit, Ecology Action, and served on the board of the California Energy Efficiency Industry Council. Brian currently helps organizations seeking to start new ventures or business units through Brian Kimball Advising. He holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley (’09) and a J.D. from Santa Clara Law (’14).

Bio: Eduardo is a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley-Haas MBA for Executives program. He is a US Air Force veteran of 15 years who has distinguished himself through his leadership roles and operations expertise. Eduardo is an active trader and investor and has been involved in the blockchain industry since 2011. In addition to his MBA, Eduardo holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida and a B.S. from UC Irvine.

Bio: Melissa is a Chicago-based healthtech venture enthusiast. Most recently, as the Director of Business and Clinical Analytics at AVIA, she partnered with over 40 of the nation’s leading health systems to develop business cases to connect strategic priorities to high-value health tech solutions to improve clinical, operational and financial performance and ultimately drive innovation. She developed industry-leading metrics, value frameworks and robust financial models to support strategic early stage investments. Melissa is also very active in Chicago’s entrepreneurship scene. She has worked 1:1 with early-stage entrepreneurs as a business coach with the Chicago Urban League’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and with small entrepreneurial teams as a mentor for Techstars Startup Weekends. In her 200+ volunteer hours of coaching and mentoring tech entrepreneurs, she has served as a sounding board for business model refinement, customer identification and solution exploration. Melissa began her career as a consultant with PwC and also worked in product planning and operations at Apple. Melissa currently sits on the Board of Directors for MAPSCorps, a non-profit that provides high school youth with STEM training opportunities through an innovative technology-based community asset mapping program. Melissa is also a champion of helping non-profits scale in her local community and serves as a Partner and Investor with Social Venture Partners Chicago. Melissa holds both a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy and a Master of Accountancy from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She also holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Melissa is a licensed CPA in both Missouri and Illinois.

Bio: Kyle is an attorney in the Atlanta office of Jones Day, where he focuses on counseling corporate clients regarding mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic transactions. Before attending law school, Kyle worked as an equity specialist at Bloomberg LP, where he fostered and sustained relationships with clients from across the financial services industry. While simultaneously attending law school and earning his MBA, Kyle completed internships at Jacobs Capital, a boutique investment bank that advises clients regarding the financial aspects of sell-side M&A transactions, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Kyle holds a B.S. in Industrial & Labor Relations from Cornell University and a JD/MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which he graduated with high honors.

Bio: Tao has been working in the biotech industry for more than 7 years. Currently, he is a director in a biotech startup in the field of genomics, managing a team of scientists in biological R&D and production. Prior to his industry work, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford Medical School, working on epigenetics of aging. Tao completed my PhD in molecular biology at Wesleyan University.

Bio: Bjorn Beer offers a 14-year career after Georgetown University driving growth for small and mid-sized software companies in multiple industries. He pioneered a partnership strategy that helped accelerate two Private Equity acquisitions, ultimately by insightsoftware, a TA backed firm. Bjorn is very passionate about helping small software companies scale, and also fosters a keen interest in clean/green tech which parallels his love of the outdoors.

Bio: Spiridon (Ionas) is a Senior Investment Professional with over 15 years of experience executing and structuring private equity and private debt deals exceeding $2.5B in a variety of industries and geographical settings, including Europe and the United States. He joined a boutique Multilateral Investment Bank since its start-up phase successfully contributing to its strategy, execution and business development across 11 countries, despite operating in highly challenging environments. He originated and led the most profitable private equity operation in its portfolio to-date, and successfully executed its first technology project (an MIT spin-off) prior to its NASDAQ IPO. Previously, Spiridon was a team leader Arthur Andersen responsible for financial management, operational and CFO-relevant duties across blue-chip telecom, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and financial services firms. Prior to Andersen, Spiridon was a consultant in Vienna and Brussels-for major International Organizations’ Country Strategy and PrivateSector Development initiatives. As an alumnus of Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan(MBA), Spiridon is an InvestorinYard and Castor Ventures and a member of various Harvard and MIT Alumni Angel groups (Boston, NY and Silicon Valley).

Bio: Josh currently serves as the manager of strategic sourcing and contracting for the pharmacy supply chain at Centura Health, an integrated delivery network system of 17 hospitals and multiple clinics across Colorado and Western Kansas. In 15+ years, Josh has worked in clinical, operational, business/finance, and leadership roles across inpatient, outpatient, and managed care settings. He is interested in improving the health care delivery experience through improved efficiencies and solid business and financial decisions. Josh received his PharmD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has completed pharmacy residency training at the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Colorado. He also received his MBA and Finance Certificate from Colorado State University. He enjoys racing bicycles and fly fishing.

Bio: Idella is Business Development Consultant and Lean Startup expert for a number of programs as part of Wisconsin’s Center for Technology Commercialization. With over 7 years assisting high-tech entrepreneurs, Idella leads efforts in customer discovery and access to early capital via SBIR funding. Co-developing and managing a number of Wisconsin supported seed funds; Idella has assisted companies to secure more than $24 million in early funding. Idella earned a PhD in Cellular and Molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bio: Krithika is a scientist and entrepreneur who is passionate about helping companies translate research-based discoveries into scalable commercial products. She has hands-on experience in science entrepreneurship as the co-founder of Better Brains—a cognitive science company—and the Director of Business Development at Prime Biologics—a biotech startup. Additionally, Krithika advises a VC firm in India on investments in biotechnology and digital health. Krithika earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology at Texas A&M University and completed her postdoctoral work at Cornell University.

Bio: Maitreyee is a Program Manager at Microsoft and a co-founder and CTO of an early-stage HealthTech startup. She previously interned at Microsoft, Disney Imagineering, and Stanford and was the founder and CEO of BlindWalk, a social enterprise that built indoor navigation tools for the blind. Maitreyee recently graduated with Honors from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in Computer Science and minors in Drama and International Relations & Politics. There, she served as the President of CMU’s undergraduate student government, TA’ed the intro Computer Systems course, and wrote an Honors Thesis on developing retinal prosthetics to restore functional sight to the blind using computer vision.

Bio: Mario began his career as an engineer in the energy management sector, analyzing and testing the HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning) equipment of commercial buildings. He’s since helped to build early-stage startups in transportation and energy efficiency, and is currently working as an analyst conducting due-diligence on private equity deals. A founding member of Mariachi Serrano de Claremont, Mario has recently begun writing posts about venture capital and entrepreneurship under the name “The Mariachi VC.” Mario holds degrees from Claremont McKenna College, Columbia University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Bio: Tiffany currently works in Strategic Finance, Ridesharing Product Finance at Uber, where she works with ridesharing product teams on evaluating the impact of launching new products. Previously, she was in technology investment banking at JP Morgan, where she worked with a number of companies in different stages to help with capital raises. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Amherst College.

Bio: Brandon is a clinical research professional with multiple years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He has worked on a wide variety of clinical trials ranging from diabetes to rare disease. In his most recent role at a startup in Boston, he collaborated with dozens of leading pharma companies to perform feasibility analysis on their clinical trials. Brandon has a B.A. in Psychology and is currently an MBA candidate at the Kellogg School of Management.

Bio: Erik is a member of the Project Finance team at Bloom Energy (a Green D Ventures portfolio company), where he helps originate, structure, and finance utility scale and distributed energy fuel cell projects across the United States. Prior to joining Bloom, Erik spent two years on the Commodities Structured Finance team at Goldman Sachs helping to finance asset-intensive, commodity based projects in North America, South America, Latin America, and Africa. Erik has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Economics from Dartmouth College, where he was the co-captain of the Dartmouth Rugby Football Club.

Bio: Kazi is currently a PhD Candidate in Chemical & Biological Engineering at Northwestern University with research focusing on nanotechnology and data science. He also serves as a Venture Associate at Northwestern’s Innovation & Venture Office (INVO) – N.XT Fund conducting due diligence on early-stage faculty research-based startups for seed-funding. Kazi has a B.S. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering with a minor in Philosophy from New York University (’14).

Bio: Jenny is a healthcare strategist with a passion for innovation and over 10 years of experience across pharma, consulting, agency, and VC. As the Director of Innovation at Pfizer, Jenny leads strategic partnerships in data and digital health, as well as oversees the development of innovative tools for oncology sales and marketing applications. Prior to Pfizer, Jenny worked in management consulting and at an angel investment firm. She has a Master in Business of Bioscience (MBS) from Keck Graduate Institute and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Psychobiology from UCLA.

Bio: Jane is an MBA candidate in her final year of study at UC Berkeley – Haas School of Business. She is currently working as a locum tenens general surgeon in critical access hospitals, caring for underserved populations across California while finishing her degree. She received her bachelor degree in Chemistry with a focus in Biochemistry from the College of William and Mary. She performed a year of liver cancer research at the NIH prior to pursuing her MD at the University of Pittsburgh, and completing general surgery residency at Northwestern University and UCSF. Jane recently completed active duty service with the United States Air Force where she was stationed at Travis AFB, with deployments to Turkey and Afghanistan.

Bio: Rahul Kumar is a first-year MBA candidate at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. Rahul also holds a BS in finance from the NYU Stern School of Business. Prior to Johnson, Rahul was a consultant with IBM, product manager at Everyday Health Inc., and founded Elements Digital Health, a designer of hardware diagnostic tools for underserved markets.