Alyson DeNardo
MaC Venture Capital, Partner
Alyson has varied experience in startups, venture capital, and Fortune 500 companies. As former chief of staff to Justin Kan and employee number one at Atrium, Alyson has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s finest. Additionally, she has worked to build numerous companies in diverse operational, advisory, and fundraising capacities. She joined M Ventures as a part-time associate in January of 2018 while pulling double-duty at Atrium as well, and joined full-time as a Partner in September of 2018 focusing on early-stage pre-seed and seed companies. M Ventures and Cross Culture VC merged in 2019 to form MaC Venture Capital.
Alexia Bonatsos
Dream Machine, Managing Director
@alexia
Alexia is the former co-editor-in-chief of Techcrunch and one of the earliest reporters to write about WhatsApp, Uber, Instagram, Airbnb and Pinterest. With Dream Machine, she hopes to help exceptional founders make science fiction non-fiction.
Amanda Galton
Orrick, Partner
@OrrickTech
Amanda helps entrepreneurs reimagine the way in which our world works. High-growth companies and their investors rely on her creative and collaborative solutions to resolve both anticipated and unforeseen obstacles and developments. With Amanda by their side, these clients can focus on their true passion - innovation.
Amy Jo Kim
Shufflebrain, CEO
@amyjokim
Named by Fortune as one of the top 10 influential women in games, Amy Jo is a game designer, community architect, and startup coach. Her design credits include Rock Band, The Sims, eBay, Netflix, nytimes.com, Ultima Online, Covet Fashion, & Happify. Amy Jo has helped thousands of entrepreneurs & innovators bring their ideas to life through her coaching programs at gamethinking.io. She pioneered the practice of applying game design to digital services and is well-known for her books Community Building on the Web (2000) and Game Thinking (2018).
Arjita Sethi
Equally, Co-Founder
@arjita_sethi
Arjita is the co-founder of Equally. Equally is inspired from Neal Stephenson's science fiction called 'The Diamond Age'. Their beta is called Da Vinci Club which is a social pets game. Think Pokemon Go for kids wellbeing. She is currently serving on the Advisory Board on the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco. She is a lecturer at the San Francisco State University where she teaches Social Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Innovation and Business Ethics.
Asra Nadeem
Draper U Entrepreneurship Programs, VP Programs + Partnerships
@asranadeem
Bio to follow.
Bethany Iverson
The Coven, Co-founder + COO
@bethany_iverson
Bethany is fiercely passionate about creating a more just, equitable world. She agitates with love, hopes radically, and advocates fearlessly to create the world women deserve. In 2017 she abandoned her cushy career as an advertising executive to pursue the dream of The Coven and with it, the unknown. Her transition from Boss to Business Owner has been equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, but above all she is inspired by the not yet written stories of women, non-binary, and trans folks who will launch dreams and build empires from The Coven.
Brianne Kimmel
Angel investor
@briannekimmel
Brianne is an early stage startup investor in 20+ companies including Girlboss, Voyage, Voiceflow, Dev.to and more. Business Insider recently named Brianne a top angel investor that every startup should know alongside Ellen Pao and Cyan Bannister. Prior to investing, Brianne built Zendesk for Startups a program to support startups like Stitchfix, Peloton, Allbirds & more. She has taught over 5,000 students at General Assembly and advises venture-backed startups in Silicon Valley."
Cadran Cowansage
Elpha, CEO + Co-Founder
@cadran_c
Cadran is the CEO and Co-founder of Elpha. Before founding Elpha she was a Technical Lead at Y Combinator and a senior software engineer at MongoDB. Cadran has a Master's is Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University and a degree in Computer Science and Biology from Colby College.
Caroline McCaffery
ClearOPS, CEO + Co-Founder
@_ClearOPS_
Caroline is the CEO & Co-Founder of ClearOPS, Inc., a privacy technology company
helping vendors respond to inquiries about their privacy and security practices. Prior to ClearOPS, Caroline spent the last 18 years as an attorney, both as in-house counsel and outside counsel, representing technology start-up companies in Silicon Valley and the tri-state area. Most recently, Caroline was the General Counsel & VP of Business Affairs for Clarifai, Inc., an A.I. company performing image recognition, where she expanded her skills from just purely legal into overseeing finance, information security, people operations and business operations.
Carolyn Ulander Peer
Humaxa, Inc, CEO
@HumaxaInc
Carolyn (CEO) is an award-winning Human Capital Management industry leader with an MA in Instructional Technology and a BA in Cognition & Neuroscience. Early in her career, Carolyn was fascinated by how machines acquired information, how people acquired information, and how it was possible to get the best of both worlds. She acquired a taste for startups as an early employee at ProBusiness which was acquired by ADP in 2003. After taking a leadership position at ADP, she guided her teams to a top-20 placement in Training Magazine's Top 125 organizations and a top-5 placement in CLO Magazine's worldwide ranking. In 2016, Carolyn’s direct team reported 100% engagement; there wasn't a single other leader within the company's 5000+ leaders who had a higher score.
Carolyn Wakulchik
Tech Ladies, SF Event Manager
@cwakulchik
"Carolyn Wakulchik joined Tech Ladies in 2016, founding the Los Angeles chapter and moving on to manage all City Organizers nationally. She also drove the learning arm of the business, curating webinars and learning content for the 50,000 person audience. Now, she partners with progressive businesses to host events in San Francisco.
In addition, Carolyn works full-time managing a team of creatives as part of Uber’s People Development product team. Her background is in learning product design and product management, and she’s made a career of working with growing, mission-driven companies to operationalize learning. She's developed products and built teams at Georgetown University, General Assembly, Heal, Inc., and, most recently, Uber."
Chantal Emmanuel
LimeLoop, CTO + Co-Founder
@ChantalEmmanuel
Chantal believes that leveraging the right technology at the right time has the power to solve problems in magical ways. Her decade in tech included being Lead Engineer at Red Clay Design, creating a community and project management platform that engaged industrial designers and brands to develop ready for manufacture designs. Most recently, she served as a Digital Strategist at the leading consulting firm, SYPartners, where she partnered with clients at a number of Fortune 100 companies, guiding them through their digital strategy. Today, as CTO and Co-Founder of LimeLoop, she oversees the digital and hardware component's development of LimeLoop's smart shippers, working to replace the 165B single use cardboard and plastic packaging.
Corey Ponder
Em|PACT Strategies, Founder + Google, Policy Advisor
@coreytponder
Corey is an empathy practitioner and educator who works with innovative companies and individuals to build safe spaces for inclusive and diverse experiences. Corey has scaled diversity programs across several companies, including with CIA and Facebook, and has developed and facilitated over 50 workshops on allyship, bias, privilege, and building empathy across the tech industry. He has also spoken on allyship for several organizations, including Chan Zuckerberg initiative, Fitbit, MomWarrior, and Diversability. He continues to publish on these topics as well, most recently being featured in Fortune Magazine's raceAhead newsletter.
Debra Vernon
Zhong Lun Law Firm, Partner
@debravernon8
Debra is a corporate and securities attorney who advises companies, entrepreneurs and investors on legal issues faced throughout all stages of growth. Debra specializes in start-up formation, venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings and corporate governance. She has successfully negotiated, documented and closed hundreds of transactions, including many cross-border investments.
Donna Griffit
Donna Griffit Corporate Storyteller, CEO
@Donna_Grif
Donna, Corporate Storyteller, has worked globally for over 15 years with Fortune 500 companies, Start-Ups and investors in a wide variety of industries. She has consulted and trained clients in over 30 countries, helping them create, edit and deliver verbal and written presentations, pitches and messages. Donna has the ability to magically spin raw data into compelling stories that captivate audiences and drive to results. Through her guidance clients have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. To learn more, visit DonnaGriffit.com
Elizabeth Yin
Hustle Fund General, Partner + Co-founder
@dunkhippo33
Elizabeth is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.
Emily Kramer
Carta, VP of Marketing
@emilykramer
Emily is VP of Marketing at Carta, where she wrote the Gap Table Study, which analyzes the gender gap in equity compensation. Prior to Carta, Emily built and led marketing teams at Asana, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly (acquired by Eventbrite). She started her career at ad agencies, holds a BA from Tufts University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Emily has deep experience building marketing teams and brands from the ground up, combining growth marketing and content to accelerate growth, and scaling SaaS businesses.
Emma O'Brien
Punchy, Founder + CEO
Emma is a messaging and product positioning expert. She helps purpose-driven founders unlock growth opportunities by telling a bigger, bolder story about their products and unique vision. Emma has worked with many tech startups making a positive impact like Proscia, The Boardlist and Scroll. Learn more at www.punchy.co
Eric Ries
LTSE, CEO
@ericries
Eric is the founder and CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE). The LTSE is building a new national securities exchange designed to transform the public company experience for businesses that are built-to-last. He is an entrepreneur and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, and of The Startup Way. Eric is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, a global movement in business, practiced by individuals and companies around the world, and the inspiration behind his founding of the LTSE.
Hannah Levy
Tech Ladies, Head of Community
@hnnhlvy
Hannah builds content and community for brands. She's the Head of Community for Tech Ladies, an online community and job board that connects women with the best opportunities in tech. Her full-time gig is Director of Content at Wealthfront.
Holly Grant
Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), VP Operations
Holly is VP Operations at LTSE, a Fintech startup that represents a coalition of modern companies and like-minded investors committed to restoring trust and prioritizing value creation in the capital markets. She joined LTSE as employee number four and has worn a number of hats during her 3-year tenure
Jake Zeller
AngelList, Partner
@jake_zeller
Jake is a Partner at AngelList and investor in early-stage technology companies. He invests opportunistically with a bias towards marketplace, deep tech and network effect businesses. Additionally, Jake is a Partner at Spearhead, a program that funds and mentors new angel investors. Previously, Jake was on the investment team at Columbus Nova Technology Partners. He studied Physics at Stanford University and graduated with distinction.
Janice Fraser
Seneca VC, Partner
@clevergirl
Bio to follow.
Jennifer Keller
Yoga Like A Boss, Founder/CEO
A featured writer and cover model for Living Now Magazine, Jennifer supports established and emerging leaders to embrace authenticity, flexibility, and fierce femininity as foundations for building more equitable, impactful, and profitable companies. With her latest offering, Yoga Like A Boss, Jennifer shares ways of finding balance so you can kick some serious ass without falling on your own.
Jess Riegel
Motivote, Co-founder & CEO
@motivoteus
Jess is Co-Founder and CEO of Motivote, a voting accountability platform for Millennials. Jess started her career with Teach for America, leading first-grade classrooms in New Orleans and Newark. As a consultant with Cause Strategy Partners, she advised nonprofits and foundations on board governance. She also led impact evaluation efforts for an ed tech startup, Kinvolved. While earning her MPA in Social Impact, Innovation and Investment from the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, Jess served on the Rockefeller Foundation’s social finance team.
Karina Cabrera Bell
OpenAccess, Co-Founder
@KarinaCBell
Karina is devoted to helping women succeed in the workplace. She is a Founding Partner
at OpenAccess, a boutique talent strategy firm working to close the gender equity gap in
the workplace. Prior to OpenAccess, Karina spent more than a decade working at the highest levels of government. At the Obama White House, Karina led the Congressional Affairs and recruitment efforts within the Presidential Personnel Office. She created strategies to recruit world-class talent to join President Obama’s political team across all agencies, contributing to the most diverse federal workforce in history.
Karen Cahn
iFundWomen, Founder + CEO
@ifundwomen
Karen is the Founder & CEO of iFundWomen. Named on NASDAQ’s “10 Best Sources of Funding for Women Entrepreneurs”, iFundWomen is a crowdfunding ecosystem providing female entrepreneurs access to capital, coaching, creative, and connections critical to starting smart businesses.
Kristina Jones
Court Buddy, Co-Founder/President
@courtbuddyinc
Kristina is Co-Founder and President of Court Buddy. In 2015, Kristina created Court Buddy with her husband James Jones Jr. when they noticed a strong need to bring qualified attorneys to those who previously did not have the resources to obtain legal counsel. Kristina currently manages the marketing and product teams at Court Buddy. Kristina has been featured nationally in publications including Essence, Forbes.com, and Vanity Fair for her entrepreneurship and developmental growth for Court Buddy.
Xuezhao Lan
Basis Set Ventures, Founding Partner
@xuezhao
Lan is the founding partner of Basis Set Ventures (www.basisset.vc), a ~$140M early stage venture firm focused on the Future of Work through artificial intelligence. Lan built the Corporate Development Strategy team at Dropbox, which was one of the most acquisitive private tech companies during her tenure with 30+ acquisitions. Prior to Dropbox, she worked with McKinsey in New York and Shanghai, advising Fortune 500 companies on issues including big data, AI, and growth strategy. Earlier in her career, Lan was an entrepreneur who built brain training games.
Lo Toney
Plexo Capital, Founding Managing Partner
Lo is the Founding Managing Partner of Plexo Capital, which he incubated and spun out from GV, based on a strategy to increase access to early stage deal flow. Plexo Capital invests as an LP into emerging seed stage VCs and also invests directly into select companies sourced from the portfolios of VCs where Plexo Capital has an LP commitment. Investors in Plexo Capital include the venture capital units of top corporate VCs, prominent family offices and technology executives.
Manan Mehta
Unshackled Ventures, Founding Partner
@mananm
Manan is a founding partner of Unshackled Ventures and has successfully launched a business with a co-founder on a visa. He's been a speaker at Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit and been covered in national outlets like Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Fortune, Huffington Post, Forbes, WSJ, etc. Prior to Unshackled Ventures, Manan ran marketing for ed-tech startup Kno (acq. by Intel 2013) that raised over $90M of funding from top VCs including a16z, First Round Capital, and Floodgate. Before Kno, Manan was an investment banker with $3B in transactions, including the $1.9B acquisition of Skype.
Melissa Moore
Seneca VC, Founding Partner
@melissazmoore
Melissa is the Founding Partner of Seneca VC, a new kind of venture firm that doesn't fit any traditional boxes. Part investor, part collective, part startup studio. Previously, she was co-founder and co-CEO of Lean Startup Co., where she led their media business and built a global movement for entrepreneurs and corporate innovators. As a first generation Filipina-American immigrant, she is mission-driven in supporting other women and immigrant founders.
Michele Perras
Alice, COO
@micheleperras
Michele is a serial entrepreneur, advisor, and award-winning product leader based in San Francisco. As COO, she is responsible for Alice’s growth strategy, partnerships, and operations. She previously led Pivotal’s startup ecosystem and key strategic partnerships through IPO, as well as product and consulting teams in San Francisco, New York and Toronto. Michele founded the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre in 2007, Canada’s first mobile tech accelerator, raised $6M, and funded 23 startups including Pebble and Muse.
Parker Thompson
AngelList Partner
@pt
Parker invests in early-stage startups directly, and build diverse portfolios of startup investments for AngelList.
Phin Barnes
First Round Capital, Managing Partner
@phineasb
Phin is a Partner at First Round Capital and a sneakerhead. In his first job after college, Phin spent six years helping to scale AND 1 Basketball. As the Creative Director for Footwear he led product direction, managed relationships with national retail accounts, and created the initial concept for the AND 1 Mix Tape. After training for an Ironman in 2002, he wanted to build fitness technology and founded an independent video game company to develop and publish Yourself!Fitness, the first fitness game for Xbox and PlayStation 2. Following a consulting engagement for MTV in product and marketing, he decided to pursue an MBA at the Wharton, which led him to First Round.
Dr. Roshawnna Novellus
EnrichHER, CEO + Founder
@drroshawnna
Dr. Roshawnna is the Founder and CEO of EnrichHER, is a lending platform that connects revenue generating women-owned ventures with lenders who want to earn a return on their investment while fueling the growth of women-led businesses. Roshawnna is a gender equality advocate who believes in economic empowerment and inclusive economic growth. Roshawnna served on the Commission on Women for the City of Atlanta and was honored as one of the Women Who Means Business by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, one of the 40 Under 40 by Georgia Trend, a Halcyon Fellow for Social Impact, one of the Top 25 Disruptors and Innovators in Tech, and one of the 27 Black Founders and Investors to watch in 2019 by PItchBook.
Sara Mauskopf
Winnie, CEO + Co-founder
@sm
Sara is the CEO and Co-founder of Winnie, a platform that helps parents find daycare and preschool. Sara has a background in consumer technology and product management having worked at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube and Google.
Sarah Gerber
Zero Gap, Co-founder
@twenty20studios
Sarah is the co-founder of the non-profit, Zero Gap, focused on gender parity in workplace culture. She is also the founder and Executive Producer of Twenty Twenty Studios, a boutique production studio telling mission-driven stories. She has produced award-winning documentaries and traveled the world capturing compelling stories. Sarah is passionate about social and economic equity. She sits on the board of a non-profit focused on systemic economic empowerment in a rural Honduran community and previously was on the board for non-profit building schools in war-torn South Sudan.
Shaherose Charania
Nike Valiant Labs, Senior Director
@shaherose
Shaherose is currently a Senior Director at Nike Valiant Labs. Early in her career she worked at 3 venture-backed startups in Product Management and Marketing and in parallel she built a movement of change, supporting hundreds of diverse founding teams as the CEO & co-founder of Women 2.0, the technology industry’s first media company for women in technology and Founder Labs, the technology industry’s first Lean Startup incubator. Building this movement eventually become her full-time endeavor and through Women 2.0 and Founder Labs she reached over a 1MM diverse founders around the world and more directly enabled over 100 founders of which the top 30% went on to raise $120MM+ collectively or were acquired within 5 years.
Shruti Gandhi
Array Ventures, Managing Partner
@atShruti
Founder of Array Ventures, Entreprise B2B fund. Professor at Columbia University. 6+ exits to companies such as Paypal, Apple, GoDaddy, We Company, etc. Array Ventures manages over 40 Investments.
Stephanie S Chow
Mediated Negotiations, Partner + Mediator
Stephanie is a mediator at Mediated Negotiations where she mediates a wide range of complex civil disputes. She is the founder of the firm’s Founder Advisory Program where she provides founders with strategies and advice on how to navigate direct negotiations. Managing negotiations starts with understanding the forces that perpetuate and exacerbate conflicts. She offers guidance on how to manage issues before they deteriorate into expensive distractions or become missed opportunities. Stephanie is an adjunct professor at Columbia University where she teaches negotiation, mediation, and conflict analysis.
Sudeshna Basu
Zendesk, Principal Product Manager, Analytics
Sudeshna is an entrepreneurial leader with a track record of creating and growing innovative businesses and products in a variety of industry segments, domains and geographies. She is passionate about discovering unmet customer needs and translating them to simple solutions that users love. Sudeshna is currently Principal Product Manager for Zendesk’s analytics products. Prior to Zendesk, she was the CEO and co-founder of Shrooble - a SaaS solution helping small businesses improve customer engagement and retention through proactive communications and online communities. Previously, she has led product teams at Electronic Arts and Intuit.
Susan Liu
Scale Venture Partners, Principal
@susanwliu
Susan focuses on investments across ScaleVP’s technology portfolio with a primary focus on SaaS. She is a board observer at Aviso and WalkMe and her efforts have led to ScaleVP investments in Lever, Namely, Textio, TalkIQ, WalkMe and Wrike. Her work in the industry earned her a spot in the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capital list. Susan most recently worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank, where she advised technology companies on capital raises and M&A strategy.
Theron McCollough
Fiifi.co, Founder
@theron
Most recently Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank, Theron connects SVB and VC/startup communities and leads client experience for the Early Stage Practice. He has spent over a decade addressing startup behaviors that promote company value and helping startups reach strategic goals and increase venture success. As an active investor and entrepreneur, he brings experience operating on many sides of the table.
Tif Lien
Tandem, Founder + CEO
@tiflien
Tif is a strategist and market development leader on a mission to build inclusive solutions to alleviate society's leading causes of stress. She’s spent her career in business development/partnerships and enterprise sales, focused on bringing products that improve people, privacy, trust & safety, and financial inclusion to market. Tif recently founded Tandem to streamline back office services for 1099 contractors and make self-employment as easy as collecting a paycheck. Tandem is designing for the freedom and flexibility you need to do your best work and ensure self-employment is stress-free, year-round.
Trish Costello
Portfolia, CEO + Founder
@trishcostello1
Bio to follow.