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Danny Hamady

Danny Hamady was born in Beirut and with his family immigrated to the United States at the age of 12. He eventually settled in San Jose, California. Danny studied at San Jose State University, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with a minor in Economics. Danny married Amal Maher, a graduate of Skidmore College BA and an MBA from Santa Clara University, and embarked together on their American dream. They both started their careers in the technology industry. This experience led Danny to start his own company in 1991, Momentum Microsystems, Inc. Today, Momentum is a leading provider of integrated turn-key computing solutions for the life sciences and biotech industries. Momentum has grown to support its clients globally and has won numerous industry awards. Equipped with over 16 years of experience in the high-tech industry, in 2005, Danny began angel investing when he invested in a few start-up companies in Silicon Valley. Today, Danny is involved in more than a dozen investments and has had 3 successful exits. He enjoys mentoring entrepreneurs as a form of giving back to a community which is dear to his heart. Danny and Amal reside in Palo Alto, California and have three children. He is also fluent in French and Spanish. Danny enjoys playing golf and basketball.

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Dave Heacock

Dave Heacock is senior vice president and world-wide manager of Texas Instruments Silicon Valley Analog (SVA). SVA was formed through the acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011. Prior to SVA, he led worldwide strategy and operations for High Volume Analog and Logic business from 2007 to 2012 as well as leading TI’s Portable Power Management business from 2002-2007. Heacock began his career with TI in 1999 when the company acquired Unitrode Corporation, where he was the director of portable power products. He joined Unitrode in 1998 through its acquisition of Benchmarq Microelectronics, a successful start-up company focused on battery management products, where he had served in various new product development and marketing roles since 1990. Prior to 1990, he held product marketing and product definition roles for ST Microelectronics and General Instruments Microelectronics. He received a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Engineering and Management from Clarkson University in Potsdam NY in 1983. He received his Masters in Business Administration from the University of North Texas in 1988.

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Patrick Henderson

Patrick Henderson is an accomplished technology executive with extensive enterprise sales and GM experience and a 30-year semiconductor industry veteran. He is Vice President and General Manager of the Mixed Signal ASICs Products Division at Broadcom. He is responsible for creating the division and leading the team for the past 5 years. Prior to his current role at Broadcom, he served in sales roles of increasing responsibility up to Senior Vice President of America Sales. Before joining Broadcom in 1998, Patrick held a variety of sales and marketing leadership positions at Integrated Device Technology and National Semiconductor. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Davis.

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Russell Hinds

Russell Hinds is a serial entrepreneur, with a dual background in technology and real estate investment. He is currently Chairman of Sponsorwise, a 4-year old enterprise software startup, and General Partner of RSH Ventures, an angel investment fund partnership, focused on early stage investments in biotechnology, life sciences, software, semiconductors, and wireless sectors. He also manages with his wife a Real Estate investment and land development partnership. Prior to this Mr. Hinds was COO of Sponsorwise. Mr. Hinds held several positions with a number of technology companies including Virage Logic Corp., a provider of embedded memory technologies that power the Internet and communications infrastructure. At Virage Logic, he served as Manager of Applications Engineering and Technical Marketing in 1998 and Manager of Business Development and Foundry Relations in 1999.

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Mark Holmes

Mark Holmes, with over a billion dollars in patent deals under his belt, is the founder and CEO of PatentBridge LLC, a privately held technology brokerage firm in Silicon Valley that specializes in bringing to market select patented technologies covering extraordinary software and Internet-related breakthroughs. Mr. Holmes is also the CEO and Co- Founder of RavenWhite Security, Inc. which was selected as one of the top 10 security startups worldwide at the RSA Conference. He was the co-founder of a successful telecommunications startup which was sold in the late 1990s to a portfolio company of the Alabama state retirement fund (Retirement Systems of Alabama). He is an angel investor and member of the Band of Angels. Mr. Holmes has advised such technology savvy entities as Visa, Sony, Applied Materials, University of California at Berkeley as well as many startups and was named to the IAM Strategy 300 – The World’s Leading IP Strategists. He served as co-chair of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) from 2006 to 2011. He is a registered patent attorney, holds an engineering degree from Brown, is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the IEEE Computer Society, and wrote the book PATENT LICENSING: STRATEGY, NEGOTIATION & FORMS. He is a member of the Board of Editors, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COUNSELOR, published by West Publishing. Mark co-chairs the Advanced Patent Licensing program of the Practising Law Institute (PLI) and speaks on software and technology licensing in the PLI Advanced Licensing program in New York, Chicago and San Francisco and PLI Patent Law Institute. He lectures nationally on the pressing issues facing patent owners in the commercialization of their intellectual property. In the past few years, he has spoken nationally over 50 times on the commercialization of intellectual property for such bodies as Renaissance Weekend, International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), Patent Law Institute, Washington State Patent Law Association, Oregon Patent Law Association, Hawaii State Bar Association, Practising Law Institute and other organizations.

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Erich Horn

Erich P. Horn, MD, MBA is a board-certified ophthalmologist, educator and entrepreneur whose private practice (East Bay Eye Specialists) is in Oakland, California. Specializing in advanced technology cataract surgery, glaucoma care, ocular trauma reconstruction and eye diseases of aging, he’s practiced clinical ophthalmology for 17 years. Dr. Horn currently is Vice-Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, where he also serves as Chief of Comprehensive Ophthalmology. In this role, he teaches residents, fellows and medical students in the classroom and in the operating room. He is active in the American Academy of Ophthalmology, chairs the Practicing Ophthalmologists’ Committee in his specialty and teaching fellow ophthalmologists annually at the Maintenance of Certification Review Course in Chicago. He has been honored by the Academy with the Secretariat Award and the Achievement Award.  He serves on the Board of Directors of the non-profit Pacific Vision Foundation and Prevent Blindness Northern California, both headquartered in San Francisco. Dr. Horn earned his MD from Harvard University in 1995, following a Howard Hughes Medical Institute/NIH research fellowship and undergraduate studies in History at Brown University. He earned an executive MBA from Wharton in 2009, and led a team to a third place finish in the Wharton Business Plan Competition that year. Dr. Horn’s entrepreneurial ventures include marketing an improved ocular prosthesis for people who lost an eye due to cancer or trauma and a nutritional supplement to enhance ocular health in people over fifty. He is interested to bring his medical expertise to evaluating new products and companies and especially looks forward to working with the Band of Angels Life Sciences/Biotech SiG. Dr. Horn is married to Biljana Horn, MD and they have two sons, Thomas and Philip.

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Peter Hsi 

Peter Hsi was born and raised in Taiwan where he received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1974, he went to the United States to continue his graduate studies and received a MS and PhD degree in Electrical Engineer from Syracuse University. From 1978 to 1988, Peter worked as system and research engineers in Network Analysis Corporation and Carrier Division of United Technology Corporation. Peter became a naturalized US Citizen in 1987. Since 1984, Peter joined AOT Corporation, a manufacturer of computer aided automatic test equipment for semi-conductor industry as Chief Engineer and Vice President of Engineering. The company was later sold to Hewlett Packard in 1989 and became a division in the Instrument Group within HP. Peter stayed in HP for a few years and then joined RAE Systems Inc. in 1993 as a co-founder. He served in RAE Systems as VP of Engineering, CTO and Board of Directors until now. In June 2013, RAE Systems was acquired by Honeywell Corporation. Peter has been focusing on the new sensor technology and product development in the past 20 years and received more than 20 US and European patents.

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Peter Huang

Peter Huang has been a noteworthy leader in the semiconductor space for over 25years. He is currently a Chief Manufacturing Officer at Empowersemi, Inc. His previous roles include VP of Technology support and Marketing at TSMC North America, VP of Operations at Innovium, Inc (acquired by Marvell), Sr Director of R&D for technology platform at LSI logic and Director of Engineering at Classic Broadcom. He has a wide spectrum of experiences ranging from equipment company, wafer manufacturing, R&D for wafer technology, IC design, IP inventor, productization, materials procurement, and supply chain management. He has 14 patents with only 1 still pending. He has been successful in the negotiation of high-level contracts. He is well versed in presentations, and accustomed to addressing clients, vendors, partners, shareholders, and corporate board of directors. He has managed multi-million-dollar budgets with full P&L responsibility, and championed the development and implementation of strategic plans. He is a visionary, with a track record for finding innovative ways to grow business and increase margins. He also has personal investment in a semiconductor start-up company. Peter Huang grew up in Taiwan. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering and PhD in Materials Science & Engineering all from UC Berkely. He has lived in Japan and Brazil. He is a hardcore techy in the semiconductor industry. He enjoys listening to music and loves to travel. He is a husband to a pharmacist and dad to 2 dogs.

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Chris Jacob

Chris Jacob is an entrepreneur in the life sciences industry with over 16 years of experience building and scaling biotech companies. He began his career as a pharmaceutical scientist before pursuing a Juris Doctor at Santa Clara University School of Law, becoming a registered patent attorney and member of the California Bar. Chris holds a degree in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego.

As the founder of Gateway Genomics, now a Myriad Genetics company (NASDAQ: MYGN), Chris drove the company's growth and innovation, establishing it as one of California’s fastest-growing consumer health businesses. Following its acquisition in 2022, he continues to serve as General Manager at Myriad Genetics. Over the past 14 years, Chris has driven successful exits for three biotech startups.

Chris is also a cofounder and the Executive Chairman of Biomedical Research Laboratories, a science-based consumer nutrition company focused on enhancing health, performance, and longevity. Beyond his entrepreneurial ventures, Chris actively invests in the life sciences and technology startups as a member of NuFund Venture Group, Life Science Angels, and Gaingels, with a portfolio exceeding 100 investments. He is a member of the San Diego Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and serves on the board of the March of Dimes, San Diego.

Chris lives in La Jolla, California, with his wife and their two children.

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Malathi Jivan

Malathi Jivan (MJ) is a seasoned product executive with expertise in FinTech, AI and eCommerce demonstrating a strong record of driving innovation and scaling businesses. Her extensive experience is supported by several patents in financial technologies and leadership roles at major tech companies including Uber, Amazon, Bank of America, Intuit, and eBay.

Throughout her career, Malathi has successfully managed billion-dollar portfolios and guided pre-IPO startups through periods of rapid growth and expansion. Her diverse background, encompassing both large-scale enterprises and high-growth startups, provides her with a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities faced by emerging companies.

Malathi aims to leverage her expertise to support and empower the next generation of startups using her combination of technical knowledge, leadership experience, and understanding of both established and emerging business environments.

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Daniel Joensen

Daniel Joensen has over 20 years of experience as an investor and entrepreneur. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Oresund Capital where he manages a hedge fund focusing on biotech and life science. Previously, he founded Danken Ventures, an early stage fund focusing on Life Science, Biotech & related engineering. Daniel was an early investor in BiPar Science which was sold to Sonofi-Aventis for ~$500MM in 2009. Daniel is former General Manager at advertising.com, a venture-funded results-based interactive marketing service provider to advertisers and publishers, where he helped the company grow to sustained profitability. He is an advisor to UCSF QB3 and to several technology startups. Daniel was a Research Assistant in Accounting at MIT Sloan. He holds a SM in Management from MIT Sloan with a thesis on Non-Linear Financial Modeling. Daniel also holds an MS in Computer Science, a BS in Computer Science and Statistics and a BA in Rhetoric and Philosophy from University of Copenhagen.

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Joseph Kao

Dr. Joseph Kao is a materials scientist, entrepreneur, and angel investor with deep expertise in AR/VR optical materials, 3D printing, and energy storage. He has led the commercialization of five high-impact inventions at Dow Chemical, Carbon 3D, Apple, and Meta, holding 15+ patents and 11 high-impact publications.

Now, Joseph is building a startup leveraging AI-driven magnetic sensor technology for grid asset monitoring, based on a Stanford breakthrough. Passionate about scaling transformative technologies, he also supports high-impact startups in AI infrastructure and energy/climate as an angel investor.

A Stanford Impact Founder Fellowship and Miller Social Change Leadership Award recipient, Joseph earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from UC Berkeley and his master’s in management (MSx) from Stanford GSB. Originally from Taiwan, he actively supports sustainability initiatives and enjoys hiking, tennis, traveling and exploring global cuisines.

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Gautam Kedia

Gautam Kedia started out about 30 years ago with his father building a Cast Metal business with an initial seed capital of about $20,000. They started as a small trading operation, importing product from India and supplying to a few distributors in Virginia and North Carolina.

Since then, he has built up their business to have their own manufacturing facility in India, with four distribution locations in the U.S. They have nearly $10 million in working capital deployed in their business in India and the U.S. with zero debt and very healthy cash reserves.

Guatam has built a good team of professionals in India and the U.S. to manage operations and operate in a complex regulatory environment both in India and the U.S.

They are very customer focused, offering a superior experience compared to their competitors, many of whom are billion-dollar corporations with virtually unlimited resources. They are the second largest supplier in California for our type of materials.

Though he lacks specific industry experience in the tech world, he possesses good, customer focused management experience, ability to review financial statements, and assist in navigating taxation law in the U.S., which became much more challenging after the TCJA passed in 2017.

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Larry Kelly

Larry Kelly is a serial entrepreneur and has worked in most aspects of the computer and information industry, in both individual contributor and C-level positions. Larry is Managing Director of Kelly Ventures, and is active in venture investing and building portfolio companies in both the information and the energy sectors. Earlier in his career, Larry worked at Hewlett Packard, where he was involved in calculators, in networking products, and in personal computers. At GRiD Systems, Larry led the development of the first laptop computers. Educationally, Larry received an SB in Mechanical Engineering and an SM in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. He chairs the energy special interest group for the Band of Angels. Aside from professional activities, Larry maintains an active sports life including running, biking and other participatory sports. Larry has also been involved in education, having founded the Montclaire Educational Foundation to raise money for a public elementary school in Los Altos, and having served as a Trustee for Castilleja School in Palo Alto and as a Regent for Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose.

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Veena Keri

Veena has spearheaded successful business and technology initiatives for a diverse range of tech companies, from hyper growth startups to established industry leaders.
Veena's career journey began as a software engineer and progressed to leadership roles. Her background spans product and engineering leadership at market leaders like Amazon Web Services, Sun Microsystems, Juniper Networks, and Informatica. Her experience in forging trust and selling to C-level leaders at Deloitte and EY helped gain a nuanced understanding of pressing business issues. This unique blend of experience positions her to deliver impactful solutions.
Veena has an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Master’s in Computer Science from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.

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Jagannath (Jag)Keshava

Jag is an accomplished engineering and technology executive with a global track record of scaling high-performance teams, accelerating product innovation, and driving operational excellence across datacenter, microprocessor, and networking domains. As former VP of Engineering at Intel, he led the delivery of next-generation Xeon processors, integrating silicon, firmware, and system-level development across global teams. Jag is recognized for building and transforming engineering organizations to enable market leadership and sustained growth. He brings deep technical expertise, business acumen, and global leadership to advise boards, founders, and investors on scaling technology businesses, operational rigor, and product strategy in high-growth or turnaround environments.

With a 35-year career at Intel, Jag has held critical leadership roles across engineering, architecture and platform development, consistently driving innovation, execution, and scale. Most recently, Jag was Vice President in Intel’s Datacenter & AI Group, where he led global Xeon and IP product development, overseeing more than 2,000 engineers across hardware, firmware, and verification teams. He successfully delivered Intel’s next-generation Xeon processor, achieving breakthrough performance and schedule reliability, while optimizing R&D investment through the development of an extensible platform strategy, turning a flagship processor into a full family of scalable products.

Throughout his tenure at Intel, Jag has consistently advanced enterprise-wide innovation by aligning deep technical strategies with scalable, customer-ready solutions. In his prior role as Vice President of Platform Engineering, he led global system integration and validation for Intel’s datacenter, client, and mobile platforms, ensuring product quality, performance, and on-time delivery across a diverse portfolio. Jag created Intel’s first enterprise-wide hardware/firmware integration strategy, standardizing the use of virtual prototyping, FPGA, and emulation platforms, dramatically accelerating time-to-market and establishing a foundational engineering capability across the company.

Jag holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on Computer Architecture and VLSI Design, and completed the Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is named on six microarchitecture patents, has published in IEEE and Intel technical journals, and has presented at leading industry forums including ITC and DAC. A recognized industry voice, Jag has represented the sector at NSF workshops and has received multiple team honors, including the prestigious Intel Quality Award.

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Sudz Khawaja

Sudz Khawaja is a multi-disciplined technology professional with 20+ years of experience at early-stage startups and established companies, leading Professional Services / Systems Integration, Product Management, and Sales teams. Experienced at launching new products / businesses and driving growth at young startups and leading business transformation activities at Fortune 500 companies. Presently leading systems implementation projects at downstream energy company. Presently, Sudz is the President of TASK Consultants, a boutique consulting firm supporting the IT leadership teams of Fortune 500 companies with business transformation projects. Before launching TASK Consultants, Sudz was the Founder & CEO of Wireless Works, a distributor and logistic services provider in the mobile telecommunications industry, where he established partnerships with leading mobile operators and device manufacturers including AT&T, MetroPCS, Motorola, Nokia, Pantech, and PCD, and managed logistic programs for various regional and national mobile carriers and big-box national retailers. A magna cum laude graduate of Coe College in Iowa, Sudz earned a B.A. in Computer Science and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and also holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.  He is presently pursuing an M.S. in Analytics from Texas A&M University. Sudz has served as a Deputy Regional Coordinator of AKF USA, an international social development agency, and is actively involved in advancing children’s causes. Sudz splits his time between Houston and San Francisco.

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Youllee Kim

Youllee Kim is a strategic advisor and investor with 20 years of professional experiences in management consulting, venture incubation/investment and marketing. Most recently Youllee was Partner & Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) based in Seoul, Korea working across several Asian countries including Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. She also worked on multiple cross-border projects in the U.S. market in the context of growth strategy and globalization. Working at BCG for 14 years, Youllee developed and led multi-year client relationship with leading Asian conglomerates supporting their CEOs and senior executives in strategic business agenda including vision and long-term strategy, corporate development, digital transformation, globalization, etc. She has a broad experience in corporate development topics (M&A, JV, partnership, due diligence, post-merger integration) where she often worked with investment bankers and private equity funds. Particularly, Youllee is well known for her strong commitment to client value creation and made significant impacts. One of her long-term clients grew 10x in revenue and 8x in market cap for the seven years of her service. Her industry expertise was evolved and expanded from financial services to consumer and healthcare based on her passion, market opportunity and client needs. She spent her first 4 years at BCG helping leading financial institutions in Korea after the Financial Sector Restructuring by the Korean government and managed multiple M&A and post-merger integration projects. For the last 10 years at BCG, Youllee was dedicated to the broad consumer space including food, beauty, fashion, retail/e-commerce, automotive and consumer electronics/technology. She also had opportunities to work/participate in the healthcare industry as biotechnology was seen as a future growth driver for leading conglomerates. At BCG, she took many leadership roles. As the first woman promoted to Partner in BCG Korea, she served on the Asia Pacific Leadership of Women@BCG. In addition, Youllee led MSP (Marketing, Sales and Pricing) Practice, CCI (Center for Consumer/Customer Insight) and Social Impact efforts in BCG North Asia System. Prior to joining BCG, Youllee worked for CJ (Samsung’s very first manufacturing business which was later spun off from Samsung Group) and Kellogg in the marketing and brand management roles. She also worked at a venture incubation and investment firm during the time of the dot-com bubble in early 2000’s. Youllee holds a MBA from the University of Michigan Business School and a BA from Yonsei University in Korea. She speaks English, Korean and Japanese.

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Steven Klebe

Steven Klebe was born in New York City in 1955. He grew up in New Jersey attending public schools with the highlight being his being selected as a 1st team All-County football player in his senior year. He then went to Northeastern University in Boston graduating with a BS with honors in Business Administration with an emphasis on Marketing. The highlight of those years was his participation in NU’s co-op ed program where he had paid employment internships totaling two years with companies such as Hallmark Cards and a large general insurance agency. Upon graduation Steve was employed in sales by a local company called North American Video (NAVCO) and moved to northern California in 1978. He was with NAVCO for five years ultimately becoming the VP of Sales. NAVCO sold CCTV systems to banks for surveillance within their ATMs and branches. Steve then transitioned from physical security to data security working for a company called Atalla who sold PIN management systems to banks that allowed consumers to pick their PINs and all the hardware to encrypt and manage those PINs as they traversed from bank to bank through the ATM networks. Following Atalla, he left the security space and joined VeriFone as the 35th employee heading up the sales efforts in the western US. During his nine year tenure at VeriFone, they went public and he held a variety of senior level positions during which the company grew from $4m in sales to over $250M. The highlights included creating the VeriFone Finance program and managing relationships with all the leading west coast banks and major payment processors. After VeriFone, Steve became the 3rd employee at CyberCash which was the first Internet Payment Gateway running Sales and Business Development. They went public during his tenure at CyberCash. Subsequently Steve joined CyberSource as their 15th employee to run Sales and Strategic Alliances. The highlights of his time at CyberCash including signing the deal with Visa to deliver a co-developed and co-marketed product called the CyberSource Fraud Screen Enhanced by Visa which became CyberSource’s key differentiator in the market. In addition he raised $1.5M from Visa and $5m from GE Capital in a strategic round and they went public during my time at CyberSource. Next came PassMark Security where he was the 3rd employee running Sales and Business Development. The highlight of this opportunity was signing the deal to have Bank of America deploy what they call SiteKey to all 20M of their online banking customers. The solution was ultimately deployed to over 8000 different banks through a variety of direct and indirect sales channels. PassMark Security was acquired by RSA and within 4 months, RSA was acquired by EMC. Steve worked for EMC for 18 months following the acquisition. Other engagements included a stint at Vindicia, a cloud based recurring billing solution provider and BilltoMobile, a leading carrier billing solution provider where he held senior positions managing strategic alliances and sales, respectively. He was then recruited to Google where he is currently Head of BD for their efforts in the online space for the Google Wallet. Steve is married to Lorna Siepser for 31 years, a former lawyer and banker and now an active civic leader and they have two grown children, Larisa and Seth. Larisa is in graduate school at Tufts University studying History and Museum Studies and Seth has graduated with Honors from UCSB in June with a degree in Environmental Studies and Technology Management. He has entered an apprenticeship program at Salesforce.com and is living in San Francisco. Steve and Lorna live in San Mateo.

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Peter Korbel

Peter is a seasoned business consultant and tech founder with 15+ years of diverse startup experience. With a creative, relentless, and forward-thinking approach, he brings a proven track record of taking ideas from the conceptual stage to fully operating businesses with one exit under his belt! Known to ruthlessly execute, Peter has been involved in various of his own ventures, including the first food-truck operation in the nation’s capital, one of the first on-demand luggage storage businesses in the world as well as starting Blender Workspace—a state-of-the-art co-working space in New York City for high caliber entrepreneurs. His ability to rapidly assess, strategize, and formulate investor-facing material from limited information is uncanny and highly valued by his clients. With a process-driven, yet adaptable approach, Peter blends his vast experience with industry know-how and a prolific network that comes from being in the epicenter of Manhattan’s entrepreneurial scene and now the San Francisco Bay Area. Peter earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and MBA from The George Washington University and proudly calls New York City home. During his downtime, he can be found with his wife walking his two King Charles around the neighborhood in Sausalito.

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Vaishali Koti

Vaishali Koti is a Silicon Valley–based Product and Technology leader with over a decade of experience building and scaling enterprise and consumer digital platforms. Early in her career, she had exposure to working in multiple startups, which has helped shape a lot of her thinking and approach towards building products. She also has experiences in large growth companies such as Amazon and HP. She hold a master’s degree in computer engineering from California State University, Long Beach.

Early in her career, she served as Engineering Lead at Transplant Connect, a healthcare startup dedicated to increasing organ donation and improving transplant coordination. She led the development of secure, HIPAA-compliant systems that streamlined donor referrals and enabled real-time communication between hospitals, OPOs, and transplant centers. The platform operated in a highly regulated, life-critical environment, requiring rigorous reliability, data integrity, and stakeholder alignment. This role shaped her approach to building resilient systems in complex regulatory landscapes while staying anchored to mission-driven outcomes.

Vaishali later joined GluTV (2006–2008) as Engineering Lead, where they built one of the earliest platforms delivering Indian television channels to global audiences—effectively a precursor to services like Hulu for Indian content. She led engineering across video ingestion, encoding, subscription systems, and scalable streaming infrastructure during the early evolution of online video. We addressed bandwidth variability, cross-border content licensing, and global content delivery challenges to serve the Indian diaspora worldwide. GluTV was acquired by Zee TV, validating our product-market fit and execution, and giving her direct experience navigating acquisition and integration within a major media enterprise. Most recently, she has mentored and advised a startup from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ecosystem, where she provided guidance on product strategy, user experience, and go-to-market approach to help the founding team move closer to product-market fit. They ended up getting accepted to Y-Combinator.

Apart from experience with startups, she has also led product initiatives at global technology leaders including ServiceNow, HP, and Amazon, where she drove platform innovation, experimentation, and AI-powered personalization. Her work has delivered significant measurable impact–including double-digit gains in customer acquisition, engagement, and revenue through scalable platform and growth investments.

Based in San Jose, CA, Vaishali is excited to contribute to Band of Angels through thoughtful investment, founder mentorship, and active collaboration with fellow members to support the next generation of category-defining companies.

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Amit Kumar

Amit Kumar is currently Chairman of the Board of three companies, one public biotech company, one private biotech, and one public solar energy company (ITUS:NASDAQ, BioCeryx, and ASTI:NASDAQ).  He also sits on two other boards (AOLS:OTCBB) and Band funded company NGXbio.  He also sits on the National Board of Directors of the American Cancer Society.  Previously he was CEO of Geo Fossil Fuels, an energy company. Before GFF, Dr. Kumar (June 30, 2010) left his position as President and CEO of CombiMatrix Corporation (CBMX:NASDAQ), a position he held since September 2001. CBMX is a biotech company that Dr. Kumar took public, and is focused on genetic analysis to enable personalized medical management for patients.  He is also an advisor to other companies in the Cleantech/Energy and Life Science industries. Previously, he was VP Life Sciences for Acacia Research Corporation (ACTG: NASDAQ), a publicly traded venture capital firm. Previous to that he was the founding CEO of Signature BioSciences, a drug discovery company. Prior to Signature, Dr. Kumar was engaged as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm. Previous to Oak, Dr. Kumar was Senior Manager for Futures Technology and General Manager for IDEXX (NASDAQ:IDXX) Laboratories' west coast R&D operations. Prior to IDEXX, Dr. Kumar was Program Manager for New Technology at Idetek. He has also been an advisor or consultant to Fortune 500 companies, venture capital firms, and private early stage healthcare companies. Dr. Kumar has over 60 peer-reviewed technical publications and holds over a dozen patents with several others pending. He also has extensive experience working with the US government, having presented to members of the House and Senate as well as major defense organizations. Amit received his AB Degree from Occidental College, followed by studies at Stanford University and Caltech, where he received his PH.D. After Caltech, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

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