Jim Adox – Ven­ture Investors

Jim joined Ven­ture Investors in 2007 as a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and heads up our Ann Arbor, Michi­gan office. He lever­ages his tech­ni­cal, oper­a­tional and ven­ture cap­i­tal back­ground by focus­ing on invest­ment prospects in med­ical devices, hard­ware, soft­ware, and communications.

Jim’s prior ven­ture cap­i­tal expe­ri­ence includes a com­bined nine years as a part­ner at Ridge­Line Ven­tures and EDF Ven­tures, where he led the spin-out, sourc­ing, financ­ing, syn­di­ca­tion and exit of numer­ous invest­ments. Dur­ing this time, he per­formed the role of Pres­i­dent, CFO and COO of select oppor­tu­ni­ties until a man­age­ment team was recruited. Jim served on the Boards of Direc­tors of Avail Net­works and Handy­Lab, and as an observer for Alfa­light, Ardesta, TherOx and Xtera Communications.

Prior to his ven­ture cap­i­tal posi­tions, Jim had nine years oper­at­ing expe­ri­ence both domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally. In these roles, he wore many func­tional hats: mar­ket­ing, engi­neer­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment and operations.

Jim cur­rently serves on the Boards of Direc­tors of His­toSon­ics, Incept BioSys­tems, the Michi­gan Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion, and is Chair­man of Tis­sue Regen­er­a­tion Sys­tems. Jim led the firm’s highly suc­cess­ful invest­ment in LenSx Lasers, which was acquired by Alcon in 2010. He is on the Board of Advi­sors to the Frankel Com­mer­cial­iza­tion Fund, The Med­ical Inno­va­tions Cen­ter, Tech Arb, and Huron River Ventures.

Steven Almany — BioStar Ven­tures

Dr. Steven Almany is a part­ner with Biostar­Ven­tures (www.biostarventures.com) a Michi­gan based ven­ture firm engaged in the devel­op­ment of med­ical devices. He is vice-chief of car­di­ol­ogy at William Beau­mont Hos­pi­tals and is board cer­ti­fied in inter­nal med­i­cine, car­di­ol­ogy, and inter­ven­tional car­di­ol­ogy. He holds sev­eral patents in the field of car­dio­vas­cu­lar med­i­cine. He has authored over 69 arti­cles and book chap­ters in the field of car­dio­vas­cu­lar medicine.

Mostafa Analoui – The Liv­ingston Group

Mostafa Analoui, Ph.D., is Head of Health­care and Life Sci­ences at The Liv­ingston Group (New York, NY). Pre­vi­ously he was the Senior Direc­tor at Pfizer Global Research and Devel­op­ment. Dr. Analoui is actively involved in invest­ment, man­age­ment and scientific/business devel­op­ment of nan­otech­nol­ogy, drug discovery/development, diag­nos­tic imag­ing, and global strategies.

While at Pfizer, he was the Site Head for Global Clin­i­cal Tech­nol­ogy in Gro­ton and New Lon­don, a divi­sion focus­ing on emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies for devel­op­ment and val­i­da­tion of bio­mark­ers and diag­nos­tics for drug devel­op­ment. Prior to join­ing Pfizer, Dr. Analoui was the Direc­tor of Oral and Max­illo­fa­cial Imag­ing Research, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Radi­ol­ogy at Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity, and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and Elec­tri­cal & Comp Engi­neer­ing at Pur­due Uni­ver­sity. He was also Pres­i­dent and CEO of Ther­a­met­ric Tech­nol­ogy Inc. He has received his Ph.D. from Pur­due Uni­ver­sity, fol­lowed by Post-Doctoral Fel­low­ship at IBM TJ Wat­son Research Cen­ter in NY.  In addi­tion to indus­try lead­er­ship in bio­med­ical and tech­nol­ogy fields, he con­sults and lec­tures in US, Europe and Asia. He has also served on var­i­ous sci­en­tific, reg­u­la­tory, and busi­ness advi­sory com­mit­tees and boards, includ­ing NIH, NSF, PhRMA, NASA, and OECD. Dr. Analoui has authored over 130 pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing jour­nal arti­cles, book chap­ters and tech­ni­cal reports.  He is senior mem­ber of IEEE, SPIE, and RSNA.

Ananth Anan­tha­sub­ra­ma­niam — DTE Energy

Ananth Anan­tha­sub­ra­ma­niam joined DTE Energy in 1995, and leads DTE Energy Venture’s invest­ments. He has been on the board as a direc­tor or an observer of a num­ber of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. Prior to join­ing DTE Energy, Ananth was a man­age­ment con­sul­tant with Booz Allen Hamil­ton and EDS. Ananth has a B.S. in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from IIT Madras, an M.S. in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Florida, and an M.B.A. from the Kel­logg School of Man­age­ment at North­west­ern University.

Mark Ariz­mendi – North­west­ern Cap­i­tal Partners

Mark Ariz­mendi founded North­west­ern Cap­i­tal Part­ners, LLC in 2001.  Mark has served as a board mem­ber of sev­eral client firms in the health-care and real estate indus­tries. Cur­rently, he is act­ing as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for HealthCure, LLC, one of North­west­ern Capital’s port­fo­lio com­pa­nies.  Prior to 2001, Mark started and devel­oped a real estate and con­struc­tion firm.  He attended the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia as an Eco­nom­ics major and Cal­i­for­nia Merit Scholar, and received an MBA from Queens Uni­ver­sity (McColl School of Busi­ness) and attended a year-long exec­u­tive pro­gram at the Kel­logg Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment at North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity.  Mark is involved with the Michi­gan Twenty First Cen­tury Jobs Fund and spoke at the 2010 Mich­Bio con­fer­ence. Mark serves on sev­eral non-profit boards, includ­ing the Leukemia Lym­phoma Soci­ety, the USC Board of Ambas­sadors, the Meck­len­burg Area Catholic Schools Foun­da­tion, and is active with Girls on the Run-Chicago. In his time away from NCP, Mark enjoys surf­ing, swim­ming, read­ing, and enjoy­ing active fam­ily pur­suits in Idaho, North Car­olina, and the Mid­west.

Lind­say Aspe­gren — North Coast Tech­nol­ogy Investors

Lind­say Aspe­gren is a co-founder and gen­eral part­ner of North Coast Tech­nol­ogy Investors, LP, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm which was founded in 1999 with $135 mil­lion in cap­i­tal under man­age­ment. Mr. Aspe­gren is an active founder and investor in early stage com­pa­nies includ­ing Chro­matic Research, Inc., Virtela Tech­nol­ogy Ser­vices, Inc., Gema Diag­nos­tics, Inc. and Ful­crum Com­pos­ites, Inc., among oth­ers. Mr. Aspe­gren is a grad­u­ate of Yale Uni­ver­sity and the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics where he earned a B.A. in Eco­nomic His­tory. He received his M.B.A. from the Har­vard Busi­ness School.

Jeff Barry — Ply­mouth Ventures

Jeff is a part­ner with Ply­mouth Man­age­ment Com­pany (PMC) the man­ager for Ply­mouth Ven­ture Part­ners I and II. He is involved in the man­age­ment of both funds. His duties include sourc­ing, eval­u­at­ing and nego­ti­at­ing deals; as well as mon­i­tor­ing and adding value to the cur­rent port­fo­lio.  Prior to his work with PMC, Jeff was a Senior Econ­o­mist at the Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (OPIC) in Wash­ing­ton, DC where he was respon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing financ­ing pro­pos­als from small– and medium-sized busi­nesses, as well as For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and deter­min­ing suit­abil­ity of the trans­ac­tions. OPIC func­tions as a com­mer­cial bank, financ­ing high-risk pri­vate invest­ment in emerg­ing mar­kets. Jeff also man­aged the down­stream mon­i­tor­ing of OPIC investments.

Jeff began his career as an Inter­na­tional Finance Con­sul­tant, spend­ing ten years with Coop­ers & Lybrand/ Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers and Stone & Web­ster Man­age­ment Con­sul­tants, where he man­aged and actively par­tic­i­pated in projects involv­ing asset sales and sell-side pri­va­ti­za­tion trans­ac­tions in Latin Amer­i­can, Africa, and Asia, in sec­tors rang­ing from cof­fee farms to elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion to cel­lu­lar tele­phony. Jeff holds an MBA in Finance from Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­sity and a BA from Trin­ity Col­lege in Economics.

Josh Beebe – MK Capital

Josh is a Direc­tor at MK Cap­i­tal, oper­at­ing out of MK’s Ann Arbor, Michi­gan office. Josh leads the firm’s health­care tech­nol­ogy invest­ment prac­tice and also con­tributes addi­tional exper­tise in the broader enter­prise soft­ware cat­e­gory. Prior to join­ing MK Cap­i­tal, Josh served as a Part­ner and Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer with Arbor Part­ners, an Ann Arbor, Michi­gan based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm focused on early-stage enter­prise soft­ware oppor­tu­ni­ties. He also has prior expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing merg­ers and acqui­si­tions trans­ac­tions in the health­care ser­vices indus­try, and also pre­vi­ously worked as an equity ana­lyst cov­er­ing var­i­ous com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the tech­nol­ogy, man­u­fac­tur­ing and energy sec­tors. Josh cur­rently sits on the board of direc­tors of Junc­tion Solu­tions, CMS Tech­nolo­gies, and Bulbs.com. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from Hills­dale Col­lege and a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Jeff Bocan — Beringea

Jeff Bocan is a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Beringea, LLC, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm based in Lon­don and Farm­ing­ton Hills, Michi­gan. He is respon­si­ble for invest­ment sourc­ing, analy­sis, deal exe­cu­tion and port­fo­lio man­age­ment. He has worked in both the US and the UK on a num­ber of Beringea’s funds over the last 10 years, his­tor­i­cally with a focus on tech­nol­ogy, media and clean­tech.  At present, Jeff’s pri­mary focus is on Beringea’s Invest­Michi­gan Fund — a $105MM ven­ture fund ded­i­cated to com­pa­nies that are based in, or that set up sub­stan­tial oper­a­tions in the state of Michi­gan. Jeff serves as a board direc­tor for the fol­low­ing Beringea port­fo­lio com­pa­nies: Sakti3, mophie, ReCel­lu­lar, Shout! Fac­tory, Relume Tech­nolo­gies, Livio Radio, and gloStream.

Prior to join­ing Beringea, Jeff was an Asso­ciate at early-stage tech­nol­ogy VC firm Saf­fron Hill Ven­tures in Lon­don. He has also worked for the bev­er­age com­pany, Hon­est Tea; and the Sierra Club, focus­ing on pol­lu­tion issues. Jeff is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame (BA), and received an MBA from Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia, Dar­den Busi­ness School.

Hugo Braun — North Coast Tech­nol­ogy Investors

Hugo has been an active ven­ture cap­i­tal investor in the Mid­west and Cal­i­for­nia since 1987. Hugo has eval­u­ated hun­dreds of invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties per year, acted as lead investor in both equity and sub­or­di­nated debt invest­ments, and has served on the boards of direc­tors of pub­lic and pri­vate companies.

Prior to found­ing North Coast, Hugo was a part­ner in Access Ven­tures, a Michi­gan based invest­ment firm with over $30 mil­lion under man­age­ment. In addi­tion, Hugo has co-managed BankAmer­ica Ven­ture Capital’s $100 mil­lion ven­ture port­fo­lio. Invest­ments included com­puter hard­ware and soft­ware, semi­con­duc­tors, med­ical devices, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and retail.

Tim Brum­baugh – Gen­eral Motors Ventures

Tim Brum­baugh was named Deputy Direc­tor, Gen­eral Motors Ven­tures LLC effec­tive Octo­ber 1, 2010. Prior to this appoint­ment, Tim worked in GE Equity, the pri­vate equity arm of GE Cap­i­tal in Chicago, Illi­nois since August 2004. His indus­try focus included oil and gas, avi­a­tion, and trans­porta­tion. Tim joined GE in 2002 through the Finan­cial Man­age­ment Pro­gram with GE Asset Man­age­ment in Con­necti­cut, where he had posi­tions in the oper­a­tions, fixed income, pub­lic equity, and pri­vate equity groups.
Tim received a mas­ter in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion with dis­tinc­tion from North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity, Kel­logg School of Man­age­ment in 2010 and earned his bach­e­lor of arts in finance from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity in 2002

Neil Cameron — Emer­ald Tech­nol­ogy Ventures

Based in Emerald’s Toronto office, Neil Cameron’s sec­tor exper­tise is in the field of advanced mate­ri­als and processes. In the Emer­ald Port­fo­lio, Neil serves as a Board Observer for Ter­raLUX, is on the tech­ni­cal advi­sory board of SDC Mate­ri­als and sup­ports Emer­ald & man­age­ment at ARXX, Xun­light and Azzurro in var­i­ous Board com­mit­tees. Prior to join­ing Emer­ald in 2006, Neil was a project leader and staffsci­en­tist with the National Research Coun­cil of Canada (Indus­trial­Ma­te­ri­als Insti­tute), was a Research Asso­ciate at McGill Uni­ver­sity and has con­sulted on tech­ni­cal and IP issues. Recent projects have includ­ed­work in nan­otech­nol­ogy, high-fidelity micro– & nanofab­ri­ca­tion, poly­mer­syn­the­sis & appli­ca­tions, inter­fa­cial inter­ac­tions and he is the co-inventor of a patented water-purification resin. Neil holds a Doc­tor­ate in Chem­istry from McGill Uni­ver­sity and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry from the Uni­ver­sity of King’s College(Dalhousie University).

Car­olyn Cassin – Belle Capital

Ms Cassin is a co-founder & co-Manager of , BELLE Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, LLC, the Gen­eral Part­ner. Ms. Cassin is the pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Michi­gan Women’s Foun­da­tion, a Michi­gan non-profit cor­po­ra­tion, which has been cham­pi­oning the causes of social jus­tice for women and girls through pub­lic and pri­vate edu­ca­tion, phil­an­thropy and advo­cacy for over 20 years. In addi­tion, she is pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of National Hos­pice Work Group, a CEO think tank for exec­u­tives of the largest Hos­pices in the US. Prior to join­ing the Michi­gan Women’s Foun­da­tion, Ms. Cassin was a nation­ally rec­og­nized health­care exec­u­tive and turn­around spe­cial­ist for almost 30 years. In 1988, after two years as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Hos­pice of South­east­ern Michi­gan, she retired their debt and main­tained prof­itabil­ity through­out her tenure, grow­ing the com­pany over 10 years to over $50 mil­lion in rev­enues and 1,000 employ­ees, with sev­en­teen sites which ulti­mately earned Hos­pice of Michi­gan the award of “Best Man­aged Non Profit” by Crain’s Detroit. In 1998 she was recruited to Vis­taCare, a ven­ture cap­i­tal backed national hos­pice com­pany, based in Phoenix, Ari­zona. As VistaCare’s Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, Ms. Cassin merged 48 sites into one com­pany and built the com­pany from $3 mil­lion in rev­enues to $100 mil­lion and pos­i­tive EBITDA. Most recently, Ms. Cassin served as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Con­tin­uum Health Partner’s New York City Hos­pice pro­gram, build­ing it into the largest hos­pice in New York City with rev­enues of over $50 mil­lion. Ms. Cassin has received numer­ous national awards from the first National Hos­pice Organization’s Heart of Hos­pice Award, to the Founders Award from that same orga­ni­za­tion. She has served as Pres­i­dent of the National Hos­pice and Pal­lia­tive Care Orga­ni­za­tion and on its Board. Most recently she was named a “Woman to Watch” by Crain’s Detroit Mag­a­zine in 2009.

Eliz­a­beth Charnock — Cataphora

Eliz­a­beth founded Cat­aphora and has led it from con­cept to suc­cess­ful prof­itabil­ity and to a suc­cess­ful pre-IPO divesti­ture that is unprece­dented in the his­tory of boot­strapped Sil­i­con Val­ley soft­ware star­tups. To do this, she has drawn on her prior expe­ri­ence as a CEO and on her exten­sive knowl­edge of infor­ma­tion retrieval tech­nol­ogy and busi­ness. She was CEO and founder of Troba, an indus­try lead­ing Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment soft­ware com­pany which she sold in 2001. Eliz­a­beth has sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in engi­neer­ing man­age­ment, man­age­ment con­sult­ing, and restart man­age­ment at such com­pa­nies as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsys­tems. Eliz­a­beth holds a BS in The­o­ret­i­cal Math­e­mat­ics from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Hon­ors Pro­gram.

John Chen — Phoenix Ven­ture Partners

Dr. John Chen is a co-founder and Gen­eral Part­ner of Phoenix Ven­ture Part­ners (PVP), a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm exclu­sively focused on invest­ing in break­through Advanced Mate­r­ial com­pa­nies. Pre­vi­ously, Dr. Chen was a Kauff­man Fel­low at Bat­tery Ven­tures, where he for­mu­lated the firm’s invest­ment strat­egy in Advanced Mate­ri­als and led and man­aged invest­ments in Advanced Mate­ri­als com­pa­nies that had appli­ca­tions in the Clean­tech and IT indus­tries. His invest­ments at Bat­tery Ven­tures included Imara Cor­po­ra­tion, Nanocon­duc­tion (acquired), and Stony­brook Purifi­ca­tion.  John also gained valu­able expe­ri­ence in early-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal as an intern with Draper Fisher Jurvet­son New Eng­land, and Nav­i­ga­tor Tech­nol­ogy Ven­tures dur­ing his MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Prior to becom­ing a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, John held key roles in busi­ness, tech­nol­ogy, and prod­uct devel­op­ment at ven­ture backed star­tups and lead­ing cor­po­ra­tions in the Advanced Mate­ri­als sec­tor includ­ing Sur­face Logix, EM Logix, Lumi­nus Devices, Pass­port Sys­tems, Ray­chem Cor­po­ra­tion, and Tyco Elec­tron­ics. He is the holder of three US patents and earned his BS, MBA, and PhD from MIT.

Paul Cum­mings — Honda Strate­gic Venturing

Paul Cum­mings is a Prin­ci­pal of Honda Strate­gic Ven­tur­ing (HSV), the cor­po­rate ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of Honda Motor Cor­po­ra­tion based in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia. HSV seeks invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in tech­nol­ogy ven­ture com­pa­nies to estab­lish the strate­gic foun­da­tion for col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship both to excel Honda’s inno­v­a­tive R&D and to help tech­nol­ogy ven­ture com­pa­nies suc­ceed in Honda’s prod­uct mar­kets. Prior to join­ing Honda, Paul held var­i­ous man­age­ment posi­tions with auto­mo­tive tier 1 sup­plier Del­phi; includ­ing, posi­tions in merg­ers and acqui­si­tions, busi­ness devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions for a Japan­ese part­nered joint ven­ture. Paul also worked for Accen­ture in the Syd­ney, Aus­tralia office with the Strat­egy Con­sult­ing Prac­tice. Paul holds an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, and BA from Michi­gan State University.

William de Groot – Boston Mil­len­nia Partners

Mr. de Groot joined Boston Mil­len­nia Part­ners in August of 2008. He has worked on inter­na­tional, fed­eral and state pub­lic pol­icy issues for health­care com­pa­nies includ­ing Glax­o­SmithK­line, Novar­tis and Mil­len­nium Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Mr. de Groot has had an exten­sive career in the pub­lic pol­icy arena work­ing both inside and out­side of the gov­ern­ment sec­tor. This work was focused on dri­ving legislation/regulation that allowed for a more stream­lined deliv­ery of prod­ucts, ser­vices and over­all health­care to patients. Mr. de Groot also brings a com­pre­hen­sive net­work of cor­po­rate rela­tion­ships from both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. He has been active in a vari­ety of busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Mass­a­chu­setts Biotech­nol­ogy Coun­cil, the New Eng­land Coun­cil, the Greater Philadel­phia Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Boston Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Health­care Insti­tute of New Jer­sey, the St. Louis Regional Cham­ber and Growth Asso­ci­a­tion, the Biotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (BIO) and the Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Researcher and Man­u­fac­tures of Amer­ica (PHRMA). Mr. de Groot assists the Boston Mil­len­nia Part­ners invest­ment pro­fes­sion­als in all aspects of port­fo­lio com­pany selec­tion, ongo­ing strat­egy and the exe­cu­tion of that strat­egy. Mr. de Groot is a grad­u­ate of La Salle Uni­ver­sity in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia and holds an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Grad­u­ate School of Business.

Brian Fan — Masdar

Brian Fan is a clean­tech and tech­nol­ogy pro­fes­sional with diver­si­fied strat­egy, invest­ment, deal-making and oper­at­ing expe­ri­ence. As the Head of Research and Tech­nol­ogy Roadmap for Mas­dar City, Brian devel­oped Mas­dar City’s tech­nol­ogy strat­egy and roadmap, which focuses on six key areas: smart grid and build­ing automa­tion, advanced cool­ing, light­ing, sus­tain­able mate­ri­als, energy man­age­ment soft­ware, and elec­tric mobil­ity. Brian was the tech­nol­ogy lead for Masdar’s part­ner­ship nego­ti­a­tions with Siemens (for smart grid and smart build­ings), Mit­subishi Heavy Indus­tries (for elec­tric trans­porta­tion sys­tems), and C3 (for energy man­age­ment soft­ware), and is actively involved in the imple­men­ta­tion and man­age­ment of these part­ner­ships, as well as addi­tional part­ner­ships under negotiation.

Before join­ing Mas­dar, Brian was Head of Research for The Clean­tech Group, a advi­sory, research and events firm spe­cial­iz­ing in clean­tech invest­ment and pol­icy trends. Rec­og­nized as one of the world’s lead­ing author­i­ties on clean­tech star­tups and gov­ern­ment poli­cies on renew­able energy, Brian was quoted in over 75 pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal, New York Times, Finan­cial Times and Busi­ness Week.

Amit Garg – Nor­west Ven­ture Partners

Amit focuses on early to late stage ven­ture invest­ments across a wide range of sec­tors at NVP, with an empha­sis on con­sumer Inter­net. Prior to join­ing NVP, Amit spent four years at Google, where he was an asso­ciate prod­uct man­ager and a busi­ness ana­lyst. As a prod­uct man­ager, he con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of Google Images, helped launch Google’s Brazil offices and inter­na­tion­al­ized sev­eral prod­ucts. In his role as a busi­ness ana­lyst, Amit sup­plied the busi­ness and sales teams with crit­i­cal ana­lyt­ics to make informed busi­ness and sales decisions.

Amit was born and raised in Brazil and has lived through­out India and the U.S. He is flu­ent in Por­tuguese and Hindi and advanced in Span­ish and Urdu. Since 2000, Amit has led Hos­pi­tal for Hope (hospitalforhope.org), a non-profit focused on devel­op­ing infra­struc­ture in rural India. He has also scaled Mt Kil­i­man­jaro in Africa, is on the Board of “Founders Hookup,” con­nect­ing busi­ness and tech­nol­ogy indi­vid­u­als, and is a fre­quent speaker on star­tups, ven­ture cap­i­tal, and global trends. Amit holds an MBA from Har­vard Busi­ness School as well as a mas­ter of sci­ence degree in bio­med­ical infor­mat­ics and a bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree in com­puter sci­ence (major) and biol­ogy (minor) from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity.

Matthew Gar­ratt — Bat­tery Ventures

Matthew joined Bat­tery in 2008 and focuses on clean tech­nol­ogy, advanced mate­ri­als and indus­trial tech­nolo­gies. He cur­rently works with Clean Urban Energy, First­Fuel Soft­ware, Sky­Foundry and Mod­u­lar Wind Energy in Battery’s port­fo­lio. Prior to Bat­tery, he was Vice Pres­i­dent of Ply­mouth Ven­tures, where he devel­oped a clean­tech focus for the fund. He has also worked for GE in their Renew­able Energy group where he helped to set strat­egy for the wind and solar mar­kets, and also spent time in Africa mon­i­tor­ing clean energy invest­ments for E+Co, a pub­lic pur­pose invest­ment company.

Matthew has also worked for Alcoa in oper­a­tions and in their cor­po­rate R&D facil­ity where he applied his mate­ri­als exper­tise in the devel­op­ment of new appli­ca­tions rang­ing from next gen­er­a­tion aero­space to con­sumer prod­ucts. Matthew has pub­lished numer­ous tech­ni­cal papers in peer-reviewed mate­ri­als sci­ence jour­nals and inter­na­tional con­fer­ences. He has a BS from Pur­due Uni­ver­sity and MS from the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­sity, both in Mate­ri­als Engi­neer­ing. At Penn­syl­va­nia State he holds a patent for his research in advanced pro­cess­ing of alu­minum for aero­space appli­ca­tions. He also holds an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, where he helped to develop a stu­dent run clean­tech fund.

Keith Gillard — Pan­gaea Ventures

Keith Gillard is Gen­eral Part­ner at Pan­gaea Ven­tures, an indus­try leader in early stage advanced mate­ri­als invest­ment. Keith has twenty years’ expe­ri­ence with the past ten years focused on clean­tech and advanced mate­ri­als. From 2006–2010, Keith served as Pres­i­dent of BASF Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Amer­ica, estab­lish­ing the Sil­i­con Val­ley office and lead­ing sev­eral invest­ments. From 2001–2006, Keith was with Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion and respon­si­ble for invest­ment activ­i­ties in Canada, with a focus on clean­tech. Prior to join­ing Mit­subishi, Keith began his career in invest­ment bank­ing and spent the late ‘90’s as an entrepreneur.

Keith is a mem­ber of the C100, Cal­i­forn­ian Con­sor­tium on Green Chem­istry and the Syn­thetic Biol­ogy Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion.  He is the co-author of “Inside the Minds: Energy Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Best Prac­tices”, pub­lished in 2008 by Aspa­tore Books.  Out­side of work, he is the high-energy father of two, an avid cyclist and a Cana­dian Inde­pen­dent Music Award winner.

Patti Glaza – Arse­nal Ven­ture Partners

Patti Glaza is a Prin­ci­pal at Arse­nal Ven­ture Part­ners and bal­ances her time between invest­ment iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and eval­u­a­tion, port­fo­lio devel­op­ment, and help­ing sup­port the entre­pre­neur­ial com­mu­nity. She has spent over twenty years ded­i­cated to the devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of advanced tech­nolo­gies. Patti cur­rently sits on boards for the Clean Coali­tion, The Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan WIMS Cen­ter, and CTSI, where she chairs the organization’s annual defense and util­ity tech­nol­ogy chal­lenges. Prior to join­ing AVP, Patti served as a Founder and the Exec­u­tive Director/CEO of the Clean Tech­nol­ogy and Sus­tain­able Indus­tries Orga­ni­za­tion (CTSI). She worked closely with gov­ern­ment agen­cies includ­ing the Depart­ment of Defense and Depart­ment of Energy/ARPA-E, multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions and util­i­ties, and start-ups to iden­tify and pro­mote leading-edge tech­nol­ogy solu­tions in energy, water, and over­all sus­tain­abil­ity. After sev­eral start-ups, Patti lead Small Times, a global media group focused on micro, MEMS, and nan­otech­nol­ogy com­mer­cial­iza­tion. She started off her career as an IT/operations con­sul­tant and man­ager at Accen­ture. Patti is a grad­u­ate of Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity with a BA in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions and Eco­nom­ics, and has her MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, Ann Arbor. In addi­tion to jug­gling ‘Go Green’ and ‘Go Blue’, Patti likes to run and do any sporty activ­ity (prefer­ably some­place warm) that helps her keep up with her hus­band and two spir­ited daughters.

Michael God­win — Res­o­nant Ven­ture Partners

Michael God­win is Co-founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Res­o­nant Ven­ture Part­ners, an Ann Arbor-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm focused on early stage invest­ing in cloud infra­struc­ture and IT related com­pa­nies. Michael has worked with venture-backed star­tups in the soft­ware, con­sult­ing, wire­less and online com­merce indus­tries since 1996. He has worked with many notable firms includ­ing: AT&T, Excite, Inde­pen­dent Online Dis­tri­b­u­tion Alliance, Menlo Inno­va­tions, WebCrawler, and Zengine/MCSI. Michael is a for­mer man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Wolver­ine Ven­ture Fund’s stu­dent advi­sory board at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, where he com­pleted his MBA. Michael cur­rently serves on the board of direc­tors of Accio Energy and the Moo Duk Mar­tial Arts Institute.

John Hater – GM Ventures

John Hater was named Invest­ment Man­ager, Gen­eral Motors Ven­tures LLC effec­tive May 1, 2011.  John joined Gen­eral Motors in 2007 and has held posi­tions in Employ­ment Cost Analy­sis, Pow­er­train Finance, Cor­po­rate Restruc­tur­ing, and New Busi­ness Devel­op­ment prior to his appoint­ment to GM Ven­tures. In these roles he has sup­ported union nego­ti­a­tions, GM’s bank­ruptcy pro­ceed­ings, and the divesti­ture of Saab AB, among other projects.

Prior to join­ing GM, John worked as a Due Dili­gence Ana­lyst at Ray­mond James and Asso­ciates pro­vid­ing qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis of pro­fes­sional money man­agers for the Asset Man­age­ment Ser­vices and Ray­mond James Con­sult­ing Ser­vices groups.

John received a mas­ter of busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion from Pur­due Uni­ver­sity in 2007 and bach­e­lor of sci­ence degrees in finance and man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tems from Florida State Uni­ver­sity in 2003.

Sandeep Jain – Abu Dhabi National Energy Com­pany (TAQA)

Sandeep has about 15 years of expe­ri­ence in the busi­ness devel­op­ment and finance areas in the energy indus­try. He is cur­rently the Head of Renew­able Energy for his com­pany, the Abu Dhabi National Energy Com­pany, and respon­si­ble for build­ing an inter­na­tional port­fo­lio of assets of about $ 2.0 bil­lion value over the next 5 years. Prior to this he has man­aged busi­ness devel­op­ment in North Amer­ica and India for his com­pany. Sandeep also served on the Board of Direc­tors and as asset man­ager for a 250 MW power plant in India with respon­si­bil­ity for all key com­mer­cial decisions.

In the past, he has also been involved in new project devel­op­ment as well as in acqui­si­tion and divesti­ture of oper­a­tional assets. He helped his pre­vi­ous com­pany, CMS Energy, sell a cou­ple gas pipelines in Aus­tralia and then helped them grow by acquir­ing a gas-fired power plant in Michi­gan. He was also involved in the green-field devel­op­ment of a 1600 MW coal-fired power plant in North­ern Illi­nois. He started his career as an invest­ment banker project financ­ing the early power, tele­com and other infra­struc­ture projects in India.

Dan Janiak – DFJ Mercury

Dan Janiak is an Asso­ciate with DFJ Mer­cury, where he focuses on devel­op­ing and orig­i­nat­ing science-based invest­ment themes and startup oppor­tu­ni­ties. Prior to DFJ Mer­cury, Dan was an Asso­ciate in the Phys­i­cal and Bio­log­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies prac­tice at In-Q-Tel, the strate­gic ven­ture invest­ment arm of the U.S. Intel­li­gence Com­mu­nity. While at In-Q-Tel, Dan was respon­si­ble for the man­age­ment and over­sight of tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment pro­grams in numer­ous In-Q-Tel port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. In addi­tion, he was respon­si­ble for lead­ing tech­ni­cal due dili­gence on all poten­tial invest­ment can­di­dates in the advanced mate­ri­als space. Dan received his BS and PhD in Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land. While at Mary­land, Dan was a Future Fac­ulty Fel­low and held the Robert E. Fis­chell Fel­low­ship in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, con­duct­ing research in the design, syn­the­sis and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of arti­fi­cial anti­bod­ies with appli­ca­tions in med­ical diag­nos­tics and bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal purifi­ca­tion.

Wendy Jar­chow — Chrysalis Ven­tures

Wendy joined Chrysalis as Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment – Upper Mid­west in March 2010.  Based in Cleve­land, Ohio, she sup­ports Chrysalis’ busi­ness devel­op­ment efforts through­out Ohio, Michi­gan and Pennsylvania.

Prior to Chrysalis, Wendy spent 14 years in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try in both Chicago and Cleve­land.  Most recently, she founded a con­sult­ing prac­tice in Chicago, to assist entre­pre­neurs with expand­ing their busi­nesses with strate­gic plan­ning, mar­ket­ing, sales and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ini­tia­tives.  Pre­vi­ously, she worked for ABN AMRO Bank/LaSalle Bank in Chicago as a mar­ket­ing and eso­lu­tions offi­cer in their for­eign exchange and deriv­a­tives group, and for Ohio-based C&T Access Ven­tures as an invest­ment asso­ciate. Wendy cur­rently serves on both the Pitts­burgh Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion (PVCA) and the Ohio Ven­ture Asso­ci­a­tion (OVA) Board of Trustees.

Abdul­ Jar­rar — Intel

Abdul Jar­rar is one of Intel’s lead­ing emerg­ing mar­kets experts. A 14-year vet­eran of the com­pany he cur­rently directs the corporation’s Emerg­ing Mar­kets Prod­uct strate­gies aimed at accel­er­at­ing Intel’s growth in those mar­kets. Pre­vi­ously he served as Chief of Staff to the Chair­man of the Board Dr. Craig Bar­rett where he was respon­si­ble for direct­ing the Chairman’s engage­ments world­wide as well as play­ing a piv­otal role in defin­ing and steer­ing Intel’s growth strate­gies. Over the past 17 years, Abdul’s career spanned a vari­ety of tech­ni­cal, mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment roles. He lead Intel’s Strate­gic Growth Office in Europe, Mid­dle East, and Africa as well as the Cor­po­rate Affairs Group for the Mid­dle East, Turkey and Africa where he was respon­si­ble for Intel’s engage­ments with gov­ern­ments in the region, pol­icy advo­cacy for tech­nol­ogy access, broad­band deploy­ment, and edu­ca­tion pro­grams. While based in Dubai from 2004 to 2007, Abdul played a piv­otal role in the expan­sion of Intel’s invest­ments in the region includ­ing the cre­ation of a $50M fund with focus on star­tups in the region. He also rep­re­sented the ICT indus­try on the board of the mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar UAE ICT R&D Fund. Prior to join­ing Intel, Abdul held a range of posi­tions with Amer­i­can Mega­trends Inc., where he estab­lished the company’s oper­a­tions in Taiwan.

Kef Kas­din — Bat­telle Ventures

As a gen­eral part­ner of Bat­telle Ven­tures and Inno­va­tion Val­ley Part­ners, Kef focuses on invest­ments in clean­tech and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, work­ing closely on iden­ti­fy­ing promis­ing tech­nolo­gies, projects and syn­er­gies with the National Lab­o­ra­to­ries that sole lim­ited part­ner Bat­telle Memo­r­ial Insti­tute man­ages or co-manages for the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy around the country.

Kef cur­rently serves on the Boards of Direc­tors of Aldis, Inc.; Ampulse Corp.; Pla­nar Energy; and Rajant Corp. She also is CEO of Pro­terro, Inc. Active in the ven­ture com­mu­nity, she sits on the Boards of Direc­tors of the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Seed and Ven­ture Funds, and of Ben Franklin Tech­nol­ogy Part­ners of South­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia. She also is a coau­thor of Inside the Minds: Green Ven­ture Cap­i­tal (Aspa­tore Books, Nov. 1, 2009).

Kef has been involved in devel­op­ing and exe­cut­ing strat­egy for high-technology com­pa­nies for more than 20 years, includ­ing Sarnoff Corp. and 3Com Corp., where she was the company’s first Exec­u­tive in Res­i­dence, Office of the Chair­man. She became a technology-startup con­sul­tant in the late 1990s, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist in 2000 and a found­ing mem­ber of the man­age­ment team form­ing Bat­telle Ven­tures in 2003. Kef holds a B.S.E degree in oper­a­tions research from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and an MBA from the Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, Stan­ford University.

Dev Khare — Venrock

Dev Khare is Vice Pres­i­dent at Ven­rock, a pre­mier ven­ture cap­i­tal firm with offices in Palo Alto, New York and Boston.  Dev focuses on soft­ware, Inter­net and mobile invest­ments.  He sits on the boards of Appia, Lavante, SlideShare and Turn­here and sup­ports Venrock’s invest­ments in Aria Sys­tems, Bill­Float and Red­bea­con.  Pre­vi­ous to Ven­rock, Dev co-founded Covigo, a mobile appli­ca­tion server com­pany acquired by Sym­bol Tech­nolo­gies, and worked in enter­prise soft­ware, pri­vate equity and cor­po­rate finance.  Dev blogs at http://www.nextwala.com and is on Twit­ter @dkhare.

Peter Klein­henz — CID Capital

Peter Klein­henz is a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of CID Cap­i­tal. He has been actively involved in technology-based busi­nesses as an entre­pre­neur, con­sul­tant, and investor for vir­tu­ally all of his pro­fes­sional career and has pro­vided lead­er­ship for new ven­ture for­ma­tion in the life sci­ences sec­tor for over 20 years. Peter leads the firm’s invest­ments in life sciences.

Peter has been active in eco­nomic devel­op­ment issues on the local and state level for over 20 years and cur­rently serves on the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee and as Trea­surer of BioOhio, Ohio’s life sci­ence ini­tia­tive, and as a mem­ber of BioOhio’s Cen­tral Ohio regional efforts. He is a found­ing mem­ber of the Mid­west Health­care Invest­ment Net­work and serves as a mem­ber of MHIN’s Board of Direc­tors. He is chair­man of MHIN’s annual MidAmer­ica Health­care Ven­ture Forum. He is on the Advi­sory Board for the Bio­Gen­er­a­tor at the Nidus Cen­ter in St. Louis, Mis­souri and the Colum­bus Tech­nol­ogy council’s Tech­Colum­bus pro­gram, Columbus, OH.

Rajesh Kothari — Seneca Partners

Raj Kothari draws on over two decade of expe­ri­ence as an investor, a finan­cial advi­sor, and an entre­pre­neur.  He is a co-founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Seneca Part­ners, a pri­vate invest­ment and invest­ment bank­ing firm where he assists com­pa­nies with merg­ers, acqui­si­tions, divesti­tures and other cor­po­rate finance activ­i­ties.  In addi­tion, Seneca Part­ners makes are vari­ety of con­trol and non-control invest­ment in com­pa­nies in the busi­ness ser­vice, high value man­u­fac­tur­ing, tech­nol­ogy, and health­care sectors.

Raj co-leads the firm’s invest­ments in emerg­ing health­care com­pa­nies through Seneca Health Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal fund ded­i­cated to emerg­ing health­care com­pa­nies. Prior to found­ing Seneca Part­ners, he was a Direc­tor at Beringea (for­merly GMA Cap­i­tal), a bou­tique investment-banking and ven­ture cap­i­tal firm where he led numer­ous divesti­tures, recap­i­tal­iza­tions, acqui­si­tions and other strate­gic trans­ac­tions for clients in a vari­ety of indus­tries.  In addi­tion, he co-managed the firm’s $70 mil­lion health­care pri­vate equity fund, Invest­Care Part­ners.  Raj has also served as an Invest­ment Offi­cer for ProVen Pri­vate Equity in Lon­don, Eng­land, a ven­ture cap­i­tal affil­i­ate of Beringea. He began his invest­ment career as a money man­ager, most promi­nently for Masco Cor­po­ra­tion where he was respon­si­ble for a port­fo­lio of $130 mil­lion in pen­sion assets.  He left Masco to found Cran­brook Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, a $650 mil­lion money man­age­ment firm, where he was Trea­surer and Direc­tor of Inter­na­tional Investing.

Raj serves on the Board of Pri­or­ity Health, Micro Machine Com­pany, LLC, Med­Bio, Inc., Prov­i­dence Health Foun­da­tion, and the CAP Foun­da­tion as well as a board observer for Crit­i­cal Sig­nal Tech­nolo­gies and Red­Path Inte­grated Pathol­ogy.  He sits on the Invest­ment Com­mit­tee for Automa­tion Alley, Civil Air Patrol, and the Finance Com­mit­tee for Pri­or­ity Health, and St. John Prov­i­dence Health Sys­tem.   Raj was hon­ored as one of Crain’s Detroit Business’s 40 Under 40 hon­orees and is a Lieu­tenant Colonel in the Civil Air Patrol in which he has served for over 30 years. Raj is also an Adjunct Instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame. Mr. Kothari, a CFA, earned a BA and MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Frank Legacki — Fletcher Spaght Ventures

Frank Legacki has over 35 years expe­ri­ence in pri­vate equity and con­sult­ing. Frank works out of Fletcher Spaght Ven­tures satel­lite office in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan. Pre­vi­ously, Frank was Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and a found­ing investor of Rose­bud Solu­tions until its acqui­si­tion by McKesson. Prior to Rose­bud, he worked as Pres­i­dent and CEO of Kaepa, a high per­for­mance ath­letic footwear com­pany that focused on niche ath­letic footwear mar­kets. Frank led the LBO of Kaepa from Wolver­ine World Wide, and sold the com­pany to Umbro. Frank has also held posi­tions as Pres­i­dent of the Andover Con­sult­ing Group, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing at Con­verse, and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of The Strate­gic Con­sult­ing Group of Mar­ket­ing Cor­po­ra­tion of America.

Frank received his BA and MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor, MI. As a for­mer var­sity swim­mer at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, Frank was a five time national cham­pion and cap­tained the 1961 U of M National Cham­pi­onship team. He was inducted into the U of M Ath­letic Hall of Honor in 1995. He is an active mem­ber of the U of M com­mu­nity, serv­ing on the Board of Direc­tors of the University’s Alumni Asso­ci­a­tion and was a pre­vi­ously a board mem­ber of the University’s Urol­ogy Cen­ter, Let­ter­win­ners M Club and Pres­i­dent of the Grey Whales.

Scott Liv­ingston – The Liv­ingston Group

Scott Liv­ingston is a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Axiom Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Inc. (Axiom) and head of the Liv­ingston Group, an invest­ment and cor­po­rate advi­sory group within Axiom focused on nan­otech­nol­ogy. Axiom Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Inc. pro­vides wealth man­age­ment, invest­ment bank­ing, prime bro­ker­age and pri­vate equity ser­vices. Mr. Liv­ingston has been called “sharp and highly con­nected” by the Forbes Wolfe Nan­otech­nol­ogy Report (July 1, 2005) and has been an invited speaker on nan­otech­nol­ogy invest­ment trends at the Har­vard Club, the Nanobusi­ness Alliance, the Cam­bridge Healthtech Insti­tute, Nanotechnology.com, the Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Forum, the Delaware Tech­nol­ogy Park, the Busi­ness Exec­u­tives for National Secu­rity, Hilary Clinton’s Jobs for New York, and has pre­sented to half a dozen state pen­sion lead­ers across the coun­try. Scott is also the cre­ator of the annual Axiom Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment “Liv­ingston Nan­otech­nolgy Con­fer­ence”, one of the largest nan­otech­nol­ogy con­fer­ences of the year.

Pre­vi­ously, Scott has served as a Senior Vice Pres­i­dent – Invest­ment Man­age­ment at Lehman Broth­ers, where he began his nan­otech­nol­ogy focus. Prior to join­ing Lehman Broth­ers in 2000, Scott was a Direc­tor of the Pri­vate Client Group at SG Cowen Secu­ri­ties, and prior to that was at Drexel and Smith Bar­ney. Scott is a SUNY Albany grad­u­ate. He is a board mem­ber of the NanoBusi­ness Alliance and a found­ing board mem­ber of the NY Nanobusi­ness Alliance. Scott sits on the board of the Nanoethics Group and the Dolan DNA Learn­ing Cen­ter at the Cold­spring Har­bor Labs. He is mar­ried with three chil­dren and lives in Long Island, NY.

Nate Low­ery – The Windquest Group

Nate Low­ery is an invest­ment ana­lyst, lead­ing invest­ments in the clean tech­nol­ogy sec­tor for The Windquest Group.  Nate is on the Board of Direc­tors of Pro Renew­ables LLC and is an observer to the Board of Direc­tors of Elec­traTherm, Inc., Ener­getx Com­pos­ites, Inc., and Next Step Liv­ing, Inc.

Nate is cur­rently in the full-time MBA pro­gram at Har­vard Busi­ness School.  He received his under­grad­u­ate degree summa cum laude in Mechan­i­cal and Aero­space Engi­neer­ing from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity.  He is a mem­ber of the national aca­d­e­mic honor soci­ety Phi Beta Kappa, the national engi­neer­ing soci­ety Tau Beta Pi and the sci­en­tific research soci­ety Sigma Xi.

Ken Massey – Life­Line Ventures

Ken­neth D. Massey is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Micro Dose Life Sci­ences, LLC and the asso­ci­ated ven­ture cap­i­tal fund for Life­Line Ven­tures, LLC. He has 26 years of bio­med­ical research expe­ri­ence in aca­d­e­mic and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech are­nas. Prior to join­ing Micro Dose, his served as a Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Devel­op­ment for Pfizer, Inc. and Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, with a joint appoint­ment in Anes­the­si­ol­ogy and Phar­ma­col­ogy, in the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Med­ical School. Massey holds a Bachelor’s of Sci­ence from East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity and a Ph.D. in car­dio­vas­cu­lar patho­phys­i­ol­ogy from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas.

Saj­jad Masud — Har­vard Angels

Saj­jad is an entre­pre­neur and a con­sul­tant and advi­sor to star­tups, as well as an angel investor and mem­ber of the Har­vard Angels group. Saj­jad is pas­sion­ate about work­ing with entre­pre­neurs, and in help­ing and guid­ing them through dif­fer­ent phases of a startup’s growth life­cy­cle. As an exec­u­tive, Saj­jad has over 15 years of mar­ket­ing and strat­egy lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence in the soft­ware, inter­net & technology-enabled ser­vices space. An out-of– the-box thinker with an entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and a well-balanced com­bi­na­tion of deep busi­ness insights, strate­gic think­ing and tech­nol­ogy exper­tise, Saj­jad brings proven lead­er­ship skills in iden­ti­fy­ing a growth oppor­tu­nity and then help­ing and orga­niz­ing high-caliber teams to strate­gize, col­lab­o­rate, and deliver on that oppor­tu­nity. Saj­jad was founder & CEO of Apvi­sion, a soft­ware & ser­vices com­pany pro­vid­ing compliance-enabling busi­ness solu­tions to the finan­cial ser­vices sector.

Jeff Maters – New World Ventures

Jeff is a Senior Asso­ciate at New World Ven­tures, a multi-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal firm based in Chicago.  He joined New World Ven­tures in 2008 and focuses on iden­ti­fy­ing and help­ing build high poten­tial soft­ware and inter­net com­pa­nies.  Jeff cur­rently serves as a board observer at SinglePlatform.

Jeff was pre­vi­ously with UBS Invest­ment Bank’s Mid­west Group, where he advised clients on a broad range of cor­po­rate finance and M&A trans­ac­tions. Prior to UBS, Jeff was with BMV Cap­i­tal, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm focused on early stage tech­nol­ogy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and media com­pa­nies. Prior to BMV, Jeff was with the Lehman Broth­ers Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Fund, an $800 mil­lion ven­ture cap­i­tal fund focused on the com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices sec­tor.  Jeff grad­u­ated with a B.S. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from the Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity and earned his M.B.A. with High Dis­tinc­tion from the Stephen M. Ross School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Bret Maxwell – MK Capital

Bret is a Man­ag­ing Gen­eral Part­ner at MK Cap­i­tal. He is also the Man­ag­ing Gen­eral Part­ner on three of the Pro­duc­tiv­ity Funds total­ing $200 mil­lion in com­mit­ted cap­i­tal. Bret has been a decision-making part­ner in six other fully invested funds, rep­re­sent­ing over $300 mil­lion in com­mit­ted cap­i­tal. Prior to found­ing MK Cap­i­tal, he was the co-Founder of First Analy­sis’ ven­ture cap­i­tal prac­tice in 1985. Bret’s areas of exper­tise include out­sourced busi­ness ser­vices, tele­com and inter­net infra­struc­ture, and energy and power infra­struc­ture. Bret is a grad­u­ate of The McCormick School of Engi­neer­ing at North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity and Kellogg’s Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment. He has served as the Chair­man of the Illi­nois Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion, and is a direc­tor on the board of Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal and on the finance com­mit­tee of the Jew­ish United Fund. He is also Cer­ti­fied Finan­cial Analyst.

Andrew McColm – Early Stage Partners

Andrew leads the Michi­gan office of Early Stage Part­ners, a Mid­west focused ven­ture cap­i­tal fund. His broad and deep indus­try expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of tech­nol­ogy enables him to cover all of ESP’s invest­ment sectors.

Andrew joined Early Stage Part­ners as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in Octo­ber 2009, coin­ci­dent with the firm’s entry into Michi­gan. Prior to join­ing ESP, Andrew was Asso­ciate Direc­tor — Busi­ness For­ma­tion, for the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Office of Tech­nol­ogy Trans­fer. Dur­ing his tenure at UM, he was involved in the for­ma­tion of over three dozen tech­nol­ogy based com­pa­nies across a range of indus­tries from soft­ware and mate­ri­als to med­ical devices. Andrew also devel­oped a national net­work of ven­ture cap­i­tal investors to review uni­ver­sity oppor­tu­ni­ties. Over the pre­ced­ing twenty years, Andrew was an exec­u­tive or key man­ager in mul­ti­ple inter­na­tional telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions startup com­pa­nies in the United States, U.K, and Brazil.

Paul McCreadie — Arboretum Ventures

Paul McCreadie joined Arbore­tum Ven­tures in 2006 and is respon­si­ble for sourc­ing and lead­ing new invest­ments in promis­ing health­care com­pa­nies. He led Arboretum’s invest­ment into Del­phi­nus Med­ical Tech­nolo­gies and Well­fount Phar­macy and cur­rently serves on the Board of Direc­tors of each com­pany. Paul has also been a board observer at VasoNova (acquired by Tele­flex) and NeoGu­ide. He is the for­mer Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer for CerviLenz, a port­fo­lio com­pany based in Ohio, where he led the re-design of the company’s first com­mer­cial prod­uct from con­cept to launch.

Prior to join­ing Arbore­tum in 2006, Paul worked at Ford Motor Com­pany for eight years, hold­ing man­age­ment posi­tions within new prod­uct devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and busi­ness strat­egy. He was a mem­ber of the Wolver­ine Ven­ture Fund (WVF) while an MBA stu­dent at Michigan’s Ross School of Busi­ness. Paul was the fund’s liai­son with IntraLase, one of the WVF’s most suc­cess­ful invest­ments to date, which was acquired by Amer­i­can Med­ical Optics in 2007. Paul earned a BS and MS in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and an MBA from the Ross School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Ser­gio Mon­salve — Nor­west Ven­ture Partners

Ser­gio brings to NVP more than 16 years of oper­a­tional and invest­ing expe­ri­ence from a wide range of busi­ness and con­sumer tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies. Ser­gio is focused on early and growth equity invest­ments in the busi­ness soft­ware, inter­net and media sec­tors. His cur­rent invest­ments and board seats include BookRenter, Center’d and myYear­book. He is also a board par­tic­i­pant and actively involved with M-Factor and Lending Club.

Ser­gio started his career at Mor­gan Stan­ley where he advised sev­eral pri­vate and pub­lic com­pa­nies on merg­ers and acqui­si­tions. Ser­gio was also a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive at Por­tal Soft­ware (now a part of Ora­cle). Por­tal Soft­ware cre­ated one of the lead­ing enter­prise billing soft­ware plat­forms, had a suc­cess­ful Ini­tial Pub­lic Offer­ing in 1999 with which Ser­gio was involved, and even­tu­ally was suc­cess­fully sold to Ora­cle. Ser­gio was also the co-founder and first sales and mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive at Cymerc, which was a hosted SaaS solu­tion for small and medium busi­nesses. Ser­gio suc­cess­fully raised var­i­ous rounds of ven­ture financ­ing and grew Cymerc from incep­tion to more than $15 mil­lion in revenue.

Pat Morand – South­west Michi­gan First Life Sci­ence Fund

Pat Morand is Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the SWMF Life Sci­ence Fund, head­quar­tered in Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan. The SWMF Life Sci­ence Fund is the nation’s only community-based ven­ture fund. With $65 mil­lion under man­age­ment, Pat is respon­si­ble for sourc­ing all poten­tial invest­ments, lead­ing them through the fund’s strin­gent due dili­gence process and over­see­ing the fund’s port­fo­lio com­pany man­age­ment teams. Prior to join­ing the fund, Pat was a three-time Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer in the bio­log­ics indus­try; Vice Pres­i­dent of Com­mer­cial Oper­a­tions for Gen­e­sis Ther­a­peu­tics; Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Sequitor Med­ical Tech­nolo­gies; and Exec­u­tive in Res­i­dence of the Pitts­burgh Life Sci­ences Green­house, a public/private investor in regional life sci­ences com­pa­nies where he pro­vided exec­u­tive sup­port to over 65 com­pa­nies, rep­re­sent­ing $100 mil­lion of invest­ment and 121 employees.

Thomas Nas­tas – Inno­v­a­tive Ventures

Thomas D. Nas­tas is founder of Inno­v­a­tive Ven­tures Inc (IVI) and one the 1st ven­ture investors in Michi­gan, 1986, with invest­ments includ­ing Neogen (NEOG: NASDAQ), AISI Inc. (acquired by ESI, ESIO: NASDAQ, USA), Per­sonal Bib­li­o­graphic Sys­tems (acquired by Thomp­son Finan­cial, NYSE: TRI & NASDAQ: TRIN, USA).  An entre­pre­neur him­self, Tom led IVI’s entry from Michi­gan in 1992 to Canada, Europe, Africa & Rus­sia, inter­na­tional funds cre­ated with cap­i­tal­iza­tion >$300 mil­lion.  He estab­lished rela­tion­ships, accessed mar­kets & raised the cap­i­tal to exe­cute these funds and finance entre­pre­neurs across these coun­tries and con­ti­nents. Tom is a mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of profit & non-profits includ­ing the $85 mil­lion Kaza­khstan Tech­nol­ogy & Com­mer­cial­iza­tion Project; Sun­tyco, a joint ven­ture of Tata Group & the EBRD, Cyprus; the Inde­pen­dent Direc­tors Asso­ci­a­tion, Moscow, & others.

Mr. Nas­tas is advi­sor to insti­tu­tions in solu­tions to ‘Scale Up Inno­va­tion, Ven­ture Cap­i­tal & Entre­pre­neur­ship’ includ­ing the World Bank & the Gov­ern­ments of Kenya, Uganda, Kaza­khstan, Rus­sia, Latvia, Slo­va­kia & Croa­tia.  His writ­ing about ‘Scal­ing Up’ appeared in Devel­op­ment Out­reach, the World Bank Insti­tute; the Russ­ian, Latin Amer­i­can & Hun­gar­ian edi­tions, Har­vard Busi­ness Review (Eng­lish trans­la­tion); the Asian, Cana­dian, Euro­pean and US Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Journals.

Matthew Nor­dan – Venrock

Matthew Nor­dan is a vice pres­i­dent at Ven­rock, a pre­mier ven­ture cap­i­tal firm orig­i­nally estab­lished as the ven­ture arm of the Rock­e­feller fam­ily. He focuses on break­through energy, envi­ron­men­tal, and mate­ri­als tech­nolo­gies from the firm’s Cam­bridge, MA office.

Prior to Ven­rock, Matthew was pres­i­dent of Lux Research, an advi­sory ser­vices firm for science-driven inno­va­tion that he co-founded in 2004. Under Matthew’s lead­er­ship, the Lux Research ana­lyst team became a glob­ally rec­og­nized author­ity on the busi­ness and eco­nomic impact of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, advis­ing cor­po­ra­tions, start-ups, finan­cial insti­tu­tions, and gov­ern­ments. Before Lux, Matthew held a vari­ety of senior man­age­ment posi­tions at emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy advi­sor For­rester Research in the U.S. and Europe.  Matthew has tes­ti­fied before the U.S. Con­gress four times on emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy issues, advised the Com­mit­tee to Review the National Nan­otech­nol­ogy Ini­tia­tive of the National Acad­e­mies, and been an invited speaker at uni­ver­si­ties includ­ing Har­vard, MIT, and Colum­bia. He was a found­ing mem­ber of the World Eco­nomic Forum’s Global Agenda Coun­cil on Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies and has advised the OECD on tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment for energy and envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­tions. A reg­u­lar speaker at tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ences, Matthew’s views have been cited by news out­lets includ­ing CNBC, ABC News, The Econ­o­mist, Forbes, and Newsweek.

Matthew is a grad­u­ate of Yale Uni­ver­sity, where he con­ducted cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research on the neural path­ways medi­at­ing emo­tion and memory.

David Odom — Arse­nal Ven­ture Partners

David Odom is a Prin­ci­pal of AVP and is respon­si­ble for assist­ing port­fo­lio com­pa­nies in tran­si­tion­ing their prod­ucts to the defense indus­try and other Fed­eral orga­ni­za­tions. He is also engaged in the search, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and qual­i­fi­ca­tion of com­pa­nies and tech­nolo­gies con­sis­tent with AVP’s Tech­nol­ogy Roadmaps. He works closely with key Depart­ment of Defense (DoD) rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the DoD com­mu­nity to under­stand pro­gram needs, iden­tify tech­nol­ogy inser­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, and actively sup­port tech­nol­ogy tran­si­tions. Through these com­bined efforts, David main­tains insights across the full spec­trum of defense tech­nol­ogy needs and prod­uct pro­grams and inter­acts with all of the DoD com­po­nents includ­ing the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, OSD, and DARPA. Through­out the tran­si­tion process, David bridges the gap between port­fo­lio com­pa­nies’ com­mer­cial focus and DoD pro­gram oppor­tu­ni­ties to max­i­mize the appli­ca­tion of the company’s prod­ucts across the DoD. Func­tion­ing as an advo­cate for the port­fo­lio com­pany, David assists the com­pany in nav­i­gat­ing the hid­den road­blocks of the tran­si­tion process while seek­ing out sup­port­ive strate­gic rela­tion­ships with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the DoD con­trac­tor base and related Fed­eral agen­cies includ­ing the National Lab­o­ra­tory Sys­tem, Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (“CIA”), Lock­heed Mar­tin, Gen­eral Dynam­ics, Boe­ing, and Raytheon.

Pre­vi­ously, David car­ried out roles in research and devel­op­ment, prod­uct man­age­ment and busi­ness devel­op­ment for both early stage ven­tures and For­tune 500 cor­po­ra­tions. This work included seven years with Lock­heed Mar­tin Space Mis­sion Sys­tems and Ser­vices where he was involved in design and devel­op­ment of mul­ti­ple plat­forms for NASA and the Air Force includ­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems for the Space Shut­tle and the Air Force’s global satel­lite net­work. David grad­u­ated from Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity at Kingsville, Summa Cum Laude, with a B.S. in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and earned an MBA from Rollins Col­lege, Summa Cum Laude.

Bernat Olle – PureTech Ventures

Dr. Olle is a Senior Asso­ciate at PureTech Ven­tures. He is part of the found­ing team of Fol­lica, Inc , a com­pany devel­op­ing novel ther­a­pies for dis­or­ders of the hair fol­li­cle, and he is the VP of Oper­a­tions and a co-founder of Vedanta Bio­sciences , a com­pany devel­op­ing a new class of drugs for autoim­mune dis­eases. He com­pleted his doc­toral work at the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at MIT, where he co-developed a novel method to increase the pro­duc­tiv­ity of cel­lu­lar cul­tures lim­ited by oxy­gen trans­fer by using hydrocarbon-coated nanopar­ti­cles.  Dur­ing his grad­u­ate work, Dr. Olle was awarded the “la Caixa” fel­low­ship by the King of Spain, and con­sulted for estab­lished chem­i­cal com­pa­nies, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and life sci­ences start-ups.  Dr. Olle received his B.Eng. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­si­tat Rovira i Vir­gili, Spain, his M.S. and PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice from MIT, and his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Rachel Pike — Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Rachel Pike joined Draper Fisher Jurvet­son in 2010 and is active in the clean tech­nol­ogy, soft­ware, and mobil­ity sec­tors.  Prior to join­ing DFJ, Rachel com­pleted her Ph.D. in atmos­pheric chem­istry at the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge.  Dur­ing her time there, Rachel served as Pres­i­dent of the Gates Schol­ars, worked on a field cam­paign in Malaysia, and gave a short TED Uni­ver­sity talk on the scale of sci­en­tific research behind cli­mate head­lines.  Pre­vi­ously, Rachel earned a B.A. in chem­istry and a minor in African stud­ies at North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity. As an under­grad­u­ate, Rachel was a co-founder of Fusion Dance Com­pany. She also spent a year in Tan­za­nia, where she stud­ied at the Uni­ver­sity of Dar es Salaam and gained expe­ri­ence work­ing on a Bus Rapid Tran­sit plan­ning project as an assis­tant consultant.

Ashray Prasad – The Liv­ingston Group

Mahen­dra Ram­sign­hani – First Step Fund

Mahen­dra Ram­s­ing­hani man­ages the First Step Fund, Detroit, MI – a fund focused on micro-investments in pre-seed and seed stage com­pa­nies. Mahen­dra joined the Invest Detroit team with over a decade of expe­ri­ence in fos­ter­ing the growth of early-stage tech­nol­ogy busi­nesses. Prior to First Step Fund, as Senior VP at Ply­mouth Ven­ture Part­ners, (PVP) Mahen­dra was involved in all aspects of early and growth stage invest­ments. Prior to PVP, Mahen­dra was the Direc­tor of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Ini­tia­tives for Michi­gan Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (MEDC) for seven years. Mahen­dra ‘s back­ground includes a Bachelor’s in Elec­tron­ics Engi­neer­ing, an MBA with a major in Mar­ket­ing & Finance.

Parag Rathi – River Cities Cap­i­tal Funds

Parag joined River Cities in June 2007 as an intern while com­plet­ing his master’s degree in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion from Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati, where he grad­u­ated with dis­tinc­tion in Decem­ber 2007 and was awarded Beta Gamma Sigma. He has expe­ri­ence in credit, account­ing and audit func­tions. Prior to pur­su­ing his mas­ters at the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati, he was a man­ager at ICICI Bank (India), where he was respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing work­ing cap­i­tal and senior debt facil­i­ties to small and medium size enter­prises. ICICI is the largest pri­vate sec­tor bank in India. At ICICI he acquired cus­tomers and devel­oped a port­fo­lio amount­ing to $6M in 12 months. His ear­lier role was as man­ager accounts and inter­nal audit where he was respon­si­ble for final­iz­ing accounts and pro­vid­ing ana­lyt­ics for top management.

He received his under­grad­u­ate in account­ing from Mum­bai Uni­ver­sity, India and also holds a Char­tered Accoun­tant degree (India’s equiv­a­lent to the CPA).  He received a full schol­ar­ship from Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati to obtain his MBA and was awarded the Best Busi­ness Plan in a year-long com­pe­ti­tion while there. At River Cities he pri­mar­ily assists the port­fo­lio man­agers in ana­lyz­ing new invest­ments. His respon­si­bil­i­ties also include ana­lyz­ing busi­ness plans, build­ing finan­cial mod­els, indus­try research, com­pet­i­tive analy­sis and updat­ing dash­board on a monthly basis for exist­ing port­fo­lio companies.

Jeff Rin­velt – Renais­sance Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund

Jef­frey Rin­velt is the Prin­ci­pal for the Renais­sance Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund. The Renais­sance Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund is the country’s largest pri­vately funded regional ven­ture cap­i­tal fund of funds. Jeff’s diverse back­ground in ven­ture cap­i­tal and tech­nol­ogy along with his expe­ri­ence work­ing in var­i­ous start-up ven­tures uniquely posi­tions him for this role. Jeff was pre­vi­ously part of Ardesta, where he was Direc­tor engaged in sourc­ing, eval­u­at­ing, and con­duct­ing due dili­gence on invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, as well as mon­i­tor­ing and pro­vid­ing assis­tance to the com­pa­nies in Ardesta’s port­fo­lio. Prior to join­ing Ardesta, Jeff was a co-founder of GrapeVINE Tech­nolo­gies, pro­vid­ing Prod­uct Man­age­ment and Mar­ket­ing for their knowl­edge man­age­ment prod­uct, even­tu­ally result­ing in an acqui­si­tion by Sun Microsys­tems. Jeff was also part of the start-up team for MAXfunds.com, an Inter­net com­pany pro­vid­ing com­plete cov­er­age of the mutual fund indus­try, includ­ing hun­dreds of funds not avail­able on any other site. In addi­tion, Jeff spent five years with Ernst & Young’s Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy group as a senior consultant.

Chris Rizik – Renais­sance VC

Christo­pher L. Rizik is the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer and Fund Man­ager of the Renais­sance Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund. With two decades of expe­ri­ence in tech­nol­ogy, finance and law, he has played a prin­ci­pal role in over 50 multi-million dol­lar ven­ture cap­i­tal transactions.

Chris most recently served as a co-founder, part­ner, and Board mem­ber of Ardesta, LLC, an indus­try accel­er­a­tor ded­i­cated to the devel­op­ment of microsys­tems and other small tech­nolo­gies. Pre­vi­ously, Chris served as a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Avalon Invest­ments, Inc., a $100 mil­lion Ann Arbor, Michigan-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm tar­geted at invest­ments in technology-oriented ven­tures. Dur­ing his tenure at Avalon and Ardesta, he accepted four con­sec­u­tive “Deal of the Year” awards from the Michi­gan Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Association.

Prior to join­ing Avalon, Chris was a senior part­ner with Dick­in­son Wright PLLC, one of the Midwest’s old­est law firms, where he led the Emerg­ing Com­pany depart­ment. He also passed the Cer­ti­fied Pub­lic Account­ing exam­i­na­tion and worked at Price­Wa­ter­house Coop­ers. Chris is also the founder of SoulTracks.com, America’s most pop­u­lar soul music online magazine.

Chris cur­rently serves as Chair­man of Nex­tEn­ergy, the State of Michigan’s advanced energy eco­nomic devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion and accel­er­a­tor and is also a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Michi­gan Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the Advi­sory Board of VHS Michi­gan (for­merly the Detroit Med­ical Cen­ter). He is a mem­ber of the board and Chairs the invest­ment com­mit­tee of the inno­v­a­tive First Step Fund, and also serves on the board of the Michi­gan Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion and Lead­er­ship Detroit, and is a mem­ber of the advi­sory board of sev­eral ven­ture cap­i­tal funds. In early 2010, Chris was named by Crain’s Detroit Busi­ness mag­a­zine as one of its “News­mak­ers of the Year” for his lead­er­ship role in the advance­ment of ven­ture cap­i­tal and entre­pre­neur­ship in Michigan.

Dov Rosen­berg — Allos Ventures

Dov is a Direc­tor at Allos Ven­tures and Blue Chip Ven­ture Com­pany, where he enjoys help­ing entre­pre­neurs change mar­kets through the appli­ca­tion of new tech­nolo­gies.  He also man­ages Blue Chip’s Val­i­da­tion Fund, which has invested in nine seed– and startup-stage tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies over the past five years.

Before begin­ning his ven­ture cap­i­tal career with Blue Chip in 2005, Dov served on the man­age­ment team at a privately-held man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany, was a senior strate­gist in the Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Strat­egy and Devel­op­ment group of Bat­telle Memo­r­ial Insti­tute, and devel­oped and man­aged the deploy­ment of soft­ware as an IT con­sul­tant for Cap Gemini.  

Rachel Shein­bein — CMEA Capital

Rachel Shein­bein is a Part­ner with the Energy and Mate­ri­als team at CMEA Cap­i­tal. She is a board mem­ber for Solaria, Dan­otek Motion, and Arca­dia Bio­sciences and an observer for Reel Solar and Con­tour Energy. Before CMEA, Rachel was a con­sul­tant for start-ups in the areas of bio-plastics, solar and water. For 9 years prior, Rachel worked at Intel, in waste­water sys­tems, Envi­ron­men­tal Health & Safety, and Sup­ply Chain IT.
Rachel is the Pres­i­dent of the board of Expand­ing Your Hori­zons Net­work, a non-profit that encour­ages girls in math, sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­ogy.  In addi­tion, Rachel vol­un­teers in var­i­ous roles for Astia, the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Tech Open and Imag­ine H2O — a not-for-profit that is turn­ing water prob­lems into entre­pre­neur­ial opportunities.

Frank Silva – Boston Mil­len­nia Partners

Frank Silva spe­cial­izes in the health­care and busi­ness ser­vices sec­tors. Frank’s pri­mary respon­si­bil­ity is to work with the part­ners pro­vid­ing ana­lyt­i­cal sup­port on exist­ing and poten­tial port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. In addi­tion, he is respon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing and eval­u­at­ing prospec­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties by proac­tively solic­it­ing deal flow from entre­pre­neur­ial venues. Frank is a grad­u­ate of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege in Mid­dle­bury, VT.

Tim Streit — Huron River VC

Tim has over 10 years of oper­at­ing, invest­ing, and financ­ing expe­ri­ence, includ­ing cor­po­rate ven­tur­ing and as an “intre­pre­neur”, where he com­mer­cial­ized dis­rup­tive new high-tech con­sumer finance prod­ucts. Tim has led busi­ness devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing in start-up envi­ron­ments and has planned, launched, fundraised for and oper­ated a start-up tech­nol­ogy business.

Prior to co-founding Huron River Ven­tures, Tim co-led HSBC Card Ser­vices’ New Prod­ucts group as well as its Cor­po­rate Ven­tures group focused on busi­ness ser­vices, finan­cial tech­nol­ogy, and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. In his New Prod­ucts role, he co-founded and oper­ated a first-of-its-kind con­sumer pay­ment and affin­ity loy­alty busi­ness includ­ing form­ing and lead­ing the busi­ness devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing, and pro­gram man­age­ment teams. Prior to join­ing the ven­ture com­mu­nity, Tim spent 5 years in cap­i­tal mar­kets and merg­ers & acqui­si­tions at J.P. Mor­gan in Chicago, exe­cut­ing dozens of trans­ac­tions val­ued in excess of $10 billion.

Maria Thomp­son – Arse­nal Ven­ture Capital

Maria Thomp­son is an Entrepreneur-In-Residence for Arse­nal Ven­ture Part­ners.  Maria was Pres­i­dent and CEO of T/J Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., a nation­ally rec­og­nized Michi­gan alter­na­tive energy com­pany that she and her hus­band, Dr. Levi Thomp­son, co-founded in 1991.  T/J Tech­nolo­gieswas acquired by A123 Sys­tems in 2006.  A123 Sys­tems is one of the world’s lead­ing sup­pli­ers of high-power lithium-ion bat­ter­ies used in elec­tric vehi­cles, hybrid elec­tric and plug in hybrid vehi­cles and grid sta­bi­liza­tion.   Maria ran the Gov­ern­ment Solu­tions Group of A123 Sys­tems after the acqui­si­tion until she retired from A123 in 2010. She and her team worked with The United States Army Tank Auto­mo­tive Research, Devel­op­ment and Engi­neer­ing Cen­ter (TARDEC), The Depart­ment of Energy and other fed­eral, state and county offi­cials to secure grants and con­tracts to build the first lithium ion bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties in Michi­gan.  Maria earned a Mas­ters of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree and a Bach­e­lors of Fine Arts  (Magna Cum Laude) from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor.  Prior to start­ing T/J Tech­nolo­gies, Ms. Thomp­son worked in indus­trial design at Steel­case and in mar­ket­ing at IBM.

Maria is a mem­ber of Ann Arbor SPARK’s Board of Direc­tors, NextEnergy’s Board of Direc­tors, the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Tech­nol­ogy Trans­fer National Advi­sory Board, the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Ross School of Busi­ness Zell Lurie Insti­tute Advi­sory Board, The Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Trans­porta­tion Research Insti­tute Exter­nal Advi­sory Board, United Bank and Trust Washt­e­naw Board of Direc­tors and the Washt­e­naw Com­mu­nity Col­lege Foun­da­tion Board. She served for 6 years on the Advanced Tech­nol­ogy Advi­sory Board for the National Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­ogy (NIST), and is a for­mer mem­ber of sev­eral non-profit orga­ni­za­tion boards.

Jason Townsend — Res­o­nant Ven­ture Partners

Jason is a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Founder of Res­o­nant Ven­ture Part­ners. He has over twelve years of expe­ri­ence in the semi­con­duc­tor, soft­ware, clean tech, auto­mo­tive, and real estate indus­tries. Jason has been an active investor for over eight years and was recently named to the Crain’s Detroit Busi­ness 2010 “40 Under 40” List.

Before Res­o­nant, Jason served as a man­ag­ing direc­tor of the stu­dent advi­sory board and deal team leader of the $5.5M Wolver­ine Ven­ture Fund at the Ross School of Busi­ness.  For 7 years prior to Ross, Jason worked at Intel and was the youngest found­ing mem­ber of the Cor­po­rate Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­age­ment team where he sold Intel sil­i­con into a vari­ety of tech­nol­ogy sec­tors.  In addi­tion to his cor­po­rate expe­ri­ence, Jason is an entre­pre­neur at heart, hav­ing served as CEO for three startup companies.

Jody Van­der­wel – Grand Angels

Jody leads the Grand Angels, a band of angel investors com­mit­ted to invest­ing finan­cial, intel­lec­tual and net­work­ing cap­i­tal in the suc­cess of grow­ing com­pa­nies to enhance the eco­nomic devel­op­ment of West Michigan.

Ryan Wadding­ton — Huron River Ventures

Ryan has over 13 years of expe­ri­ence in invest­ing, oper­at­ing and con­sult­ing roles in the alter­na­tive energy and envi­ron­men­tal sec­tors, and is widely rec­og­nized as an expe­ri­enced clean­tech invest­ment pro­fes­sional. Ryan has invested in more than 15 energy tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies at seed, ven­ture and growth equity stages, total­ing over $100 mil­lion of invested and com­mit­ted capital.

Prior to co-founding Huron River Ven­tures, Ryan helped estab­lish an energy-focused pri­vate equity group within New York-based Ziff Broth­ers Invest­ments, one of the largest and most suc­cess­ful fam­ily office invest­ment firms in the coun­try. There he became part of the core team of invest­ment man­agers and worked on mul­ti­ple trans­ac­tions in sec­tors includ­ing renew­ables, bio­fu­els, power trans­mis­sion and advanced mate­ri­als. Ryan began his career in ven­ture cap­i­tal work­ing inside DTE Energy’s cor­po­rate ven­ture group, where he worked on invest­ments in fuel cells, energy stor­age, power elec­tron­ics and waste-to-energy, among oth­ers. Ryan also estab­lished and exe­cuted a seed stage fund­ing pro­gram at Nex­tEn­ergy, where he funded sev­eral promi­nent Michigan-based alter­na­tive energy com­pa­nies, and co-founded a “dot com” web por­tal for out­door enthu­si­asts while in busi­ness school.

Paul Weiss — Ven­ture Investors

Paul joined the firm in 2006, as a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor. He focuses on mak­ing Health­care invest­ments and is an active mem­ber in the firm’s Ven­ture Igniter pro­gram. Paul has over 17 years of oper­at­ing expe­ri­ence in the biotech and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries. He pre­vi­ously was Pres­i­dent of the Gala Biotech busi­ness unit of Car­di­nal Health (now Catal­ent Pharma solu­tions). Before join­ing Gala, Paul served as the VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for 3-Dimensional phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals (Nas­daq: DDDP), a biotech­nol­ogy com­pany that com­pleted its IPO dur­ing his tenure and was sub­se­quently acquired by John­son & John­son. Ear­lier in his career, Paul worked as Direc­tor of Licens­ing for Wyeth-Ayerst Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, a divi­sion of Amer­i­can Home Prod­ucts (now Wyeth Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals). He also served as Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and Research for Sci­en­tific Pro­tein Labs (SPL), a divi­sion of Amer­i­can Home Prod­ucts, prior to its spin-out. Paul began his career in indus­try as the Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions for Colum­bia Research Labs (Nas­daq: COB), a small, publicly-held com­pany that focuses on women’s health.

Paul is cur­rently a mem­ber of the Boards of Direc­tors for Mithrid­ion, Pro­Cer­tus (also act­ing Pres­i­dent and CEO) and Tis­sue Regen­er­a­tion Sys­tems. He is an observer at Cel­lec­tar. Paul also serves on the Board of Direc­tors for Alfacell Cor­po­ra­tion (Nasdaq: ACEL).

Alex Wong — D.E. Shaw & Co.

Alexan­der Wong is a man­ag­ing direc­tor of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. and head of ven­ture cap­i­tal at the D. E. Shaw group. Prior to join­ing the firm in 2005, Dr. Wong was a part­ner at Apax Part­ners, a global pri­vate equity firm. Before that, he served as a man­ag­ing direc­tor at Intel Cap­i­tal and in tech­ni­cal roles at Motorola, Inc. and Lawrence Liv­er­more National Lab­o­ra­tory. He cur­rently serves on the boards of direc­tors of Infi­nite Power Solu­tions, Inc., Solaicx, Inc., and Natrix Sep­a­ra­tions, Inc.

Dr. Wong holds a B.S. in com­puter engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Urbana-Champaign, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley.

Mark Zhu – DTE Energy

Mark is an invest­ment man­ager at DTE Energy Ven­tures. Mark has been a key mem­ber of deal team in all trans­ac­tions since he joined the group in 2008. Prior to his ven­ture invest­ment career, Mark was a chem­i­cal engi­neer at Prax­air and United Tech­nolo­gies in work­ing in areas such as process con­trol, process mod­el­ing, sys­tems engi­neer­ing and prod­uct de­velopment. Mark received a Ph.D. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing from Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity, and an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mel­lon University.