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Founding Partner of Chingona Ventures, an institutionally-backed pre-seed stage fund. Holds robust experience as a board member and advisor for various companies– she currently sits on the Board of Advisors for Angeles, Camino Financial, Chicago Blend and serves on the Board of Directors for Suma Wealth, ConnectCareHero, Certiverse and as a Board Observer for Tiny Organics and EarlyBird. Also co-founded the Latinx Founders Collective organization bringing together Latinx founders, investors, and community leaders to support the entrepreneurial / startup ecosystem. Prior to Chingona Ventures, Samara was a Venture Partner at MATH Venture Partners, an early stage fund in Chicago. Samara invested in early-stage companies across multiple sectors, helped fundraise two funds and managed a portfolio of investments. Prior to MATH Venture Partners, Samara held various roles at Goldman Sachs.

Sameer Dholakia is a partner of the growth investment practice at Bessemer. Sameer joined SendGrid as CEO and board member in 2014 to accelerate the company’s growth. He led SendGrid through a successful IPO in 2017 and subsequent acquisition by leading cloud communications platform Twilio for approximately $3 billion in early 2019. Before joining SendGrid, Sameer served as group vice president and general manager of cloud platforms group for Citrix Systems, where he was responsible for the company’s rapidly growing cloud business. He joined Citrix following its acquisition of VMLogix, where he served as CEO.

Samir focuses on health, sustainability, food, and advanced technology investments. Samir led the firm’s investments in Cadre, Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Impossible Foods, Mojo Vision, NanoH2O (acquired by LG Chem), Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), Oscar, Quantumscape, and Ultima,among others. Prior to co-founding Khosla Ventures, Samir spent five years at Flagship Ventures where he started and invested in early-stage biotechnology companies. While there, he was involved in co-founding Helicos BioSciences (IPO), a leader in developing single-molecule sequencing instruments to revolutionize personalized medicine, along with Stan Lapidus and Steve Quake of Stanford. Samir was also founding CEO of Codon Devices, where he raised their Series A financing, built the technical and advisory teams, and booked significant revenues in the company’s first year of operations. His other investments include Epitome (acquired by Millipore), LS9 (acquired by REG), and Morphotek (acquired by Eisai).

Samir is a managing director at M12, leading investments globally where artificial intelligence or machine learning is a key point of leverage. He also stewards the fund’s Vanguard Bets investment category—startups aiming for breakthroughs that will result in generational shifts in the technology landscape. Samir’s other investment focuses include quantum computing, robotics, autonomous systems, transportation and silicon—especially for AI. Prior to joining M12, Samir was a senior director of business development and product management in Qualcomm’s corporate R&D division. There, he led early-stage product validation, partnerships, acquisitions, and strategy for embedded machine learning, computer vision and heterogeneous computing. Samir started his career at Microsoft, where he spent several years leading product management and product planning efforts for enterprise mobility before joining Palm and Samsung.

ex-member of the healthcare and clean energy practices at the Boston Consulting Group. received graduate degrees from Cambridge and Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and an A.B. in Chemistry from Harvard University.

Senior Advisor at Lightspeed and Founding Partner at Blockchain.com Ventures. Previously led Naspers Ventures early stage tech investments. Apple featured iOS app publisher. Angel investor in 50+ companies.

Enterprise investments: Infrastructure software, dev / ops automation tools, data infrastructure, distributed systems, ML-driven applications, security ops

Works with Elevar teams in India, United States and Mexico. Founded Elevar in 2008, being passionately driven by working with early stage companies that foster economic development for low income communities; particularly in financial services including MSME finance and microfinance (where he played a leadership role in the sector’s transformation over a decade from the non-profit space to formal banking), affordable education, healthcare and agricultural services.

As an active venture capitalist, Sandeep works closely with portfolio companies to ensure they benefit from a strong ecosystem cultivated by the firm through its majority entrepreneur LPs, Speaker Series Platform that brings top-end CIOs/CTOs into private panel events, and an advisor network of operators in the areas of R&D, Sales, BD, Marketing, and Finance. Prior to this Sandeep was the managing director of BluePointe Angel Forum which invested in companies such as Punchh, Tile, and The Fabric. In his earlier career, Sandeep worked in various management positions at frog design, iPass, MIT, and JP Morgan.

Previously, Sander served as Vice President, Business Development for Pager, a venture-backed digital health company focused on improving patient access to the right care. Sander helped to evolve Pager’s business to a national enterprise-facing company selling to leading payers and health systems while overseeing sales, account management, strategic partnerships, and corporate development. Before Pager, Sander opened and managed the East Coast office of Cleveland Clinic Ventures. He began his career in healthcare private equity after graduating from Dartmouth with a BA in Molecular Biology.

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in enterprise SaaS companies. She loves working with technical founders who care deeply about design and data. She aims to partner closely with CEOs to build generational businesses that raise the bar for customer and employee experience. Prior to Unusual, she was an early employee and executive at Amplitude, leading pivotal efforts across product development, category creation, fundraising and GTM strategy. As the EVP of Marketing & Growth, she helped establish Amplitude as a category leader in product analytics and the digital optimization space, overseeing 50x growth in its ARR. While at Amplitude, Sandhya also founded Amplify, the world's leading product-led growth (PLG) conference and served as a product strategy advisor to leading startups and Fortune 100 businesses including NBC, T-Mobile and Ford.

Sandhya is passionate about helping founders transform industries through the use of AI/ML and other new, emerging technologies. Sandhya was previously the founder and Managing Partner of Deep Ventures, a seed investment firm focused on entrepreneurs who were tackling hard, unsolved problems through the use of AI/ML. Prior to Deep Ventures, Sandhya was a General Partner at Social Capital, co-head of the Growth Fund and the lead for AI investments. Sandhya was also 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 Advertising product business for Skype from pre-revenue to $100m that laid the foundation for the company’s planned IPO and eventual sale to Microsoft for $8.5 billion.

CFO / COO at Artsy Managing Partner at Red Swan

Currently the CEO of Africa Health Holdings Ltd. Experienced investor with a focus on healthcare.

Previously worked in the corporate strategy group at McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Co. managed software development and shipped features at Microsoft and startups.

To date, he has made over 130 investments as part of the 500 Global family and is an expert in Product Development. He is the Founder of Mexican.VC, Super Happy Dev House Mexico City, and Startup Weekend Mexico City. Santiago is a passionate hacker and thinker who hosts his own podcast and vlog, and is also an avid photographer.

Santo started Spark in 2005 with Todd Dagres and Bijan Sabet. Prior to Spark, Santo joined Bankers Trust, to help launch the bank’s first early stage venture arm, became the President of Blockbuster, and became a general partner at Charles River Ventures.

Santosh started his first company, Razor Studios when he 13 years old that provided IT support to small business in his hometown in Maryland. His most recent business was a bootstrapped financial media publication that he co-founded and sold while in college. He got his first taste of fund management when he oversaw approximately $1M of technology investments through the Great Recession for the Nittany Lion Fund, outperforming his benchmark by 6.37%.

Following an early stint in VC as part of Menlo Ventures, Sara dove into the startup world, joining Facebook as an early member of their corporate development team Over 6 subsequent years, she built the corp dev teams at Dropbox and Airbnb and led over 30 acquisitions.

Dr. Sara Brand is the Founding General Partner of True Wealth Ventures and the owner of (512) Brewing Company, the largest draught only,self-distributing microbrewery in the U.S., after co-founding it with her husband with the mission to be a green and clean brewery.

Sara Chamberlain has worked in the energy and environment sector for nearly a decade, with a core focus on helping energy startups develop commercialization strategies. Working at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship is a personal passion. She currently leads Energy Foundry’s investment activity and maintains an active role with each of the firm’s portfolio companies. Prior to joining Energy Foundry, Sara co-managed the government advisory practice for clean technology startups at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she successfully led multiple teams through more than two dozen federal and state grant and loan applications, including over $300 million in research grants, loans and guaranteed loan funding. From working with large Fortune 500 companies to startup businesses, Sara has broad and deep industry knowledge of the energy sector and was recognized by Midwest Energy News “40 under 40.”

One of the earliest investors in Prometheus Fuels, the world’s first zero-carbon fuel unicorn, and was an early investor in Andela, another social impact unicorn. Sarah Cone’s prior venture capital experience includes two years at Illuminate Ventures, where she was an Associate for the B2B enterprise/cloud-focused firm. Sarah got her start in venture capital at Omidyar Network’s emerging technologies venture capital group.

responsible for sourcing, due diligence, and supporting our portfolio companies after investment. Prior to joining Windham, Sarah was an Operations Manager at Particle Health, a NYC-based digital health startup. prior experience in venture capital includes her time at Healthy Ventures, where she was a research analyst, and her time at Red Bear Angels, a Cornell-affiliated angel investment group.

Prior to Pillar, Sarah served on the executive team at Pluralsight (NASDAQ: PS) and co-founded Intelligent.ly, a leadership development company that has transformed thousands of emerging leaders. Invests in enterprise and consumer companies on behalf of Pillar VC and leads the firm’s platform, supporting portfolio companies with access to leadership development, talent and customer connections.

Managing director of Cleo Capital & a former contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine. She has served as a senior advisor at Bumble where she focused on their corporate VC arm Bumble Fund and on the board of the Michigan State University Foundation endowment. Kunst has been named a Future Innovator by Vanity Fair, Forbes Magazine 30 under 30 and a top 25 innovator in tech by Cool Hunting. She has been recognized for her work in Business Insider as a 30 under 30 Woman in Tech and Top African-American in Tech & Pitchbook Top Black VC To Watch and honored as a top woman in VC by the Wall St. Journal.

responsible for Northzone’s Seed investments and is based in London. focuses on early-stage companies across data/developer tooling leveraging community led growth, productivity SaaS and new platforms that lower the barriers to entrepreneurship. founder of Femstreet, the leading newsletter and global community for female entrepreneurs and women in venture capital. Previously, Sarah was a B2B SaaS investor at Dawn Capital

Specific operational expertise in biotechnology (mammalian cell and tissue culture, genetic engineering, bioproduction), carbon removal, connected cars, carsharing, vehicle electrification, fleet sustainability, digital marketplaces and the sharing economy. Previously conducted graduate research on decarbonization and carbon removal leveraging biotechnology at MIT.

Prior to joining a16z, she was a vice president at TA Associates, where she invested in and partnered with founders at growth-stage companies across technology, tech-enabled services, and financial services. Sarah also served on the board of ZoomInfo (fka DiscoverOrg), which scaled to over $350M in revenue in the enterprise sales and marketing intelligence sector. Before TA, Sarah was an early stage investor at DCM Ventures and Radicle Impact, and she started her career at the Boston Consulting Group and Morgan Stanley. She holds a BA, Phi Beta Kappa in economics from Harvard, where she was a John Harvard Scholar, and earned her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was a Siebel Scholar and Arjay Miller Scholar.

As a tech CEO for over a decade and previously a Senior Leadership Team member of two publicly traded companies, I've enjoyed building & leading teams and mentoring individuals for 20+ years. Having worked with and learned from some incredible entrepreneurs, executives, and investors throughout my career, I truly enjoy the company building process and am now spending time with entrepreneurs to help them do the same. I'm particularly interested in ideas/products/companies where cybersecurity is a critical enabler for success. This spans horizontal technology segments such as cloud/datacenter infrastructure, as well as vertical segments such as fintech, healthcare IT, and media.

Saumitra has experience in machine learning start-ups and research, politics, and medicine. Saumitra believes in mentoring technical founders into becoming well-rounded CEOs. He plays an active role as a board member in his companies. Saumitra is a board-certified internal medicine physician and practicing hospitalist. He is also an active mentor at various innovation programs spanning from government agencies to elite research universities.

Engineer, operator, and investor Areas of Interest: Blockchain Infrastructure, Decentralized / Open Finance, Web 3.0 ; Cloud Native IT Infrastructure ; Intelligent Application Software

combines 15 years of entrepreneurial experience including his time as co-founder of EPOK, an early cloud-based enterprise solution launched in 2001. has experience as a corporate attorney at White & Case and digital media expertise developed at CBS Local where he focused on strategy and business development. member of the board of Seeds of Peace, a founding member of Young Leadership Committee (YLC) and served as chairman of the YLC board.

Scott Brady is Managing Partner at Innovation Endeavors, a Lecturer in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Board Member and Investor at Replica, Rebellion Defense, Third Wave Automation, Skylo Technologies, Plenty, Afresh, Canvas, Citrine Informatics, skyTran. Scott was the Executive Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Slice. Scottattended Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the University of Florida.

Scott has always been an entrepreneur at heart – from beanie babies and Pokemon “businesses” in high school, to starting/scaling two actual technology startups after college. Since his ventures, Scott co-led corporate strategy and M&A at Serco, served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at AARP, and worked as a consultant to multiple decision-makers within the intelligence community.

Scott’s a serial founder who’s been helping to drive Melbourne’s startup ecosystem for many years. Since 2008 he's been Cofounder and CEO for Eventarc and Attendly, as well as cofounding Startup Victoria, the biggest founder-focused non-profit in the country. He also spent five years as a mentor and member of the investment committee for Angelcube, Melbourne’s first venture accelerator.

Co-Founder of The Fund. Author of The Fuzzy and the Techie. Former Google and Facebook.

Scott is an experienced builder and investor having worked with companies such as Instacart, Flexport, and Foxtrot.

Scott Law, CPA is the Founder and CEO of Zotec Partners. Scott founded Zotec in 1998. His objective is to partner with healthcare providers and their patients across the country to simplify the business of healthcare and continually innovate the patient financial experience. Scott graduated from Butler University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting. He is a member of the Radiology Business Management Association, the Medical Group Management Association, and the American College of Radiology’s Radiology Leadership Institute. Scott is the Zotec Entrepreneur Executive in Residence with the Butler University Andre B. Lacy School of Business, where he also sits on the Dean’s Advisory Council.

Scott is the founder of InsureTech startup Covera, was a Principal & EIR at Ferst Capital Partners, and was previously a lawyer at Gowlings.

Experienced executive and advisor with a history of developing leading organizations and teams, across a variety of sectors, that make a difference for their people and customers.

Dr. Rocklage has over three decades of healthcare management experience with strategic leadership responsibilities that led to FDA approval of three U.S. New Drug Applications (Omniscan™, Teslascan® and Cubicin®). He has served as Chairman and CEO of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, President and CEO of Nycomed Salutar and has also held R&D positions at Salutar and Catalytica.

A successful investor having founded two large institutional hedge funds (Severn River and Sagamore Hill) managing several billion dollars in assets between 1999 and 2014. Scott now runs his family office and makes investments in both public and private securities. Scott enjoys helping startup ventures and learning about the intersection of genomics and computer technology. Prior to his first hedge fund, Scott was a nuclear engineer for the Navy, attended Harvard Business School and was a proprietary trader at Goldman Sachs. He lives in Greenwich, CT with his wife and two daughters.

Interactive entertainment entrepreneur, investor, and operating executive. With over 20 years experience including at Modern Times Group, McKinsey, Deutsche Bank, and Carlyle. Based in Denver.

Part of the founding team of the pioneer Internet Telephony company Net2Phone; Scott helped take the company from a piece of software that was first to bridge the PC and the Public Switch Telephony Network to acquiring millions of users, generating over $200M in revenue, an IPO (1999) and the strategic sale of the company to AT&T for $1.4 Billion (2000). He was fortunate to be in a position to bring his skill sets, passions, and experiences to support other entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Brazil reach their visions. Holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University. 

Seamon brings more than a decade’s worth of experience in entrepreneurship and operations and boasts an impressive track record in technology investments. Within Palm Drive, Seamon is responsible for discovering new investments, growing the company’s network of stakeholders and facilitating cross-border collaboration between startups and investors in the US and Asia.

Prior to joining TEN13 he was an Investment Principal at VU Venture Partners, a global venture capital fund based in San Francisco and Hong Kong. worked in early-stage strategy and finance roles at a UK start-up, as well as in private equity investing and consulting. Famous for a project called ’Saddle Sand Sea', he has also rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and run 6 marathons in 6 days across the Sahara desert.

Works as a Principal at Rock Health Capital after previously working on the Consulting and Research teams.

Co-founder of Merus Capital, an early stage venture firm based in Menlo Park. Formerly at Google, Microsoft, and Deutsche Bank

Led and/or supported 150+ early stage health financings along with having built the health/bio practice at GFC.

Born in Jamaica and raised in Toronto, Sean Green’s entrepreneurial spirit has been cultivating since he was young. Sean has a background in computer science and deep-rooted entrepreneurial spirit from watching his mother run the family maid-service business. Out of school, he partnered with friends to establish a hedge fund in the currency markets, then his own startup connecting homeowners with quality contractors. Sean’s newest venture ARTERNAL has taken him to new heights in the art world.

Prior to joining Castle Island Ventures, Sean was a Principal at Highland Capital Partners where he co-led Highland’s investments in Clearco (Series B), Coin Metrics (Series A), Unchained Capital (Series A) and Jerry (Series C). Prior to Highland, Sean was an investor at Pomona Capital in New York and Hong Kong. Sean started his career covering financial institutions as an investment banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Assisted in standing up Juvo’s inaugural fund, which has now invested in 21 portfolio companies (https://juvovc.com/portfolio/).  Sean has a J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark School of Law and is a licensed Utah attorney.

Previous investor at Atento Capital, the venture capital arm of one of the largest community foundations in the country and alumnus of the Venture for America fellowship. 

Partner at Concrete Rose Capital. Attended Cornell University.

Seán has spent over two decades in venture capital and technology commercialization. His string of investments leading to initial public offerings includes Cvent, CymaBay, FreeMarkets, NuPathe and ServiceWare.

Most recently, Dr. Bernales co-founded Metagenomi, a pioneering gene editing company developing next generation therapies for patients. Prior to Metagenomi, Dr. Bernales co-founded Praxis Biotech, a California-based biotech company focused on rapidly translating early-stage ideas into IND ready programs.

Fintech entrepreneur and VC investor.  founded an award-winning money transfer service Lebara Money and was an early executive at M-Pesa, the pioneer mobile money service.

Semil Shah is a Founder and General Partner at Haystack and was a Venture Partner at GGV Capital.

Managing Partner at One Way Ventures.

Senofer Mendoza is a founder and General Partner of Mendoza Ventures, a Boston based pre-seed Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity venture capital firm. After having a career in enterprise sales and hospitality design, she began Mendoza Ventures to address the growing funding gap in the pre-seed investment stage. The firm was launched in January of 2016 and invests internationally in the Cybersecurity, AI, and Fintech space. She is a published author, innovator, and thought leader in the technology, startup, and VC space with a passion for equity and diversity.

Prior to joining the firm in 2021, she worked as an investor at Tusk Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in regulated, consumer-centric industries such as digital health and insurtech. Previously, Serena was an Analyst at Goldman Sachs within the Institutional Investment Management Division, where she focused on corporate credit.

Serena Williams is an American professional tennis player who is currently ranked No. 1 in women's singles tennis. Williams is also the reigning French Open, US Open, WTA Tour Championships and Olympic ladies singles champion. In 2008, Williams helped to fund the construction of the Serena Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya. She received a Celebrity Role Model Award from Avon Foundation in 2003 for work in breast cancer. Williams has also been involved in a number of clinics at schools and community centers, particularly those which have programs focusing on at-risk youth; she has also won the "Young Heroes Award" from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater L.A. and Inland (2003) and the "Family Circle and Prudential Financial Player Who Makes a Difference Award" (2004).

Serene is passionate about working with entrepreneurs, and spends most of her time with SaaS and marketplace startups. Prior to Kickstart, she worked at Susquehanna Growth Equity, a growth-stage B2B tech fund. Serene helped build SGE's Portfolio Value Creation team, a function dedicated to accelerating portfolio company growth. In this capacity, she worked primarily on strategy and go-to-market initiatives to scale revenue, boost retention, and more. Previously, she worked as a management consultant at Cicero Group on growth and transformation strategy.

Serene is from Tokyo and fluent in Japanese. She is a Boston-qualified marathon runner and enjoys food, reading, drawing, and traveling.

Serge is the Co-Founder and Partner of 6MV and the Co-Founder and CEO of Staytuned, a suite of tools to help your high-growth e-commerce brand grow even faster.

a serial entrepreneur, operator, and venture capitalist, who has founded over 10 companies. was a part of the founding team of CFT Group, a leading Eastern European banking, and payments software company. co-founded Koronapay, which is one of the largest payments remittance platforms in Europe held senior management positions at several leading multi-billion AUM European growth and private equity funds, which were focused on financial services. co-founded QWave Capital, an $100 million fund that was the first venture capital fund focused exclusively on emerging quantum computing technologies. founding investor and board member of Affinity Bank

Technology entrepreneur and investor with more than 20 years of experience. Over the years he participated as a founder, top manager, or investor in many startups in USA and Israel. Sergey has a lot of experience across such sectors as software development, VoIP, cybersecurity, digital health, finance, and others. Today Sergey is an investor, board member, or mentor in several startups across US and Israel.

investor and successful entrepreneur who has operated global tech businesses in Silicon Valley invested early in unicorns like Kahoot!, Udemy, and Adaptive Insights during his decade-long career as Partner at Norwest Venture Partners has also held leadership roles at high-growth tech companies like eBay, PayPal, and Portal Software co-founded the Entrepreneur-In-Residence Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Education

Sergio has built and led product and engineering teams and marketing and sales initiatives. He works alongside founders on refining product-market fit, go to market strategy and execution, sales, and fundraising. He often meets with founders at least once a week for six months post-investment.

Seth Bannon is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years, a San Francisco based seed fund that backs entrepreneurs solving the world’s biggest problems with technology. Seth has seeded many sustainability startups shaping the world for the better — companies like Memphis Meats (culturing meat to eat), Solugen (engineering enzymes to produce industrialchemicals sustainably), Geltor (recombinantly making collagen and gelatin), and Cover (building homes like Tesla builds cars) to companies in sustainable food, transportation, and finance. Seth is also the co-founder of impact.tech, a community of entrepreneurs combining purpose with profit, and was previously the founder & CEO of startup Amicus. A graduate of Y Combinator, Seth was named twice to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Entrepreneurship. Seth can occasionally be found in parks around the world attempting to hustle chess hustlers.

Specialties: Blockchain, Digital Assets, Bitcoin, Startups, VC, Equity Research, Equities, Alpha Generation, Angel Investing (100+ companies), Operational Advice, Non-profit Boards

Seth Levine co-founded Pledge 1%, a global network of companies who have pledged equity, time, and product back to their local communities.

Seth also spends time as an advisor to venture funds and companies around the globe – especially in the Middle East and Africa – to help promote entrepreneurship and economic development.

In 2021, he released The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business, a book he co-authored with Elizabeth MacBride about the increasingly diverse future of entrepreneurship in America.

A passionate cyclist, above-average skier, and general fan of all things outdoors, Seth and his wife live in Colorado with their three children.

managed the University of Maryland’s angel investor group, Dingman Angels, and served as a Principal at the Momentum Fund. was an analyst at a $120m early-stage technology fund investing industry agnostically in the region. worked for Community Analytics, an angel-backed startup company in the Baltimore area developing proprietary technology for influence marketing and information services.

Sha Zhou is a writer, geek, venture capitalist, and foreign affairs visionary. Meanwhile, Sha is advising Chinas Central Government on key issues such as the Beijing Olympics, Taiwan, Global RMB and the One Belt One Road development strategy, gaining much inspiration from FDRs New-Era Great Depression strategies. Sha Zhou started as a software engineer from 1996 and worked in both technical and management position for companies such as HP, Alteon, NetScaler, NetScreen, and Juniper, etc. Sha founded and invested in numerous startup companies, spanning from robotics, drones, block chains, semiconductors, social networking, securities, computer visions, etc. Having critical resource and connections in both the U.S. and China, Sha is in a unique position to connect both worlds to form a strategic solution for new frontier technology to thrive.

Investor at Afore Capital and Catalyst Fellow at On Deck. Prior to that, he worked at WeWork's EMEA's Strategy and Ops team.

Shafiq leads deal sourcing, investment process and portfolio management.

Shafiq joins TELUS from the Business Development Bank of Canada, where he was a Senior Partner in their Advisory practice focused on accelerating high growth businesses. He brings over 15 years of global experience in banking, private equity, management consulting, and venture capital.

Co-Founded Loom (current valuation at $1.5B) last 2020. Currently the CEO of Prologue, owner of Hyper and ProductHunt. 

Managing Director across all stages for investments in India and the SEA I always try to understand what drives founders to devote their life to a problem. Do they have any unique insights into a market, have they thought deeply about serving their customers better than others? I’m always keen to understand what shaped their life and key decisions. I like to hear about their family and friends, their siblings, parents. I look to learn about their failures and how they might have overcome them. We are shaped by our challenges and failures more than we are by our successes. In the end, I think amazing success can be achieved by highly imperfect people. It’s not for us to judge others, but for simply to understand them and assess if there are common values, so we can work well together for a very long period of time.

Previously served as IAC's Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning & Mergers and Acquisitions Previously, served as Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance for Allen & Company, LLC. Received her B.A. from Hampshire College with a triple major in Sculpture, Philosophy and Linguistics and attended the Master of Arts program at New York University's ITP.

Dr. Shante Williams is currently the CEO of Black Pearl Global Investments, a healthcare venture capital firm. Before her current position, she worked fully in the medical field and is widely recognized for her stellar discovery of innovative chemotherapy treatments for high-grade invasive brain tumors.

Shari Redstone is Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Advancit Capital. She is a media executive with a wide-ranging background in numerous aspects of the media and digital industry. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of Paramount Global. She is also Chairperson, CEO, and President of National Amusements, one of the top 10 movie exhibitors in the U.S. Shari has expanded the company's international footprint and its exploration of new technologies. Shari earned a BS from Tufts University. She serves on the Board of Trustees for the Paley Center for Media and is actively involved in charitable, civic and educational organizations. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Prior to Tau Ventures, Sharon was a software engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub where she developed and designed portals and automation of sequencing submission pipeline for proteomics sequencing.

Northpond Ventures is a multi-billion dollar science-driven venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and Bethesda, MD. Northpond has been named one of the three most active lead biotech investors in 2021 by Crunchbase, and the most active lead investor in life science solutions and molecular diagnostics by Silicon Valley Bank. It is particularly engaged in the research ecosystem, having founded a bioengineering laboratory at Harvard, and sponsored a prize for women entrepreneurs at MIT. It has led over 50 financings over the past several years, with a high percentage having an academic origin. Learn more at npv.vc.