Akli Adjaoute

Akli Adjaoute is an investor and entrepreneur in the area of artificial intelligence. He founded Brighterion in April 2000 which was acquired by Mastercard in August 2017, and he is now advisor to the President of Mastercard. Brighterion delivers a leading AI and machine learning platform that provides real-time mission-critical intelligence from any data source, regardless of type, complexity or volume. Brighterion’s AI solution secures billions of transactions monthly and is used and trusted by 76 of the top 100 U.S. banks and more than 2,000 customers worldwide, processing more than 100+ billion transactions annually. While running Brighterion, Akli was Adjunct Professor at University of San Francisco where he shared his real-world experience with the students. Previously, he founded Conception En Intellligence Artificielle in 1988 while finishing his PhD in Artficial Intelligence at Pierre and Marie Curie University. Conception En Intelligence Artificielle offered Rylm, an artificial intelligence platform, MINDsuite, combining the power of Smart Agents, Neural Networks, Business Rules, Genetic Algorithms, Constraint Programming, Fuzzy Logic, and Cased-based Reasoning. Akli holds PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Pierre and Marie Curie University in France. He also holds Master of Mathematics and Computer Science from Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC) in France.

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Jim Ashford

Jim Ashford is an operating executive, director, investor, CEO coach, and board advisor. A former CEO of public and private companies, he recently launched a consulting, investment and development company (WOWdevelopment) to bring his passions to life. He is particularly interested in working with young people as they imagine, develop and deliver solutions to solve society’s problems. Jim spent over 30 years building a small tightly held public company, Scientific Technologies Inc., with three other principal owners into the US market leader for Automation Safety. Customers included fortune 50 and 100 companies in the automotive, technology, semiconductor, aerospace, power management, food processing, and pharmaceutical sectors to name a few.  Safety is most always on the agenda of these large global companies board meetings. Leveraging his entrepreneurial and operating skills he successfully expanded the capability and market reach of the company by forging strategic alliances with leading global automation companies. His experience also includes founding manufacturing companies in Singapore and China, founding a global machine safety service company and building sales companies in China and Germany. Further, Jim has extensive knowledge in product development, design, engineering management, manufacturing systems and management. He holds 13 patents. In 2006 the company was successfully sold to the OMRON Company of Japan. Jim continued as the President/COO of the combined global safety business and in 2012 assumed the role of CEO. Jim retired from OMRON in 2014 to pursue other passions.

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Val Babajov

Val Babajov is an entrepreneur and angel investor with thirty five years of software development, business management and investment experience. Val is currently Founder and General Partner of VoiVoda Ventures, an early stage investment fund focused on B2B, mobile, cloud, VoIP software technology startups. VoiVoda has provided initial and follow-on funding for 20 companies since 2009. Many of the investments are syndications with other angel groups or early stage VCs. During the last six years VoiVoda Ventures and Val personally sold five software companies, all of them were cash transactions. Four of the five buyers were publicly traded companies. The fund’s geographical focus includes both companies based in USA and outside of the United States. VoiVoda leverages the growing network of international technology accelerators to identify top companies from around the world and assist them with moving to Silicon Valley for fundraising. In the beginning of 2014 VoiVoda Ventures engaged in a new more aggressive form of incubation of its own projects. Based on Val’s experience, pool of ideas, large number of potential CEO candidates and existing senior engineers in Val’s network, VoiVoda Ventures incubated four very early stage projects. One of them InstaCollab Floortime, where VoiVoda is lead investor is progressing rapidly. It is a platform for real estate agent/ brokerage lead optimization. Prior to founding VoiVoda ventures, Val spent 33 years in the software development industry. He founded his first company, WebMessenger in 1993 in his garage. During the dot com boom, Webmessenger with engineering offices in six countries developed IP in medical software, digital media, mobile software and communications for a wide range of clients including large corporations and startups. After the bubble burst, Val pivoted the business to enterprise level unified mobile instant messaging, which resulted in a 2007 acquisition byApptix (OSE: APP). After several months, it became evident that Apptix did not have the right vision for the Webmessenger product line. In 2008, Val orchestrated a buyout of the technology from Apptix and subsequently sold it to CallWave (Nasdaq: CALL) which continues to develop and promote the platform, and has ported it to the iPhone and Google Android operating systems. After this second exit Babajov established engineering development team in Partners 1993, Inc. Partners 1993 developed a variety of technologies ranging from mobile applications for startups to core mobile technology for large corporations such as Juniper Networks and Verizon wireless. Partners1993 engineering team was acquired by BroadSoft (Nasdaq: BSFT) in May 2012. Since then Val has focused his full attention on investing through VoiVoda Ventures and the incubation projects. Val enjoys working with entrepreneurs who have a strong value system and personal drive. Val believes in the importance of people’s word, and still conducts business based on a handshake. Having immigrated to the United States from communist Bulgaria before of the collapse of the system in February 1989 with only $100 in his pocket, Val knows first-hand the struggles that early entrepreneurs face in trying to build their business. His goal with VoiVoda Ventures is to help entrepreneurs avoid many of the common mistakes and accelerate the growth of their businesses. Val believes that entrepreneurs can accomplish anything when they put their mind to it, and enjoys watching young companies.

Nik Bahram

Nik Bahram is a 35-year veteran in the tech industry, including executive leadership roles at NetApp, Western Digital, Virident, NXP Semiconductors and LSI Logic. He has leadership track record in 5 startups and 5 Fortune 500 companies. His organizations have achieved fastest ramp time to $1B revenue run rate in 3 different companies. Amongst his experiences, Nik has led 500-person global engineering teams, as well as startup engineering teams delivering graphics processors, secure microcontrollers, NFC/Secure Elements, iSCSI/Fiberchannel processors and multi-protocol WiFi chipsets. In product management, he was responsible for $4B product portfolio at NetApp. At NXP Marketing & Sales, he had $250M revenue responsibility in the mobile and computing segment worldwide with 6 top mobile and computing OEMs account engagements. His current focus is on integrated Cloud to Edge AI/ML learning and inference systems for Autonomous Systems. Nik volunteered pro-bono to develop the technology ecosystem in Santa Cruz, CA as the Executive Director for the non-profit Santa Cruz Works (SCW). He developed the SCW Accelerator program in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz connecting entrepreneurs with mentors and capital. Nik holds BSEE and MSEE in Computer Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, MS in Finance from Boston College, Certificate in Business Administration from Harvard University, and has completed the Executive Education in Strategy & Innovation Management from Babson Graduate School of Business.

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Michael Bates

Mike Bates is Co-Head of the Life Science Screening Committee at the Band of Angels and an active member of the Life Science Angels. He has invested in over 30 startups, about two-thirds of which are medical technology related. His portfolio includes companies such as Practice Fusion, HealthCrowd, CogENT Therapeutics, Aerin Medical and Mixbook.com. He formerly served as Director and Audit Committee Chairman of BÂRRX Medical, Emphasys Medical, and Satiety. He also served as a Director of Catheter Connections, Inc., a company seed funded by Life Science Angels. Prior to becoming an angel investor, Mr. Bates served as Chief Financial Officer of four successful life science companies, all of which were sold at premium valuations generating high rates of return for their investors, including St. Francis Medical Technologies, Inc. (sold to Kyphon in January 2007), Silicon Genetics (sold to Agilent Technologies in 2004), Collagen Aesthetics, Inc. (sold to Inamed in 1999) and Penederm Incorporated (sold to Mylan Laboratories in 1998). Mr. Bates is a certified public accountant (non-practicing), having begun his career at Deloitte LLP and has also held positions at Tandem Computers Inc. He is a graduate of California State University, East Bay and received an MBA in Finance from the University of California at Berkeley.

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Mark Belinsky

Mark Belinsky has over 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur and operating executive at privately held and publicly traded software, services, and embedded technology companies. He’s founded, co-founded, or had C-level roles at companies with products and services in e-commerce, educational services, digital rights management, supply chain traceability, and operating systems.  He’s been an active angel investor for the past 3 years, including investments in Band companies Tenacity Health, Kiana Analytics, and Detection Group.  He serves on the selection committee for Harvard Business School Angels of Northern California. Mark has served as SVP and GM at video encryption and software e-commerce company Macrovision (Nasdaq: TIVO) and at haptics leader Immersion Corporation (Nasdaq: IMMR) in business unit GM, corporate development and business development roles.  He current consults to emerging software, services, and IoT companies in areas related to strategic relationships, pricing, channels, partnering, financing, and international. Mark joined Macrovision as GM of the video products division, and over an 8-year period led Macrovision's digital watermarking technology launch, its music DRM launch, its DVD copy protection technology launch, and its acquisition of software e-commerce company Globetrotter Software (now called Flexera) for $800M.  Mark drove the diversification of Macrovision from a single-product video encryption/copy protection company to a diversified software and services company, growing revenue from $10M to $150M over his time with the company. The company went public at a $70M market cap and grew to a $5B market cap within four years. Today trading under the symbol TIVO, Macrovision has a market cap of $2.4B. At Immersion, Mark ran the mobile products division and built the business that today is a $50M haptics platform and technology/IP licensing business. He led a product, marketing and sales team of 25, split between San Jose, Oxford (UK), Montreal, Seoul, and Helsinki. Mark also refined Immersion’s approach to monetizing its IP and participated in the negotiations with Sony Electronics that resulted in cash payments to Immersion of $147M over a five-year period. Today trading under the symbol IMMR, Immersion has a market cap of $250M. Earlier, Mark ran sales and marketing at UNIX OS company UniSoft, and served as SVP/GM at internet training and technology demonstrations company Interop, where he grew the company from $1M to $20M revenue over a four-year period, drove a $23M exit, and launched the company’s European operation in Paris. Mark holds a B.A. in Accounting and Finance from Wayne State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In his free time, he enjoys playing competitive tennis and pick-up ice hockey, as well as biking, and sailing on SF bay and in the BVI.

Jason Bennett

Jason Bennett is a Principal with Start Up Mavericks, focused on our Property Tech investments and helping our founders scale their business for rapid growth. Prior to SUM Ventures, Jason was the VP Sales for TrackStreet, where he scaled his team by 500% and closed over 280 deals with 550 net new logos in three years. Over his 25-year career, Jason has held senior level roles in venture capital, strategic alliances, business development, marketing, and sales at Accenture, Dell/EMC, Gartner, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, Hitachi Data Systems, and Violin Memory. He has also been a successful entrepreneur as a real estate developer in both residential and commercial projects. Focusing on new construction and value add projects, Jason has successfully exited over thirty deals in Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Montecito, San Francisco, and Piedmont, California. In addition to projects in Sun Valley and Boise, Idaho. Mr. Bennett holds his California Real Estate License and his California General Contractors License. As a graduate of the University of Southern California, Jason is an active member of the Trojan family volunteering his time with USC admissions and serving as the advisory leader for Trojans at Los Angeles Venture Association. Mr. Bennett was the founding board member and President of the Idaho Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization. Jason enjoys all that Idaho and California have to offer- sun, sand, waves, and mountains.

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Jim Bochnowski

Jim Bochnowski founded Delphi Ventures in 1988. His focus is on medical devices and biotechnology. Jim began investing in medical companies in 1981 after co-founding Technology VENTURE Investors, a private venture capital partnership. Since 1984, he has focused exclusively on healthcare investments. From 1976 to 1980, Jim was with Shugart Associates, a venture-backed disk drive company. As President and CEO, he led Shugart to increasing profitability, with annual revenues growing from $13 million to $200 million. Shugart was acquired by Xerox in 1979. From 1972 to 1976, Jim was a general partner with Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette’s (DLJ) venture capital arm, the Sprout Capital Group. Prior to that, he served as a securities analyst with DLJ. Trained as an aerospace engineer at MIT, Jim served as an Army officer and a missile systems engineer with the U.S. Army Missile Intelligence Directorate, serves on the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was a member of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Health Policy and Management Executive Council. Jim was a director of the Western Association of Venture Capital. Jim received his MBA with Distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Business and his BS from MIT.

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Jean-Louis Bories

Jean-Louis Bories is currently a management consultant and angel investor. A 35 year veteran in the semiconductor industry, Jean-Louis has a strong international business background and a proven history of creating and growing new businesses. From 2007 to 2011 Jean-Louis was the President and CEO of Xceive Corporation. Prior to joining Xceive, Jean-Louis was with National Semiconductor Corporation in a variety of roles including: Executive Vice President, Information Appliance and Wireless Group, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Wireless & Displays Group; and Senior Vice President, Core Technology Group. He has also held executive positions at LSI-Logic Corporation in France, England and the US. He started his career as an engineer at Thomson CSF in France designing Programmable Digital Signal Processors systems for embedded Radar and Missile applications. Jean-Louis Bories has an engineering degree from Ecole Superieure d’Electricite (ESE) in France and currently serve on the Board of The International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto.

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Ron Burns

  • Sales Leader: Software, Semiconductor, EDA, Global Services & Embedded Systems

  • Energetic global leader with a successful track record of exceeding objectives and leading cross functional sales teams, from startups ($0-$60M) to working with Fortune global 20 multi-nationals.

  • Sales leadership enhanced by experience leading both Sales and Marketing teams and strategic account development.

  • Specialties: Sales Leadership | Sales Management | Product Development Services | Technology Evangelism | Consultative Sales | New Ventures-Upstarts | Corporate Entrepreneur Models | Solutions Oriented Alliances | Multi-level Complex Exec Suite Sales | Domestic/International Growth | M&A | Sales and Marketing Strategy

  • Driven by a love of technology and its role as a change agent in global markets. Experienced in EDA, Global Development Services, Embedded Systems/Network protocol, Multi-core Processing, and Fabless System-on-Chip (SoC).

Christian Busch

Christian Busch  is an expert in leading innovation/growth teams and incubating new businesses inside large companies. He has 20 years of experience in senior executive roles at the world's most competitive software companies with a broad range of product R&D, engineering, operations, GTM, sales and technology market expertise, building transformational products as well as the organizations to support and sell them. Most recently, he led practice at Cognizant ideating, delivering, and launching transformational digital products for Fortune 100 clients where he took a 2.5-year-old zero revenue product offering to a $10M ARR in 10 months. Previously, at SAP he ideated, developed, and launched four profitable SaaS product solutions in cloud imaging, real-time analytics, natural language processing, and internet of things. These products have won several industry and UX awards. As an entrepreneur, Christian has worn many hats—Innovator, Developer, COO, CPO, CTO, GTM, and sales leadership. He founded his first software company while still in college, building a browser-based agile project team platform (something like Jira today) out of an internship at DaimlerChrysler in 1996. In his spare time, Christian enjoys mentoring international startups succeed in Silicon Valley at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) Ignite, The Alchemist Accelerator San Francisco, German Accelerator Silicon Valley, and Sparklabs Global Ventures. Christian holds Bachelor degree in Economics from Freie Universität Berlin in Germany.

Laird Cagan

Laird Q. Cagan is Managing Director and co-founder of Silicon Valley-based Cagan McAfee Capital Partners, LLC, a private investment firm he founded in 1990.  He has been actively involved in over 40 high-growth companies over the past 30 years, as investor, founder, board member, and CEO in a variety of industries including, Energy, CleanTech, FinTech, NanoTech, MedTech, Healthcare, Information Technologies, Payments and Water.  He recently acquired FloShield, Inc., a medical device for laparoscopic surgery, sold globally and moved manufacturing to China where he developed a joint venture for sales in mainland China.  He has taken over 10 of those companies public and has traditionally continued on the board of those companies.  Over $1B of equity capital and $2B of debt/JV capital has been invested in those companies.

Mr. Cagan previously worked in M&A at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Drexel Burnham Lambert.  In all, he was involved in over 30 transactions valued at more than $15 billion, bankruptcy work-out transactions of more than $2 billion, and a variety of equity, high-yield bond and senior debt financings. 

Mr. Cagan attended M.I.T. and received a BS, MS and MBA from Stanford University.  He is also a graduate of the UCLA Board of Director’s program and he took time to earn a two-year, part-time MA degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica for personal growth and to advance leadership skills.  He is the founding Chairman of the SF Bay Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization, is a founder and Chairman of the San Francisco Chapter of the World Presidents’ Organization and is the Chair of the San Francisco Group of Tiger 21, a global network of Ultra High Net Worth Investors focused on successfully managing personal wealth. He and his wife founded and run the Stand4Lyme Foundation, teaming with The Stanford Lyme Working Group which they helped initiate at the Stanford Medical School.  An avid athlete, he played varsity soccer at Stanford and continues to enjoy soccer, tennis, golf and skiing.  In 2004, Mr. Cagan’s team won the Veteran’s Cup, over-40 Soccer National Championship and in 2012 his team won the over-50 National Championship.  He is a former member of the Stanford University Athletic Board, an inductee to Stanford Associates for his volunteer efforts at Stanford and is honored to have the Laird Q. Cagan Stadium at Stanford named after him.  

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Juan-Antonio Carballo

Dr. Juan-Antonio Carballo is currently a Sales Executive at Broadcom Corporation, where he arrived via the acquisition of NetLogic Microsystems, where he was Global Director of Major Accounts, responsible for the largest wireless infrastructure and Cloud accounts worldwide. Prior to this assignment, he was IBM's Semiconductor Venture Capital partner and worldwide Head for IBM's Microelectronics Services team, responsible for its 9-digit revenue, profit, and signings target. As IBM's VC partner, Juan-Antonio had been top ranked in his team and led the development of its hardware practice in the US and China. Juan-Antonio has had a number of other industry leadership roles, including IBM Research, Digital Equipment, and LSI Logic. Prior to his current role, he also gained independent venture experience, as Partner at Argon Ventures, the first VC firm focused on cross-border US-Canada venture; and start-up executive experience, being the first head of marketing at Schooner IT, a Venture-backed appliance company. Dr. Carballo has authored more than 50 scientific and business articles, and a widely available book "Chip Design for Non-Designers, An Introduction". He holds over 35 patents worldwide in semiconductors, systems, and software, and is the recipient of several IBM awards. He sits in numerous chip industry committees (e.g. Chair of the Industry's design roadmap, ITRS), and is a frequent keynote speaker at top technical and business conferences. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan (joint with Carnegie Mellon University), an M.B.A. from the College des Ingenieurs (Paris), and an Ms.C. in Telecommunications Engineering from the UPM (Madrid). He is fluent in 5 languages. Dr. Carballo has had 8 investments with the Band of Angels, most of them in the Clean Tech / Energy space, among which so far one ended in a successful exit.

Richard Caro

Dr. Richard G. Caro has 30+ years of experience at the intersection of technology and business — as startup CEO; startup CTO; scientist/inventor; angel investor; and advisor to emerging growth companies. 

He is currently Co-founder of Tech-enhanced Life, PBC — a social venture which, together with a virtual community of older adults (the Longevity Explorers), is exploring the intersection of aging and technology. He is also a startup advisor/mentor and occasional angel investor, with deep domain expertise in agetech; medtech & digital health; telecom; & photonics, and a strong current interest in applications of AI across many verticals.

Richard’s prior experience includes operational roles in high tech companies in Silicon Valley and Boston — as CEO (founder) of Vital Insite, a venture-backed, medical device start-up; Engineering Program Manager at Coherent, one of the world’s largest laser manufacturers; and CTO (employee #5) of Summit Technology, a pioneer in the laser refractive surgery (LASIK) business. He has also been an industry analyst and advisor to companies ranging from tiny startups to some of the world's largest companies — as CEO of TangibleFuture, and Managing Director at RHK.

Before entering industry, Richard was an IBM Post-doctoral fellow, then member of the research staff, at Stanford University. He has a Physics D.Phil. (Ph.D.) from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and has 24 patents.

 

Tom Carroux

Tom Carroux has helped grow and manage a variety of pioneering technology companies, from pre-revenue concept stage to leading a team generating $20M in annual revenue. Repeatedly closed first ever sales. B2B, SaaS, security, digital media, broadband and wireless. His role has typically focused on defining customer requirements, launching new products, opening new markets, strategic partnering, raising money, closing deals, and enabling geographically dispersed teams to excel. Commercial agreements ranging from $50K to $7.35M. Hands on experience in the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Identified third party product acquired for $45M. Speaker at industry conferences. Authored numerous articles. 

Worked at four start-ups, two of which became high-growth unicorns that beat the odds. One evolved from a sole proprietorship into a public company and then sold for $3B, while the other increased revenues from $17 million to $247 million and IPO.

Self-directed public market investor since 1985. Portfolio concentrated in low cap-ex companies that generate recurring revenue and typically have dominant market share and strong barriers to entry. Joined the Band of Angels to identify start-ups developing radical and significant technology.

MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. 

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud expert level technical certifications.

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Jack Carsten

Jack Carsten is a Managing Director of Horizon Ventures, a Los Altos based VC fund managing $150M in invested capital and also a personal investor and director of several local technology companies. He is a founder of the Band of Angels. Previously he was a General Partner with US Venture Partners and Technology Investments. Earlier at Intel he was Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Microprocessor Group, and finally, General Manager for Semiconductors. He also served as General Manager of the MOS Division at Texas Instruments. He holds a BS in physics from Duke University.

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Hector Casab

Hector Casab is a finance executive with expertise in managing companies for growth and value creation. Hector is now a consulting CFO to biotech and health tech companies in the Bay Area. He is Board Member of the NorCal chapter Association of Bioscience Financial Officers, which provides a forum for the senior financial executives of more than 100 Bay Area life science companies to discuss business and financial issues related to the industry. He is Founder, Director and CEO of the Benjamin Links Foundation, a non-profit that provide services to children with autism, their families and their communities. Previously, he was CFO / VP of Finance at ForSight VISION5 (private, acquired by Allergan); Vice President of Finance & Administration at Icon Bioscience; Head of Financial Planning at Onyx Pharmaceuticals (public, acquired by Amgen). During his five-plus year tenure at Genentech (public, acquired by Roche), his multiple roles included Director, Corporate Planning, Director, Global Supply Chain Finance, and Associate Director, Manufacturing Collaborations Finance. He was previously with Applied Biosystems (public, acquired by Invitrogen to form Life Technologies), serving in various roles in operations and finance. He holds an MBA from Santa Clara University with a concentration in Marketing and Finance, and a B.S. from Oakland University in Accounting and Management Information Systems.

 Dr. Faouzi Chaahoub

Dr. Faouzi Chaahoub has held Engineering and Senior Engineering Management positions at various high technology companies, including Broadcom, Inc., Avago Technologies, Intersil, Conexant System, Motorola, Quallan, and Rockwell Semiconductor. He was most recently the Senior Director of Engineering at Broadcom/Avago, leading the Research and Development team for High-Speed Optical Networking Products for Supercomputers and Datacenters. Dr. Faouzi Chaahoubholds Ph. D., and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Grenoble, INPG Institute National Polytechnic of Grenoble, France. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Montpellier in France.Dr. Faouzi Chaahoub has over 30 years of experience in semiconductor and management especially in Integrated Circuit Design of Analog Mixed Signal/Radio frequency and High-Speed Optical Integrated Circuit. He has proven success in leading and building world-class product development R&D teams worldwide (US, Europe, India, China, Singapore, and Malaysia).Dr. Faouzi Chaahoub’s technical background and extensive worldwide engineering experience has helped develop a wide range of successful Wireless products and Datacenter High-speed Optical-Networking products. He also contributes to many IEEE publications, as well as international conferences. He holds over 37 US and worldwide patents in the field of Analog Mixed-Signal/Radio-Frequency and High Speed Optical Integrated Circuits Design.

 Joy Chen

Joy Chen is a CEO, board member, and advisor with over 25 years driving sales and profit growth through innovative brand building, global expansions, and digital transformation. Her international expertise includes North America, Asia, and the European markets. Most recently, Joy served as the Board Chairman and CEO of H2O+ Beauty, a leading global brand in the premium skincare category, which she turned around from a declining business to +25% sales growth and +30% margin improvement.

Previously, Joy served as CEO and Board Director of Yes To, Inc., overseeing the global expansion and accelerated growth of its natural skin and bodycare portfolio. Amid the economic downturn, she scaled the start-up, catapulting the brand to the #2 ranking in the natural personal care category. Under Joy’s leadership, the business successfully grew +450% in revenue growth and the company valuation increased by 5x. During this time, the Yes To brand also won nearly 70 product and business awards including the top 100 fastest growing company. She launched the brand into mainstream channels, including WalMart, Target, Kroger, CVS, Ahold, Amazon, Sephora.

Before joining Yes To, Joy spent 17 years at the Clorox Company, serving as Vice President and General Manager of the laundry business, overseeing P&L for a $1B+ division, handling the company’s most valuable brand equity, Clorox, and managing a large multi-functional organization. At Clorox, she turned around the Laundry business to +4% growth, a +10% profit improvement in a mature, declining category, and securing Clorox’s market position as #1 brand in segment. During her tenure at Clorox, Joy also held other senior leadership roles including VP Marketing and VP Sales.

In addition to her CEO roles, Joy finds time to support the community. From her immigrant upbringing, she values the importance of education to her own career. She has served as a board member on Junior Achievement, and most recently on Girls Inc, an organization whose mission is to get underpriviledged girls to college. She is active on the Harvard Business School’s Advisory Council. Her entrepreneurial passion has also led her to serve as a board member and advisor for tech, health, and wellness start-ups: Vibechain, 18 Rabbits, and 479 Popcorn. She is an invited keynote speaker at many conferences and a judge for global startup competitions at Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Joy was awarded Most Admired CEO and named Most Influential Woman Forever Honor Roll in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was honored with Stevie Awards for Women in Business in both the Executive of the Year and Mentor of the Year categories, as well as Executive of the Year from Best in Biz awards. Joy is a content contributor to ENTREPRENEUR magazine. She received her BS from the University of California, Berkeley and MBA from Harvard University.

Harper Cheng

Harper Cheng is a product leader with diversified experiences across enterprise software, consumer electronics and semiconductor industries. At Microsoft, she takes the helm as the Principal Product Manager, leading the Microsoft Azure High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software team. In this pivotal role, she drives the innovation of the Cloud software infrastructure for cutting-edge services including Open AI and Azure ML. She is responsible for shaping product strategy, leading Azure planning, and identifying strategic acquisition targets. She is also a speaker at Microsoft Executive Briefings to drive global customer engagement. Prior to Microsoft, she led engineering teams in product design and development for Pixel Phone at Google, Mac Computer at Apple, and Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMIC) at Renesas Electronics and Marvell Technology.

Harper is an emerging Venture Capitalist and Angel Investor with a passion for driving positive social and environmental change through disruptive technologies. She has been actively engaged in the startup and venture capital ecosystem, supporting promising startups by providing not only financial backing but also mentorship and strategic guidance. She is a Super Angel Partner of Alumni Ventures, and an investor of Sand Hill Angels, Band of Angels and Wharton Alumni Angels. She also participates as a Limited Partner in established venture capital funds, aligning her investments with top-tier VCs to diversify her portfolio and contribute to the broader tech investment landscape. Her investment portfolio spans a wide array of sectors, including enterprise software, consumer products and services, biotech, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, cryptocurrency, web3, real estate, and food & beverages, etc.

Harper holds an M.B.A. degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. She serves as the President and Board of Director of the Penn Club of Silicon Valley, orchestrating social, cultural and community service activities to enrich the lives of alumni and the extended Penn community. She serves as a Board of Director at American Technion Society to support scholarships, teaching and research of Israel’s leading university Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. She leads a consulting team at PennPAC, providing pro bono consulting support for nonprofit organizations to enhance their efficiency and amplify their positive impact.

LinkedIn profile

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Ron Collett

Ron Collett has been involved in the high tech industry for more than 35 years. He was CEO/co-founder of Numetrics Management Systems, Inc., a pioneering predictive analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) company providing major global semiconductor and systems companies with an enterprise-level SaaS solution for estimating chip design project schedules and staffing requirements. Funded by the Band of Angels, the company was acquired by McKinsey & Co. in 2013. Ron is currently CEO/founder of NMX Global Software, a spinout of Numetrics’ software engineering organization that provides software development and cybersecurity services. Previously, Ron was CEO/founder of Collett International, Inc., a leading consulting firm serving the C-suite, specializing in technology, product and business strategy, as well as product development benchmarking, electronic design automation (EDA) and market modeling. Earlier in his career he was a Director at Gartner Group (Dataquest), overseeing research and analysis for the firm’s EDA and semiconductor ASIC practices. He’s held engineering positions at GTE Communications Systems, the Federal Aviation Administration, and SPS Technologies, an early robotics company serving the automotive industry. Ron was a longtime monthly columnist for Electronic Engineering Times and several other periodicals in the U.S. and Japan, publishing several hundred articles on technology, market and business strategy. Ron earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University and law degree from Santa Clara University, where he was a member of the Law Review, and he is a member of the California Bar. His hobbies include: wine making, skiing, sailing and playing ice hockey.

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Gregory Corona

Greg Corona is the Chief Executive Officer of Malibu IQ and Chairman of its Investment Committee. In his role, Greg oversees the day-to- implementation of Malibu IQ’s commercialization strategy and deployment of investment capital to implement the firm’s investment objectives. Greg has over 30 years of operating and financial experience as a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer or a Managing Director in the areas of manufacturing, technology, financial services and private equity. He was an original partner of a leading private equity firm with over $950 million of capital under management, is the Founder and Chairman of Lakewood Capital, LLC, a private investment firm and held a variety of financial positions with Finance Staff of the Ford Motor Company. He has been the lead principal or a participant in more than 40 institutional investments and transactions in various industries in the United States, Europe and China. He has previously served as the Chairman or Member of several public and private company Boards and Audit Committees in the financial services, technology and industrial sectors. He is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and has mentored boardroom governance in several emerging growth and technology companies. Greg received a Bachelors Degree in Finance from Michigan State University,a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the University of Detroit, has completed Executive Education Programs at the Harvard Business School and the National Association of Corporate Directors where he received the Certificate of Director Education.