WEB 2019

Partner, Amplifyher

Meghan joins Amplifyher as a startup operator and investor who is passionate about the New York tech community. As the original Managing Partner of Red Bear Angels, she built the Cornell alumni angel network of 100+ accredited investors and led investments across 20+ companies including Lyft. Meghan received her venture training from Foundation Capital, Bowery Capital, and StarVest Partners. Prior to investing, she was an early Director at StyleCaster, Inc. (acq. She Knows Media), a lifestyle publication that pioneered the convergence of media and technology. She was an early PR specialist for Skype and Foursquare.

Head of Venture, Plum Alley Investments

Avantika is Head of Venture at Plum Alley, an investment platform focused on investing in gender-diverse founding teams and raising the equity bar for investors. Having scaled teams and businesses to billion plus dollar valuations and a successful IPO (NASDAQ), she brings operation, growth, and investment leadership for private and public companies across health care and technology. Avantika’s diverse background across early stage, growth, and a public exit provides Plum Alley a unique perspective during deal sourcing, evaluation, and strategic direction. As a founder of a cross border SaaS company, early team member of a first-to-market biotech product and as an executive in unicorn companies, she has expertise focusing on analytics, proprietary modeling, and growth strategies in venture backed companies. Her domain knowledge spans healthcare, CPG, HCM, Foodtech, and market places. She is active in the startup ecosystem in New York, San Francisco, London, and India and is a TEDx speaker.

Partner, Muse Advisors

Janet is a founder of Muse Advisors, a consultancy that helps post-seed stage companies led by women create financial roadmaps to scaling and profitability and integrate financial discipline into their strategic planning. Muse acts as a strategic advisor to help focus the company’s capital and team on those drivers that matter most and improve fundraising success. After 10 years as a sell-side analyst at Morgan Stanley and five years with a Bass family hedge fund, Janet co-founded a long-only asset manager where she also managed the firm's consumer investments. She has been an angel investor with Golden Seeds since 2009 and is a mentor at the Founder Institute, Monarq and CTNext accelerators. Janet currently serves on the Board of Directors for an ecommerce party supplies company (Shindigz) and the Women's Business Development Council.

Founder & CEO, Skaled

Jake designs repeatable, sustainable sales models and processes that outperform industry standards. As the Founder and CEO of Skaled Consulting, Jake helps executives around the world accelerate business growth with data-backed sales solutions. Before building Skaled, he held the roles of VP of Sales at Nowait (acquired by Yelp), Head of Sales and Customer Success at Chartbeat, and VP of Sales at Glassdoor (acquired by Recruit Holdings for $1.2 billion dollars in 2018).

Angel Investor & Lawyer

Jenevra is a lawyer and occasional angel investor in New York. Jenevra works at AIG, where she heads a group that negotiates contracts ranging from social media deals to partnerships with tech companies. She is also actively working on automating aspects of the legal process at AIG and is a member of the advisory board at EvolveLaw, an industry group for legal tech entrepreneurs. Jenevra has invested in software, biotech, and consumer startups as a member (and now alumna) of Golden Seeds, an angel group focused on women-led companies.

Operating Partner at Primary Ventures

Cat is Operating Partner at Primary Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm focused on transformative startups, where she plays a critical role in shaping the founder journey, focusing on post-investment support. Prior to her role at Primary Ventures, she spent a decade supporting growth at Chartbeat, a "Made in NY" tech startup that helped media organizations harness audience engagement. In her spare time, Cat also leads due diligence for PeopleTech Partners, an early-stage advisory and investment group that brings forward-thinking leaders together to accelerate the growth of companies in its portfolio.

Head of Growth, The Helm

Emily is the Head of Growth at The Helm, a community and venture capital fund that makes it easy to invest in women, and the co-founder of Loup Digital, a prominent digital marketing firm in the media and ecommerce industries. Prior to this, in 2015, Hughes was the first-ever Director of Audience Development at Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's luxury lifestyle brand. She learned the bulk of her digital marketing knowledge on the audience development team at Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure. Outside of work, Emily teaches audience development at Columbia University and sits on the Alumni Board at her alma mater, Villanova University.

Doctoral Fellow, Columbia Business School

Dana is a doctoral fellow at Columbia Business School where she applies behavioral insights to understand sources of inequality in entrepreneurship. Prior to embarking upon her Ph.D., Dana co-founded and ran a venture-funded mobile technology startup, an experience that inspired her to examine gender distinctions among founders and top management team members. Dana’s findings on the social psychological mechanisms behind implicit bias have been featured in BBC Radio; Bloomberg; Chicago Booth Review; Entrepreneur; Forbes; Fortune, Inc.; Quartz; TechCrunch; TEDx; Thrive; The Times; The Wall Street Journal; and Wharton Magazine. You can read her work in the Academy of Management Journal and Harvard Business Review. After graduating magna cum laude from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Dana began her career in investment banking and strategic consulting for Citigroup and Winterberry Group.

Private Equity Investor (GS Growth), Goldman Sachs

Olga joined Goldman Sachs in 2010, where she leads $20 million to $500 million investments as part of the GS Growth team within Goldman Sachs' Merchant Banking Division. She is focused on high-growth technology companies across the software, internet, and e-commerce landscape. Olga is also a Lead Investor for Launch With GS, the firm’s for-profit initiative to invest in women-led businesses. Prior to joining the firm, she held various roles at UBS and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a strong advocate for enabling equity through education and serves on the board of Mission Graduates, a nonprofit focused on college access.

Partner, Muse Advisors

Monica is a partner at Muse Advisors, a strategic financial consultancy that creates custom, forward-looking financial roadmaps to help women business owners focus on their key business drivers, better manage resources, and attract capital. She has spent more than a decade supporting women entrepreneurs, both as a mentor and investor. Before co-founding Muse Advisors, Monica served in an advisory role to a number of women-founded companies, as an angel investor with 37 Angels, and as a mentor at Monarq, an incubator for women-led startups. Prior to her work as an investor, Monica spent more than 20 years in corporate finance and equity research at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Federated Investors.

Partner, Kairos

Katie is an investor, serial entrepreneur, and growth marketer passionate about connecting great people and building great companies. Currently, she is a Partner at Kairos, an early-stage venture fund on a mission to make life more affordable for the everyday consumer. Previously she ran a highly sought-after growth consultancy working with Seed to Series B tech companies as an interim CMO. Prior to this, Katie was the first marketing hire at OrderGroove (Series C) - an enterprise marketing platform used by retailers including Walmart, CVS and L’Oreal. She ran marketing, PR and communication efforts through their Series A & B fundraises. Katie started her career by co-founding a manufacturing company from her NYU dorm room, selling her company in 2012. The company's best-selling brand, CitySlips, was sold at Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, The Shopping Channel, and hundreds of additional retailers globally. Katie is the Founder and President of The Strategic Exchange, an Empact100 White House honoree, and a BusinessWeek Top Young Entrepreneur. She has been featured on Fox News, New York Daily News, CNN, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Entrepreneur Magazine, and more. She's also an angel investor in New York City.

General Partner, Rubicon Venture Capital

Joshua is a General Partner at Rubicon Venture Capital, where he leads Rubicon's New York office. He oversees the day-to-day activities and operations of Rubicon including evaluating early stage technology companies seeking funding, assisting current portfolio companies with development and interaction with LPs, attracting LP capital, and developing the Rubicon professional network. Joshua has extensive experience and connections in technology, real estate, luxury lifestyle brands, digital media, and consumer products. Joshua was formerly the Director of Market Intelligence at Citicorp Debt Capital Markets, Manager Eastern European Banking Systems at Citibank and was with the Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC). In 2007, he became an active angel investor with interests in software and technology. He has invested into such companies as Daily Harvest, Super Coffee, Nylas, Superhuman, Todaytix, LISNR, Unikrn, Domio and Easyship to name a few.

President, NYPAY, and Partner, Paygility Advisors

David has a long history in the payments industry, working with issuers, networks, merchants, processors, and fintech firms. He has developed and directed strategy, marketing, new products, operations, and finance at companies including American Express and Mastercard. Currently, he advises several technology startups. David is a partner at Paygility Advisors, which helps firms navigate the changing world of payments, and president of NYPAY, a professional group where payment leaders and fintech innovators meet to learn and network. His recent work includes due diligence on a merger target, launching a tablet point-of-sale system, finding profitable markets for a closed-loop mobile payment platform, and reducing acceptance costs for several merchants.

Managing Partner, Springboard Growth Capital

Amy is Managing Partner of Springboard Growth Capital, which invests in women-led companies in consumer, technology, and media. She has twenty-five years of direct investment experience. Amy started her career at the Blackstone Group, working on principal investments and M&A. Subsequently, she joined Morgan Stanley Capital Partners where she evaluated and structured buyouts and growth equity investments in the consumer, media, technology and healthcare sectors. She is a co-founder of Solera Capital and Boldcap Ventures. Amy has served on the boards of private and public companies in the consumer, media, and health care IT sectors. She currently serves on the board of the University of Michigan Social Venture Fund, the Dean's Advisory Board of the Ross School of Business, the National Advisory Board of Springboard Enterprises, and the NY Fashion Tech Lab Expert Network.

VP, Hearst; Founder, HearstLab

Chris is the founder of HearstLab, an invitation-only community of early-stage women-led startups working inside Hearst Tower, home to one of the world's most diversified media, information, and technology companies. HearstLab invests in startups that are innovating in media, information, or services where connectivity with any of Hearst’s more than 350 businesses is a difference-maker for a founding team. Chris has a 20-plus-year digital media career innovating at two media giants: Hearst and, before that, Ziff Davis Media. He is a "serial intraprenuer," starting and supporting dozens of new initiatives including launching new brands and deploying new technology while inventing and perfecting growth strategies.

Managing Director, Reinventure Capital

Julianne has been putting technology to work for the greater good in the U.S. and abroad for more than 25 years. Along the way she has contributed in a variety of roles: Co-Founder of a seed-stage investment firm; VP of Communications at a utility-scale energy storage company; Co-Founder and Director of Business Development of a biofuel company; VP of Engineering at a water-purification company; and trusted mentor, board member, advisor, or consultant to many more. Julianne invests heavily in cultivating community, including as a mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and life deacon in her church; she recently concluded a three-year term as co-chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum Innovation Series. As an author and speaker for domestic and global audiences, she has contributed to GreenMoney, GreenBiz, Sloan EMBA, GIST Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, All-Russia Innovation Convention, and the MIT Nuts & Bolts Course, among others. She also frequently serves as a judge for technology and entrepreneurship competitions and as a connectrix for innovators around the world.