Kerry Rupp
Emcee
Venture Partner, True Wealth Ventures
Leveraging over 20 years' experience launching and growing startups and new lines of business, Kerry advises clients on innovation and strategy.
Kerry is also a Venture Partner at True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage VC fund investing in women-led businesses in consumer health and sustainable products and technologies. She is an active startup coach who judges startup competitions nationwide and speaks on entrepreneurship, innovation, and investing. She is a mentor at Capital Factory and International Accelerator and an Advisory Panel member of the Texas Health Catalyst program at Dell Medical School.
Prior to this, Kerry was CEO at DreamIt, a Top Ten startup accelerator and venture fund, where she was directly involved with the launch of over 150 companies. She grew DreamIt's programs to five cities, raised a $15+M follow-on fund, and initiated the DreamIt Access (minority entrepreneur), DreamIt Athena (female entrepreneur), and DreamIt Health programs.
Kerry founded an online travel service, Holiday Golightly, which organized unique group travel excursions for women. She has also advised senior executives at Allrecipes.com, ReadersDigest, LexisNexis, Payscale, and Taleo. She has held Vice President level positions at AllRecipes.com, Jobster, Classmates.com and LexisNexis. Kerry began her career as a consultant with McKinsey and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).
Kerry holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Biology from Duke University. She serves on the board of Texas 4000 and on the leadership teams of Women@Austin, The Angel Forum, and the Austin chapters of Harvard Business School Alumni Club and Alumni Angels, and the DukeGEN Global Entrepreneurship Network. She is an avid adventurer who has visited over 50 countries and 49 US states.
Aya Zook
Principal, Microsoft Ventures
Aya Zook is a Principal at Microsoft Ventures, responsible for managing marketing and PR, and is passionate about building new initiatives designed to source and engage promising early stage startups for the fund program. Aya joined Microsoft Corp. in 2006, and has worked in various senior marketing roles, first with MSN then Windows Live, Bing, and the Bing Fund.
Before joining Microsoft, Aya worked for an interactive agency as a designer and a project manager. He sits on the executive council of the Internet Marketing Association. He graduated from the University of Washington where he studied philosophy.
Dr. Werner Vogels
CTO, Amazon
Dr. Werner Vogels is Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company's technology vision, which is to continuously enhance the innovation on behalf of Amazon's customers at a global scale.
Prior to joining Amazon, he worked as a researcher at Cornell University where he was a principal investigator in several research projects that targeted the scalability and robustness of mission-critical enterprise computing systems. He has held the positions of Research Engineer, VP of Technology and CTO in companies that handle the transition of academic technology into industry.
Vogels holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has authored many articles for journals and conferences, most of them on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing.
jay steinfeld
CEO, Blinds.com
As founder and CEO of Blinds.com, Jay was an early mover in e-Commerce, in 1993 bootstrapping his website built in his garage into the world’s #1 online window covering store. In January 2014, Blinds.com was acquired by The Home Depot. Jay is still active as CEO, driving and integrating the Blinds.com platform into Home Depot’s interconnected retail strategy.
Jay earned a BBA in Accounting with Honors from the University of Texas in Austin, after which he worked for KPMG Peat, Marwick. Jay is a 10-year member of Vistage International, The Houston Technology Center Tech 100, Houston Jewish Community Center board member, American Leadership Forum, and the XPRIZE Innovation Board.
He is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and writes for Inc. Magazine about becoming a more effective leader. In 2013, was ranked globally as one of the Top 60 CEO's on Social Media. Jay is an advocate and frequent speaker on how company culture and authentic core values drive profitable growth.
Dominic Ybarra Ekarius
Technology PR Lead
Dominic brings more than 15 years of experience in global technology communications and has worked in a variety of high-tech markets including Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, London, UK and Austin. She has developed and managed thought leadership campaigns for a wide array of companies, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 leaders. Dominic’s work is focused on driving partnerships, branding, media relations and strategic brand programs. She is working with Qukku to help them in formulating their brand and articulating their story.
BEN WILSON
CTO, GE
Ben Wilson is Chief Technology Officer at GE and is located in Houston, Texas. He holds several degrees and certifications but is basically a caffeine-based life-form that enjoys tinkering in the cloud, opening up anything to see what’s inside, ignoring instructions for anything that needs assembly, writing bios in the third person and wondering why bios are needed when LinkedIn exists. If you feel compelled to know more please read on….
Ben oversees Global Infrastructure Operations across more than 600 locations, global application support, enterprise cyber security and Industrial Internet deployment and operations. Ben is also one of the global Cloud leaders for the General Electric Corporation and actively engaged in IoT with GE's customers.
Prior to GE Ben was CIO and Head of Global IT Trading Operations at BG Group, CIO for Siemens Fossil Power Generation Division and a Partner with PwC.
Jeff Valk
CEO, Admetsys
Jeff Valk is co-founder and CEO of Admetsys. Prior to taking the helm of Admetsys, he was the company's Chief Technologist, responsible for development of its artificial pancreas system for hospital care and the state-of-the-art visualization and network monitoring technologies that support it. Jeff is a hardware and software engineer by background, specializing in the design of adaptive systems and has technical expertise in areas including machine learning, distributed systems, human-computer interaction and mobile/web technologies. Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and is a member of numerous technical, engineering and research organizations.
Jenny Fielding
Managing Director, Techstars
Jenny Fielding is a Managing Director at Techstars, where she leads both the Fintech and Internet of Things Accelerators in NYC. Prior to joining Techstars, Jenny headed up corporate venture and digital innovation at BBC Worldwide where she made strategic investments and led business development deals. She has also started several companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired. She began her career as a lawyer. You can find Jenny somewhere between NYC, London and San Francisco.
Craig Cummings
Chief Operating Officer, RideScout
Craig Cummings is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of RideScout, the “Kayak” of Ground Transportation. RideScout was acquired by Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) in September 2014. In his free time, Craig actively invests in technology start-ups through his company, Moonshots Capital, which he co-founded with Kelly Perdew. Since leaving the military in 2009, Craig has co-founded and served as COO of BTS (exit 2011) and co-founded APX Labs (NEA backed).
Prior to transitioning to the private sector, Craig spent 17 years in the Army, most of that time as an Intelligence Officer serving in multiple National Security Agency (NSA) assignments and locations. In 2006-2007, Craig deployed to Afghanistan with the Joint Special Operations Command where he earned the Bronze Star. During his military career, Craig also served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, NY. Craig graduated in the top 2% of his West Point class and later earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was the first-ever Truman Scholarship winner from a Service Academy, a U.S.-Italy Young Leader, a former Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a Board member for several of companies.
In March of 2015, Craig was selected by HillVets as one of the 100 most influential and impactful veterans in the United States.
Craig is married to Lawton Cummings, a former Law Professor and television legal analyst. They have two children, Addison (13) and Cooper (11), and reside in Austin, TX.
Lynne Chou
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers
Lynne Chou joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers in 2013 and focuses on life science investing in medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health.
Before joining KPCB, Lynne had over twelve years of healthcare operating and investing experience at Abbott Vascular and Guidant in multiple roles and worked on the launch of over ten interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery products both in the US and internationally. Lynne lead the global launch of Absorb, recognized by Wall Street Journal as Medical Device Technology Innovation of the Year and Popular Mechanics. Earlier in her career, Lynne worked at Apax Partners with a focus on software venture capital investing. In addition, Lynne worked at Goldman Sachs in the Mergers and Acquisitions group and worked on multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions and sell side transactions in various industries.
Lynne earned a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Justin Graham
Chief Innovation Officer, Hearst Health
Justin Graham is Chief Innovation Officer for Hearst Health, where he leads the development of new technology and content-enabled solutions that improve patient outcomes and drive efficiency. He directs the Hearst Health Innovation Lab in South San Francisco, supporting internal projects and those developed in collaboration with outside clinician-entrepreneurs. Before joining Hearst, he was Chief Medical Information Officer at NorthBay Healthcare in Fairfield, California. Between 2003 and 2009, he held executive leadership positions in medical informatics at the California Prison Healthcare Receivership and Lumetra, and consulted as lead physician content designer for Kaiser Permanente’s national electronic health record deployment.
Dr. Graham is a medical doctor with board certification in infectious diseases and holds a master’s degree in biomedical informatics. He received medical training at UC San Francisco, Harvard University, and Stanford University.
Dylan Boyd
Director, R/GA Ventures
Dylan loves working with early growth companies. He is currently the Director, New Program Development of R/GA Ventures where he works with global brands to develop in house, partner and accelerator programs. R/GA is a global Digital Agency that creates early stage products, digital services and experiences. He recently led the growth and launches of the Techstars vertical accelerator programs like Sprint (Mobile Health), R/GA (Connected Devices/IoT), Barclays (FinTech), Nike (Digital Health and Sport), Disney (Entertainment and Content) and others.
In his past lives, he has built start up companies, global e-commerce initiatives, online business solutions for large corporations/major brands with integrated interactive content and strategy programs. He has been fortunate enough to be honored with creative and business awards, including three INC 500/5000 awards. He is conditioned to growth.
He lives and works obsessively in Portland, Oregon, allowing him to focus on the fast-paced world of early growth start up development while still always being connected to life here and abroad. He enjoys spending time with his wife, two sons and their friends.
You can frequently find him in a metal tube at 36K feet. He is always trying to change that.
Krishna Srinivasan
General Partner, LiveOak Venture Partners
Krishna Srinivasan is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early stage Texas based companies and entrepreneurs since 2000. His current and past board involvements at LiveOak include CS Disco (e-discovery platform), Hive9 (Marketing planning and performance measurement software), OJO Labs (AI based customer service agent), Razberi Technologies (video surveillance appliance), RxWiki (Pharmacy patient engagement platform), StackEngine (Docker / container management) – acquired by Oracle, StepOne (predictive, contextual self-support), and Written (content marketing platform).
Prior to co-founding LiveOak, Krishna was a Partner at Austin Ventures. At Austin Ventures, he worked with companies such as Augmentix, Entorian (NASDAQ: ENTN), Caringo, Coldwatt (Nasdaq: FLEX), Spatial Wireless (NASDAQ: ALU), Mavenir Systems (NYSE: MVNR) and BlackSand Technologies (NASDAQ: QCOM). Prior to joining Austin Ventures, Krishna was with Motorola where he wrote large scale optimization software for supply chain planning and worked with a variety of business units on strategic and operational issues. He started his professional career at SEMATECH.
Krishna received his MBA from Wharton where he graduated with highest academic honors as a Palmer Scholar. He also has an MS in Operations Research from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, where he graduated with the highest all-round honors.
Krishna also currently serves as Chairman of the Miracle Foundation board, an Austin-based organization that supports orphanages in India and is one of the founding members and a past board member of TiE Austin.