Spike Ventures Team

Bio: Steve has over 20 years of operating and investing experience, having closed 30+ equity, debt, and M&A transactions totaling ~$5 billion. Previously, he was Founder and Managing Partner of Fox Meadow Capital Partners, a PE and infrastructure investment and advisory firm. Prior to that, he was a General Partner and top performer at Clarity Partners, an $800M PE fund, and a Vice President and top performer at Clarity’s predecessor, Rader Reinfrank & Co., a $100M TMT venture capital fund. While at Clarity, Steve founded ImpreMedia, which he built into the largest Spanish language newspaper company in the US as CFO/EVP of Corporate Development. Steve has also worked in investment banking and as a developer and investor in energy and utilities. He has a JD from Stanford, an MBA from Cornell, and a BS with distinction from Cornell’s College of Engineering. Steve teaches Advanced Private Equity at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and serves on the advisory council of the Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy (CPIP).
Notable Deals: Trillium Digital Systems, Multex, PrimeCo, ImpreMedia, Verity Studios, Veem

Bio: Alim is a Senior Principal at Spike Ventures, AVG’s fund for Stanford alums. Before joining AVG, he worked at American Express Ventures and GE Ventures focused on enterprise, B2B, fintech and AI/ML investments. Prior to investing, Alim worked in tech at Google, where he generated revenue for advertisers and managed a $100M book of business. He also spent time at PayPal in product marketing and Instart Logic, a startup backed by a16z and KPCB, where he focused on business development and partnerships. He holds a BS in Business and Accounting from the University of Southern California where he graduated magna cum laude, an MS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Bio: Stephanie spent more than 15 years in higher education advancement as a fundraiser and alumni relations professional, getting her start at Tufts University. She also worked at Northeastern University, where she led the programming and engagement for 200,000+ alumni worldwide. Earlier in her career, she had her own consulting practice, which focused on fundraising, board development, and communications strategies in the non-profit sector. A strong advocate for mentorship and networking, she brings those passions to investor engagement at AVG. She holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire, where she was a member of the women’s soccer team, and a MA from Emerson College.

Bio: Prior to joining AVG, Jordan worked in consumer and commercial lending with New Hampshire based firms. A Massachusetts native, Jordan graduated with honors from Plymouth State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management with a focus in business law.

Bio: Anthony Barsoom is the CEO at fabric.com, an Amazon.com subsidiary. Fabric is the world’s leading online fabric store and Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world. He has over 20 years of experience in general management, strategy, finance, and engineering. His experience was gained in the retail, data analytics, and environmental engineering industries. He has worked in both the Fortune 30 and private equity arenas, owned $34B P&Ls, and lead international enterprises. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University, an MS in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Duke University.

Bio: Michael Whitaker “Whit” is Senior Vice President of Emerging Solutions for ICF. He specializes in advancing organizational approaches to innovation management, high-value collaboration, and emerging solution development across both the public and private sectors including domains such as resiliency, smart cities, cyber security, digital transformation, public health, international development, and disaster management. Previously, Whit co-founded and successfully exited a startup focused on using advanced data analytics and behavior change to achieve quantifiable improvements in urban sustainability. He has a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Design) from the University of Colorado–Denver and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering and Science and a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University.

Bio: Don has an extensive track record of success in semiconductors. He began his career as a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and held management positions at Honeywell SPT and Sierra Semiconductor before co-founding Integrated Sensor Solutions where he served as COO and VP of Engineering. He took the company public and headed up the integration team when subsequently acquired by Texas Instruments. Don then joined Linear Technology where he was VP & GM for a $500M+ power products business unit. He played a key role in the $14.8B acquisition of Linear Technology by Analog Devices. Don received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and an MBA from the University of Colorado.

Bio: Arun Penmetsa is a Partner at Storm Ventures and invests in early stage Enterprise SaaS companies. Some areas of focus include Security, Devops and Digital Health. Specifically, Arun is excited about how modern data architectures and AI are disrupting industries and creating innovative solutions. Previously, Arun built enterprise solutions at Google (Google Apps for Business) and Oracle (Enterprise Manager). Arun holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon and an MS in Computer Engineering and an MBA both from Stanford University.

Bio: Canyon has over 25 years of investment management experience in asset owner and asset manager roles. He was most recently the chief investment officer of HP Inc. and was responsible for managing over $30B in investment assets for HP’s pension and retirement plans. Prior to HP, Canyon was a senior vice president and portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Investments. He held various investment and portfolio management roles in Franklin’s global fixed income, alternative investments, and US equity investment teams. Canyon graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in quantitative economics and is a CFA charterholder.

Bio: Sam is a transactional attorney for entrepreneurial companies. He helped develop the first RSA wireline cellular company in the Rocky Mountain region. He has lead M&A transactions in a number of industries, including cable television, specialized mobile radio and medical device. He was in-house general counsel for a VC-backed internet data center company, a Japanese-owned geophysical company, and a PE-backed REO company. He is currently general counsel for a 503A/503B compound pharmacy. Sam received his BS in Accounting from Brooklyn College (CUNY) and his MBA and JD from Stanford University.

Bio: Dr. Middleton is internationally recognized as a serial innovator and as thought-leader in clinical informatics and healthcare information tech. He is Chief Informatics and Innovation Officer at Apervita, which delivers a PaaS for the democratization of healthcare data and analytics. Earlier, he was a professor of Biomedical Informatics and of Medicine at Stanford, Harvard, and Vanderbilt. He has also held executive leadership roles at Stanford, MedicaLogic/Medscape, Partners Healthcare System, and Vanderbilt. He studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado, received a Master’s in Public Health from the Yale University School of Public Health, and an MD from SUNY Buffalo.

Bio: Jen is an adviser, consultant, and board member with expertise in digital strategy, cybersecurity, data and analytics, and social media. She is CEO of JEM Consulting & Advisory Services and managing director of Consultants Collective. Earlier, she was VP of Digital & Social Media at Thomson Reuters and held management roles at Redwood Collaborative Media, Ziff Davis, and Ketchum. She served on the Social Media Advisory Council of the UN’s Population Fund and co-founded the nonprofit think tank Society for New Communications Research. Jen received her Master’s degree from Stanford and her Bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College.

Bio: Eric is a Managing Director at Montage Capital, a leading provider of growth debt to capital-efficient companies. At Montage, he co-manages investment funds and oversees investor relations, operations, and finance. Earlier, Eric was a venture investor at DCM, where two of his early stage investments became billion dollar IPOs. He also founded and ran his own startup company, managed products at Cisco and HP, and served in investment banking at a Boston-based boutique. Eric received an AB in Economics from Harvard (magna cum laude) and an MBA from Stanford.

Bio: Tamara is the President of Amaratal, a consulting company that offers strategic marketing and business consulting services to clients ranging from technology startups to established companies. She has over 25 years of experience in new technologies and markets in the US, Europe, and Latin/South America. Her areas of expertise include digital advertising, mobile, big data, digital media and entertainment portals, mobile gaming, social networking and consumer applications, e-commerce platforms, enterprise and embedded operating system software. Tamara has a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Bio: Christina is the President and Managing Director of Zacamy & Co., which provides strategic and financial advice to both public and private companies, including advice on corporate strategy, M&A, capital raising alternatives, and strategic partnerships. Previously, she worked in the Principal Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs and in the Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Advisory Group at Deutsche Bank Securities. She is a member of the Board of Directors of The LPGA Foundation, Chair of The LPGA Foundation Leadership Committee, and a member of the Finance Committee. Christina has a degree from Stanford University.

Bio: Cliff has 40+ years of experience in investment banking and investment management. He was a product specialist and client portfolio manager for an asset management firm for municipal and taxable strategies before joining Brandes Investment Partners, an employee-owned investment manager. There he worked as a Director and Co-Head of Fixed Income. Clients included corporate cash portfolios and pension plans, endowments, foundations, and pension consulting firms. He was president of the Stanford Club of NYC and is a member of the Stanford Associates. Cliff has a BA in Economics from Stanford and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bio: Bruce is an angel investor, tech mentor, and startup advisor who lives at the intersection of innovative hardware products and business. He was a Co-founder/CTO of Immersion, leading development of haptic simulation and 3D shape-scanning products and technologies. He was also one of two Engineering Fellows (VP) and a main system architect at Intuitive Surgical, creators of the daVinci Surgical Robot. After Intuitive, Bruce was a senior member of the Robotics Initiative at X Inc. (fka Google[x]). He has 147 issued US patents and 200+ international patents and patents-pending. Bruce has a BS & MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a D. Eng. degree from Stanford.

Bio: Theresia is an engineer, experienced entrepreneur, and investor in the new mobility space, focused on security, data analytics, and consumer sectors. She recently co-founded Aspect Ventures, leading early investments in Cato Networks, Exabeam, ForeScout, The Muse, SelfScore, and BirchBoxr. Previously, she was a Partner at Accel, championing many companies through IPOs or acquisitions, and a founding VP of Business Development & Sales at Release Software. Earlier, she worked at Bain & Company. Theresia has been named to Forbes’ Midas List six times, most recently in 2017. She holds a ScB in Engineering from Brown University and an MBA from Stanford.

Bio: Brian has been providing financing to high-tech firms in Silicon Valley and Southern California since 1982. He co-founded AVI Capital, a VC partnership with resources of $75M focusing on early stage IT investments, and co-founded Alpha Partners. He has also worked at Hewlett Packard and the Stanford Research Institute. Brian has served on many boards, including Digimarc, Apptitude, Intraspect Software, Pointbase, InViso, and Prosetta. He is also a past Board Member of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and the Monterey Bay Stanford Alumni Club. Brian holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford.

Bio: Mark is a partner at Five Peaks Capital Management, a PE firm focused on investments in tech-enabled services companies. He has over sixteen years of experience in private equity, with senior roles at DLJ Merchant Banking Partners (~$10B of capital under management) and JLL Partners (~$4B of capital under management). He has led PE and distressed debt investments across a range of sectors. Prior to that, Mark was an investment banker for Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette Securities, executing debt and equity financing and M&A advisory transactions. Mark holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA with distinction from Tuck at Dartmouth.

Bio: Avin is Director of Strategic Operational Finance at Wayfair, building the finance infrastructure for their supply chain & operations. Previously, he served as VP Finance for healthcare tech startup par8o. Earlier, Avin spent a decade at VC and PE firms, including Goldman Sachs. Avin began his investing career at Summit Partners, with later stints at Google, Great Point Partners, and OpenView. He has also been an angel investor and adviser to seed stage tech companies, including Rentjuice (sold to Zillow), Kahuna, vSplash, and more. Avin earned a BS and MS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bio: Julian is General Counsel of NIO USA, Inc., which is developing advanced technology modules for next-generation smart autonomous electric vehicles. Previously he was chief legal officer or general counsel for a number of SaaS companies, including Jasper, an IoT platform that was acquired by Cisco, Responsys, a SaaS marketing platform which went public and then was acquired by Oracle, and SuccessFactors, a SaaS talent management platform which went public and then was acquired by SAP. He started his in-house legal career at Salesforce, where he helped take it public. Before going in-house, Julian worked in the Palo Alto office of Skadden, Arps, served as a deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, and completed a federal district court clerkship in the District of Hawaii. Julian is also an angel investor and board member of Vetter Software, Inc., a SaaS veterinary management platform. He earned a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and received his law degree from Berkeley Law.

Bio: Temi Marcella Awogboro is a Director with the Abraaj Group and Co-Founder of Kairos Angels, an early stage investment club which partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build scalable enterprises developing innovative solutions that address critical needs in their respective markets. Temi has more than a decade of experience in finance across developed and growth markets. As an investment professional, Temi has committed nearly US$500 million in private capital across a range of sectors including healthcare, consumer, industrials and financial services, in a bid to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Temi started her career at Goldman Sachs International, where she was a recipient of the Goldman Sachs and Institute of International Education’s Global Leaders Award. Temi holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and Master of Arts (MA) degree with First Class Honors in Economics from Christ’s College, the University of Cambridge, where she was a matriculation scholar. Temi is a Kauffman Venture Capital Fellow, an African Leadership Institute Tutu Fellow, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper (Lagos Hub) and Alumni Ambassador (London Hub). She is the recipient of the Future Awards Africa Prize for Professional Service, M&A Advisor’s European Emerging Leaders Award and has been recognized as the Female Lead’s Top 20 Women under 20; and, Management Today and The Telegraph’s 35 Women Under 35 in the UK.

Bio: Vikas Taneja is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG. He is on the Executive leadership team of BCG’s Technology, Media, and Telecom practice; a global leader of BCG’s GrowthTech business; and an investment committee and advisory board member of B Capital Group (Series B/C venture fund). Vikas is also an active angel with investments in companies such as Ripple, Refinery29, Citus Data (sold to Microsoft), Rapportive (sold to LinkedIn), Careport (sold to Allscripts), PubNub, Jugnoo, ChaiPoint, NowFloats, ClimateAI, and Evolve Energy. He holds a BS in computer systems engineering and economic development from Stanford University and an MBA from The University of Chicago – Booth School of Business.

Bio: Roby was member of the small IDEO/ Stanford group that defined Design Thinking, is the founder of IDEO Germany, ran development at Nanosolar with $500m in venture funding, and has 70+ patents in his name applied for or granted. He is partner at the innovation and strategy consultancy VCI, commuting between Berlin and Johannesburg, has built technology roadmaps on all continents for companies with a total market cap of $400bn, advises companies and countries on cultural transformation and worked for over 100 clients on anything from gold to jets to cars to chocolate bars. Roby has built the world’s largest mining innovation consortium with 150 partner companies, is a member of the digital advisory board at a 100k employee company, and taught at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, TU Munich and others. Roby is an angel investor in startups in Germany, the UK and US, Canada and South Africa, and advises corporate VCs and private equity funds.

Bio: I have spent most of my adult life trying to engender collaboration to solve problems that are almost always too complicated for an individual to tackle. Either because they require innovation beyond the current state-of-the-art or require expertise from multiple areas. I thrive on getting to the root-level understanding of the opportunity/challenge; recruiting individuals that have open minds (and ears :-)) and can come up with ideas worth pursuing; and then get out of their way as much as possible so that there is space for magic to happen. My professional experience has led to products and services that range from silicon design, board-level electronics, industrial designs including mechanical engineering of robots, and software ranging from firmware to always-on RESTful services to web and mobile applications. I have a B.S in Computer Science from Portland State University, and an M.S from Stanford University with an emphasis on Systems.

Bio: David is a retailing industry expert, with 40 years of experience as a corporate executive, industry analyst, and investor. As an equity analyst and portfolio manager at TIAA Investments, he had investment authority over portfolios averaging $1+ billion, including a global consumer fund. He was atop-ranked sell side analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. At Federated Department Stores, he led corporate development, mergers and acquisitions. David graduated with Distinction from Stanford University. He is a member of the Investment Committee of Phi Beta Kappa. He and his wife Elin founded the You’ve Got a Friend Fund of Healthy Acadia.

Bio: Dan Turchin is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Astound (www.astound.ai), the leading AI platform for employee service automation. He is a board member at Auger.ai and member of the Forbes Technology Council. Prior to Astound, Dan was Vice President of Product at DevOps leader BigPanda, Chief Product Officer at security analytics company AccelOps (now Fortinet), and a Senior Director of Product Strategy at ServiceNow. He also served as a founding board member at Rhomobile prior to its acquisition by Motorola. In 2000, Dan co-founded Aeroprise and served as CEO until it was acquired in 2010 by BMC Software. He is an active angel investor and startup advisor. Dan’s passionate about building great teams that build great products that solve hard problems that change lives. He’s a big fan of Orwell, Dr. Seuss, youth soccer, adventure sports, and Tynker. Dan has BS and BA degrees from Stanford University. Follow him on Twitter: @dturchin.

Bio: Barry Margerum, CEO of Heartrise, is an active investor and has sat on numerous boards. He started his career at IBM, then worked with Steve Jobs at Apple in the 1970s. He left to help build the groundbreaking company, GRiD Systems Corp. He went on to be CEO of MITEM and Euphonix. As chief strategy officer at Plantronix, he helped grow it from a $100 million to almost $1 billion company. Barry has a BSE from Princeton University and MBA from Stanford. He was captain of the Princeton wrestling team and has continued to coach youth wrestling and junior golfers in the Bay Area.

Bio: Kristin leads KD Consulting, a boutique strategy consulting firm focused in the food and consumer products industries. Her expertise is in growth strategy, with half the firm’s work in strategy development for strategic clients, and the other half M&A advisory for both strategic and private equity clients. She has led deals with transaction values ranging from $20 million to $3.2 billion.
Kristin also leads the corporate development function for Musco Family Olive Co., the family-owned #1 branded olive player in the U.S. She also created both the marketing and global sourcing functions at Musco and helped recruit and build the teams that now run those departments.

Bio: Eric is a seasoned international operations executive most recently setting up global operations for systems applying muon tomography and machine learning to create 3D images of contents within shipping containers and trucking. He has also spent over 10 years in the energy industry with project finance and asset management experience for renewable energy projects as well as commercializing a new air pollution control technology and successfully selling the technology to a 3rd party before leading the integration into the new business. He lived and worked in Singapore while leading a solar energy business and doing business throughout Asia and Australia. In parallel, Eric was a reserve military officer flying the F-16 and deployed twice for combat operations. Eric has a BS in Civil Engineering from Stanford, an MBA from the National University of Singapore and an MA is Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Bio: Garrett is an angel investor and startup mentor who loves to find interesting combinations of technology and defense applications. He was the co-founder and CEO of OGSystems, a software and systems developer for intelligence and defense customers. OGS built geospatial and threat warning systems and grew to over 500 employees before being acquired. He’s currently a Co-Founder and Board Chairman at GeoSpark Analytics, has other board roles at companies like Parsons Corporation, and is a lead investor in defense tech start-ups on both coasts. He lives in San Diego with 5 boys who play hoops, are defenders of Catan, shoot BB guns, and set up tents on weekends. Garrett has a BS degree from Stanford University.

Bio: Fred is a seasoned biotech executive and angel investor with experience in commercial and corporate development at start-ups and established companies. Early in his career, he learned the pharma industry through roles of increasing responsibility in sales and marketing at Johnson & Johnson. An entrepreneur at heart, he then joined the founding team of moksha8, a TPG backed start-up aiming to become the leading emerging market specialty pharmaceutical company. He participated in the building of its commercial operations and led multifunctional teams across geographies and therapeutic areas. However, he feels most fortunate to have guided the growth of early-stage biotech and medical device companies pioneering new platform technologies: from the early days of DNA Shuffling (maxygen) to more recently novel tissue-integrated sensors for long term continuous monitoring of body chemistries (Profusa) or oral biologics that act in the small intestine with systemic therapeutic effects (Evelo Biosciences). He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in France and obtained both an MS in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from Stanford University (he still hopes to finish his PhD!…). He has lived and worked in six countries and currently resides in Hong Kong with his wife and 3 kids.

Bio: Cameron has an extensive background in venture investing, digital finance, software management, and industrial artificial intelligence. His recent projects include mobile financial retention research in sub-Saharan Africa for The Gates Foundation and the financial fraud prediction system for Starbucks. He served as founder and CEO of ClickStream Technologies (acquired by Microsoft) and went on to lead Microsoft’s Telemetry practice, managing all inbound data systems globally. Cameron serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at StartX, is a Venture Studio Advisor at Stanford’s GSB, and co-manages the Oxford Angel Fund. He serves on the External Technology Advisory Board for Accenture. Cameron holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from Oxford University and MS in Statistics from Stanford.

Bio: Rishi started his career in consumer internet at Mozilla and later as Head of Business Development at Cooliris (acq. Yahoo). He transitioned to mobile with Qik, leading Business Development and then becoming Head of Product, leading development of the first US mobile video chat app. After Qik was acquired by Skype, Rishi became Principal Program Manager of Mobile before Microsoft acquired Skype ($8.5B). He is now Co-founder and Managing Partner of HiFi Ventures, a boutique VC firm that builds and advises early-stage companies. Rishi graduated from Stanford, where he was VP of the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students.

Bio: Lyon Wong has an extensive investment track record of working with companies across multiple stages, focusing on founder growth and product market fit. He co-founded Spectrum 28, a $170M early stage venture fund with investments in Plangrid, Rhumbix, Karius, Freenome, Duetto, Reflecktive, Bizzy (acq. by Sendgrid), and more. At Lightspeed, he invested or worked with companies such as Blend, Affirm, Comprehend Systems, Kitematic (acq. by Docker), and Branch. He is a Creative Destruction Lab Fellow and a C100 member. Lyon received his MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Systems Design Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo.

Bio: Lonnie works at Intellectual Ventures, where she helps support funds that create and commercialize intellectual property. At IV, she helped launch a $160M fund with Microsoft and other investors, formed TerraPower (financed by Bill Gates and others) and the Global Good Fund (with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). She also developed a novel legal structure for sponsored invention that has been used by the BBC and others. Earlier, she was COO at Azulstar, SVP and General Counsel at Blue Frog Media, VP of Corporate Development at AT&T, and Associate at Preston Gates and Ellis. Lonnie has a JD from the University of Washington and a BA from Stanford.

Bio: John is a tech investor, founder, and CEO with decades of experience in funding, launching, and leading companies. As an entrepreneur and CEO, he focused on database technologies, including Tokutek (as CEO) and StreamBase Systems (as Co-founder) with Turing Award-winner Michael Stonebraker. At Accel Partners and Summit Partners, he sourced and/or led investments in Rapt Corp. (acq. by MSFT), Counterpane Internet Security, and comScore. He now focuses on foundational and infrastructure technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, and databases. He has an undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford.

Bio: Gina is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks, the fastest way to create and grow a community-powered brand on your own deep interest network on mobile and web. Previously, Gina and Marc Andreessen co-founded Ning, a pioneering social platform for niche networks online. Under her leadership, Ning grew to 90 million people across 300,000 active communities in entertainment, politics, and education. In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves on the board of directors of Scripps Networks, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel. Gina has also appeared on Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. She received her BA and MBA from Stanford.

Bio: Leo was recruited as one of the first five engineers to build and scale the infrastructure for MyFitnessPal. Under Leo, the successful mobile app scaled eight-fold and he led a big data initiative to turn terabytes of mobile and web data into actionable insights for users such as Kafka, Kinesis, Hadoop Spark, Tableau, and redshift. MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour for $475M. The last four big data/AI startups where Leo served as core contributor all led to successful IPO or M&A (combined valuation of $1B+). Leo is now mentoring local college graduates and young adults in Hong Kong and China about innovation-driven entrepreneurship.

Bio: Cyril is the Co-founder of Landis and Managing Partner at Berd Industries, a global real estate investment firm. Earlier, he was a Director at Crown Acquisitions, a NY-based real estate investment firm. Before joining Crown, he worked at Houlihan Lokey, where he advised companies on M&A, equity and debt capital markets, and restructuring transactions. Previously, he worked in Credit Trading at Citigroup. Throughout his career, he has completed over $10B in transactions. He is also now an advisor to early stage companies and a director at TP NYC, a real estate investor. He holds an undergraduate degree from Emory University and an MBA from Stanford.

Bio: Frank is an experienced PE and VC fund manager. He has founded or co-founded three PE firms and invested in early stage tech in Silicon Valley; real estate developments in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and the US; plus technology and leading-edge agricultural projects in the Middle East. Frank was the founding President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists, the first VC trade organization in the world (now over 100 Silicon Valley venture firm members). Frank spent two seasons playing professional football (Steelers, Broncos), and he and his family have now endowed a scholarship for Stanford student athletes. He has a BA from Stanford and an MBA from UCLA.

Bio: Sebright Chen is the Founder and Chairman of Summer Atlantic Capital where his primary focus is on investing in the Technology, Media and Consumer sectors. Mr. Chen has extensive experience in investment management, corporate advisory and technology industries. Prior to founding Summer Atlantic Capital, he began his career as an analyst at Signalert Asset Management, and has subsequently held executive positions with asset management companies and technology firms in China resulting in the development of extensive contacts in China and the United States. Creating important international relationships within the asset management and investment banking sectors. Mr. Chen received his Bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in 2013 and has studied Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stanford University from 2014 to 2015.  Mr. Chen is also the advisor or board member of different startups in the consumer and technology sectors, as well as the venture partner in different technology-driven funds.

Bio: An entrepreneur herself, Gwen currently runs an innovative digitization services company she co-founded and grew into a thriving four location retail service business in the Denver area. Prior to starting her own company, Gwen worked in CPG food marketing and brand management for 10 years, growing brands such as Tombstone Pizza, Velveeta and Horizon Organic. Gwen holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University and a Master of Management degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Bio: Polina is passionate about fintech and digital finance. She has about ten years of international experience in corporate finance, investment banking, corporate and business development, focusing on financial services and fintech sector. Polina recently graduated with a Master of Science in Management from Stanford GSB. She is interested in seeing how technology, data, and AI will transform the financial services industry.

Bio: Mika Eddy has spent the last 10 years focused on innovation in healthcare and the lifesciences. She currently serves as Director of Clinical Product Innovation at UnitedHealthcare spearheading various digital health initiatives. Previously, she worked on strategic projects for boutique precision medicine firm DeciBio Consulting. Before DeciBio, she was a Fulbright Research Fellow evaluating quality of care in rural and urban clinics in Xi’an, China. Mika started her career at L.E.K. Consulting focused in the lifesciences. She graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Human Biology and Minor in Modern Languages and is originally from Tokyo, Japan.

Bio: Experienced strategy and operations leader with a demonstrated history of working in enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) and consulting across industries solving leaderships’ biggest problems facing revenue growth. Skilled in revenue strategy & operations, go-to-market strategy, professional services, pre-sales consulting, customer success management, and sales operations. Strong manager with VP-level experience combined with significant hands-on analytical skills.

Bio: Ganesh Swaminathan is currently a second-year MBA student at Wharton. After his first year at Wharton, Ganesh was an investment intern at Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, helping to close sustainability-focused venture and growth-stage deals. Prior to Wharton, he worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, advising Fortune-500 companies in the US, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia on their digital and growth strategy. He also worked at the Impact Investment Exchange in Singapore, structuring a $100M women’s livelihood bond as part of the Capital Markets team. He has a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, and Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Bio: Ashwin works as a Product Manager at Tableau, where he owns product development for mapping and spatial analysis. He also sits on the boards of the Stanford Club of Washington and the Tableau Foundation Community Council, organizations through which he leads various community service engagements in the Greater Seattle Area. Ashwin holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford.