Partner, Grasshopper Capital

Professional Bio:

Nisa Amoils is a partner at Grasshopper Capital investing in fintech/Blockchain and has been an early-stage investor for the past decade. She was named one of Business Insider’s Women VC’s to watch and top 100 Women in Fintech, and top 50 global Blockchain thinkers. She is a former securities lawyer and on the Boards of several institutions and Girls Who Invest. She contributes for Forbes and is host of the Coinscrum show. Prior to investing, she was an entrepreneur and spent many years in business development at companies like Time Warner and NBC Universal

She holds a BBA (business) degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

CEO, Affinity Marketing Partners

Professional Bio:

Eric is an active entrepreneur and investor, engaged in numerous transactions in the fields of E-Commerce Consolidation, Performance-Based Digital Marketing, Telemedicine & Digital Health, Education Technology, Human Capital Staffing & Solutions, Energy Efficiency, and Financial Services. Eric creates aligned partnerships with entrepreneurs where his capital, network, know-how, and time are invested in an aligned structure to help bring companies to scale both via organic growth and via acquisition.

Eric was the co-founder and CEO of Affinity Direct (“AD.”) AD was a federal student loan consolidation company that helped borrowers refinance over $5.5 billion of federal student loans.

Eric is committed to a wide range of non-profit initiatives and organizations in health, education, and entrepreneurship.

Eric received his Bachelor of Arts (English Literature) from The University of Pennsylvania College of Arts & Sciences in 1992.

Entrepreneur and Innovator

Professional Bio:

Bikram is a seasoned CEO, innovator, and entrepreneur based in the Washington, DC area. His most recent venture – QSSI – rose to prominence as an iconic health technology business that led the turnaround of healthcare.gov and built critical components of health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. QSSI was acquired by United Health Group in 2012. Subsequently as a member of the Office of the CEO for Optum, United Health’s services arm, Bikram ran the government business and helped establish Optum as a premier partner to Medicare, Medicaid, Military and Veteran Health. Prior to that Bikram led Optum’s international business across Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.

He is an active investor in cyber and health tech companies and is a named inventor of 13 US patents. Bikram has an MBA from the Wharton School.

Co-Founder, Yoz Labs
Director, Google & Facebook
Board Chair, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco

Professional Bio:

Ethan Beard W’94 is an angel investor, tech entrepreneur, operator, and leader. He is currently the Board Chair for the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco and a Board Member for Beyond 12, a technology-based service nonprofit whose mission is to increase the number of historically underrepresented college and university students. He was the co-founder of Yoz Labs and has built, grown and managed developer platforms and ecosystems ranging from Android to Facebook Platform to XRP Ledger (Ripple blockchain). Ethan has served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Greylock, a Director at both Google and Facebook, and a co-founder of BigSoccer.com. He holds a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School of Business and an MBA from NYU Stern.

Partner, Kings Circle Capital

Professional Bio:

Mona Bijoor C’98, WG’05, is a partner at the investment and advisory firm Kings Circle Capital, where she invests in online marketplaces, digital assets, and real estate and is the founder of Sol TV, a platform for emotional wellness and mental health creators. Mona has a demonstrated history of building online marketplaces across the consumer and luxury goods industries. Her experience as a brand consultant for the fashion industry and within buying departments for global retailers inspired her to found JOOR in 2010 to solve some of the incredible challenges and time constraints she encountered during her career. Today, JOOR is the largest online global B2B marketplace for wholesale buying, directly connects brands and retailers, and serves over 12,500 brands and 325,000 retailers in 144 countries. While at JOOR, Mona was recognized by Crain’s 40 Under 40, Wharton’s 40 Under 40, and the Big Apple Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She is the author of Start-Ups and Downs: The Secrets of Resilient Entrepreneurs and frequently contributes to TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, and HuffPost.

CEO & Chief Investment Officer, Axiom International Investors, LLC

Professional Bio:

Andrew Jacobson is the Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer of Axiom International Investors LLC, a global investment management firm that manages global, small cap and emerging market equities with a single guiding philosophy and consistent, disciplined investment process. Prior to Axiom Investors, Andrew was Executive Vice President at Columbus Circle Investors (acquired by Pimco).

Andrew and his wife, Marina Kunis Jacobson, G’93, WG’93 initiated the Jacobson Venture Awards which seeks to provide students from The Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies with the opportunity to focus their energies on their entrepreneurial venture during the summer.

Andrew holds a B.A. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Co-Founder, Paymentsense

Professional Bio:

George Karibian is a serial entrepreneur. Since 2000, he has co-founded five high growth, tech-enabled disruptive startups in spaces dominated by large incumbent players. He co-founded Euroffice during the early years of the dotcom boom. It is now the third largest online office products company in the UK serving small businesses in the UK and Italy. In 2008, George co-founded Paymentsense, which provides card processing to small businesses. The company has a customer base of 60,000 small businesses processing $9bn p.a.

George graduated in 1993 with an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 2006, was named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Co-Founder & General Partner: MizMaa Ventures

Professional Bio:

Catherine K.C. Leung is Co-Founder and General Partner of MizMaa Ventures, which is an early stage global venture capital fund focused on investing in the unfair, competitive advantages of Israel and select areas of the Nordics. The key investment pillars include cybersecurity, mobility, cloud computing, blockchain/fintech and artificial intelligence. She is currently a board member of Twiggle, Corephotonics (recently sold to Samsung), Aurora Labs, Orca, Allegro.ai, Coronet, Vayavision and Resolution Games.

Prior to MizMaa Ventures, Catherine was an investment banker for twenty years and last served as Vice Chairman of JPMorgan Asia Investment Banking where she led with a focus in Greater China. Under her leadership, JPMorgan was named Best Foreign Investment Bank in Hong Kong for eight consecutive years. She has advised clients in marquee IPO’s, mergers and acquisitions, debt and derivative transactions. She was named among the Top 20 Women in Finance by Finance Asia in 2011.

She worked as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman & Co in United States and London from 1990 to 1994.

Catherine graduated from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, with majors in Finance and Accounting, in 1990.

Chief Technical Officer, Eventbrite

Professional Bio:

As Eventbrite’s Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Sagi WG’06 is responsible for leading the company’s global engineering team to drive innovation for the largest event marketplace in the world. Vivek’s career has spanned more than two decades as a serial entrepreneur, product and engineering executive. Prior to joining Eventbrite, he served as Chief Technology Officer for RetailMeNot and previously held leadership positions at Amazon, first as the chief technology officer of Woot.com, an Amazon company, and then as the global head of product and engineering for Amazon Business Procurement Solutions. Vivek co-founded and successfully exited two venture backed companies and is also Managing Partner at Valorem Ventures, a multi-family real estate investment firm operating in Texas and Arizona. He holds engineering degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Penn State University and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Co-CEO of M S International (MSI),

Professional Bio:

Rajesh Shah W’96, with his brother Rupesh Shah W’99, is the Co-CEO of M S International (MSI), the leading importer and distributor of countertops, flooring, wall tile, and landscaping products in North America. MSI was named one of the fastest-growing companies in Orange County by The Orange County Business Journal and one of “America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity” by Newsweek. Prior to joining MSI, Rajesh Shah worked at Lehman Brothers from 1996 to 2003 as a vice president in the investment banking division, where he focused on the needs of financial sponsor/private equity funds. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School.

Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer of Denali Therapeutics

Professional Bio:

Alexander Schuth WG’05 is a Co-Founder and Chief Operating and Financial Officer of Denali Therapeutics, a biotech company dedicated to discover, develop, and commercialize effective medicines for patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and lysosomal storage diseases. Alex and his team contributed to building and scaling the company and managing and supporting a broad portfolio of therapeutic development candidates through private and public capital raising and the establishment of partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies. Alex previously held operating and leadership positions in the business development and finance functions at Genentech and, before that, he worked in the investment banking group at Merrill Lynch in London. He holds an M.D. degree from the Charite Medical School at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Founder & Managing Director, Cranbrook Capital

Professional Bio:

Kathryn Stewart (WG’88) is founder and managing director of Cranbrook Capital, which provides seed and early-stage capital to emerging tech-focused companies. The firm also invests in public and private equity. Previously, Kathryn was a managing director at Baltimore-based Alex. Brown and, post-acquisition, at Deutsche Bank.

Kathryn is a board member of Baltimore-based Passive Capital Management and a board observer at DC-based HomeSnap. She serves on both the Robert H. Smith School of Business advisory board and the Dingman board of advisors at the University of Maryland. She is active with Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a trustee of the Maryland/DC Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. She is a past board member at the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, where she currently sits on the Finance and Investment Committee.

Kathryn holds an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Michigan State University.

General Partner, Battery Ventures

Professional Bio:

Dharmesh Thakker WG’07 is a General Partner at global, technology-focused investment firm Battery Ventures. Dharmesh joined Battery in 2015 to focus on early- and growth-stage investments in sectors including cloud infrastructure, big data, security and next-generation enterprise applications. Currently he is involved in companies including Databricks, Collibra, Gong and Matillion, and he previously backed Jfrog (NASDAQ: FROG); Confluent (NASDAQ: CFLT); Sumo Logic (NASDAQ: SUMO); and StreamSets (acquired by Software AG), among others. For a full list of his investments, click here.

Prior to Battery, Dharmesh was a managing director at Intel Capital, where he led the firm’s global cloud and big-data practice and made early- and later-stage investments globally. He also assisted in long-range strategic planning for Intel’s $14 billion datacenter group. Before joining Intel Capital, Dharmesh spent almost a decade in product management and go-to-market roles with enterprise-software companies like Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), Manhattan Associates (Nasdaq: MANH) and two other startups leading to their acquisition. In 2016, Dharmesh was named to the Forbes Midas Brink list of up-and-coming venture capitalists, and in 2018 he was included on Business Insider’s 23 Top Venture Capitalists in Enterprise Tech list. Dharmesh is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a BS in electrical engineering and also holds an MBA from The Wharton School.