Jenny Fielding is the Managing Director of Techstars New York where she leads the program. She is also the founder and General Partner at The Fund, a first check fund investing exclusively in New York based companies. Her portfolio includes more than 100+ tech enabled companies. Previously, 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 tech companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired in 2009. Jenny began her career as a lawyer, spent time at JP Morgan and is a graduate of Columbia University where she is an Adjunct Professor.

At Eniac we call Nihal the human rolodex, thanks to the thousands of connections he has made with some of the world’s top companies and brands. He developed many of these connections over the past 20 years while founding five different high tech startups. Most recently Nihal was the founding CEO of LocalResponse, where he grew revenues 2153% in three years and landed them at number 204 in the 2014 INC. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies. Prior to LocalResponse, Nihal founded buzzd, the first real-time mobile cityguide, and ipsh!, one of the first full-service mobile marketing agencies in 2001, which was acquired by Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) in 2005.

Even before founding Eniac, Nihal honed his ability to spot top entrepreneurial talent by investing in Admob (acquired by Google), Swiftkey (acquired by Microsoft), Tala, Tapad (acquired by Telenor), and Uber to name a few. Because of his experience both building and funding top technologies, he frequently guest lectures at business schools around the country on entrepreneurship and mobile marketing and is published in over 15 books and white papers on the subject.

Outside of the office Nihal loves to spend time with his wife Reshma and is a big supporter of her non-profit Girls Who Code. Around town, you will usually see him with his son Shaan and beagle-bulldog Stanley. Nihal is the life of the party, which is why he always spearheads Eniac events.

Nihal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Philosophy and a BSE in Computer Science.

Beth Ferreira, a partner of FirstMark, invests in a broad range of consumer companies, including next-generation commerce, consumer tech, and mobile startups. Prior to FirstMark, Beth was the Managing Partner of WME Ventures, the venture capital arm of WME IMG and led investments in Glossier, Daily Harvest, Masterclass, and Hush.

Prior to this role, Beth was Chief Operating Officer at Fab and ran operations in the early days of Etsy. Beth also held positions at Flatiron Partners, BCG and UBS.

Beth holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

Aaron combines several years of deep technology expertise, having developed advanced equity trading software and derivative systems at Goldman Sachs and GFI Group, with operational experience working with early stage founders and CEOs to build high growth companies. As the first Managing Entrepreneurial Officer at Cornell Tech, he has been instrumental in pioneering the campus’ startup and Studio Culture and shepherding deep technology startups toward commercial success. Aaron built his venture investment experience working directly with the Managing Directors at Gotham Ventures and has been mentored by some of the world’s leading venture capital investors.

As a founding partner of 645 Ventures, Aaron teamed up with Nnamdi Okike to build a premier venture capital firm that is instrumental in moving seed stage founders to competitive Series A rounds and beyond. He notably led 645 Ventures investments in FLY Labs (acquired by Google), Source3 (acquired by Facebook), Nanit, Goldbely, FiscalNote, and several others.

Aaron received a BS in Computer Science (Cum Laude Honors) from Morehouse College and an MBA from Cornell University.

Anthony Ha is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media and advertising and co-hosts the Original Content podcast. Previously, he worked as a tech writer at Adweek, a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance. He lives in New York City.

Rebecca Kaden is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. She began her career as a journalist and prior to USV was a General Partner at Maveron, a consumer-focused early stage fund. Rebecca was born in New York City. She studied English and American Literature at Harvard and received her MBA from Stanford.

Will has been leading technology-focused startup teams for over 20 years, as a serial venture-backed CTO, founder, and application developer. In addition to his operating roles, Will has served as an advisor, consultant and mentor-in-residence for many Boston area startups. He joined Google in 2016 by way of an acquisition, and is honoring his startup roots by working to bring Google Cloud solutions to early-stage companies. Will received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Music Composition from MIT. He and his family live in greater Boston.

Jenny Fielding is the Managing Director of Techstars New York where she leads the program. She is also the founder and General Partner at The Fund, a first check fund investing exclusively in New York based companies. Her portfolio includes more than 100+ tech enabled companies. Previously, 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 tech companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired in 2009. Jenny began her career as a lawyer, spent time at JP Morgan and is a graduate of Columbia University where she is an Adjunct Professor.

Vanessa is the VP of SAP.iO, a global organization responsible for building an ecosystem of startups around SAP. In her role, she is overseeing SAP.iO’s North American Foundries in New York and San Francisco, including programs devoted to women and diverse-led B2B enterprise tech companies.

Vanessa was most recently the Chief Operating Officer at Trigger Media Group, a $22MM digital media incubator. In her role, she co-founded, incubated and oversaw business operations and strategic initiatives of Trigger’s portfolio companies: InsideHook (the essential digital lifestyle guide for adventurous and discerning men) and Fevo (SaaS technology bringing friends and networks together for group experiences at live events).

Vanessa currently serves as a board observer of Fevo and is an advisor or investor in start-ups including Bounce Exchange, Grata Data, GroundSignal, Knotel and Narrativ. She mentors female founders through Declare’s Lead Program.

Previously, Vanessa was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company’s Media and Entertainment Practice, based in Amsterdam, London and New York. In this role, Vanessa was responsible for serving clients in a variety of media and high tech sectors including online advertising, magazine and newspaper publishing, television, video content production, and information services, particularly on issues of digital media strategy, emerging market strategy, growth and innovation.

Vanessa graduated magna cum laude with an AB in psychology from Harvard University and cum laude with a JD from Harvard Law School. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands where she conducted independent research on the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. She serves as Vice President, College Alumni Affairs, of the Harvard Alumni Association.

Karen Bhatia is Senior Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, leading Creative and Applied Tech strategies to promote economic development and entrepreneurship throughout the city. This includes emerging tech initiatives such as NYC's blockchain strategy, launching the first publicly-funded VR/AR Lab in the country, and spearheading the City's strategy for ethical development of AI & data. Karen is also an attorney, entrepreneur and startup advisor. She was the principal of her own law firm advising tech startups on corporate issues, financing and overall business strategy. As an entrepreneur, Karen founded ActionCam, an educational platform explaining public policy issues and providing resources for people to take action. Karen also founded Stanford Startups NY, a business network of over 700 Stanford entrepreneurs and investors in the region. She is an advisor to several tech organizations and also on Board of Trustees of Mott Hall, a middle school in the South Bronx. Raised in Queens, Karen has a B.A. from Stanford University, a Master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School.

Andy Saldaña is the Executive Director of NY Tech Alliance, a non-profit organization that runs the largest Meetup group in the world, the NY Tech Meetup (NYTM). With over 61,000 members and a mission to build a more sustainable and diverse technology industry for all New Yorkers, the organization sits at the center of the NY Tech ecosystem.

He is also a co-founder of QueerTech, a non-profit based in Montreal focused on empowering, connecting, and increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and technologists.

He is a strong advocate for increased diversity, access, and all around inclusion in tech, but above all, he enjoys cultivating connections and the conversations that evolve.

Tejpaul Bhatia is the NY Startup Program Lead for Google Cloud. He was most recently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Citi Ventures. His most recent startup post was as COO for Explain Everything, an interactive screen casting whiteboard app. He also served as CEO and co-founder of Chatwala, a mobile video chat app and Kaptur (acquired), an app that enables users to aggregate photos taken at an event in seconds. Prior to founding Kaptur, Tej was Senior Manager of Product and International Strategy for ESPN, where he launched ESPN3 in the US, Mexico, Brazil, and Europe. He also co-founded Media Strategy Partners, a media asset management consulting company. Tej began his career as a digital media consultant at Scient and Sekani.

John Paul Farmer is the Chief Technology Officer of the City of New York. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Previously, John was a Managing Director of Microsoft Cities, where he led a team to build partnerships and design technology products that make urban communities more livable, more productive, and more sustainable. He served as the Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Obama White House, where he co-founded and led the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. John holds degrees with honors from Harvard University and the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Alex joined Citi Ventures in 2018. He is the Global Consumer Banking lead for the D10X program, which incubates new products and businesses designed to generate new, organic growth for Citi.

Prior to joining Citi, Alex was the General Manager of Mobile for JP Morgan Chase, responsible for Chase Mobile Banking and mobile channel governance for the Consumer and Community Banking Group. Prior to JPMC, Alex co-founded Moven, the world’s first mobile “neobank” and an award-winning, globally recognized fintech pioneer which has nearly 2 million global users and raised over $20M in venture financing during Alex'’'s tenure. Alex has been a financial services practice leader at both CapGemini and Sapient, and has advised large financial institutions, startup organizations, and industry groups.

Alex has a B.A. from Yale University. He is on the Advisory Board of Cell Trust, an innovator in secure mobile messaging, and was an adjunct professor of Digital Marketing at the Georgetown School of Continuing Studies. He serves on the innovation council of BAI and the digital leadership council of American Banker, and is a frequent conference speaker. Alex lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and two kids.

Scarlett Sieber is one of the industry’s most sought-after speakers as a
thought leader and innovator, with expertise in driving organizational
change at both startups and enterprises alike across the financial services
and fintech ecosystem. Scarlett has been invited to speak at over 100
prestigious financial services and technology conferences around the globe
including Sibos, Money 20/20, The Financial Brand Forum, CIO Edge,
Seamless Middle East, South Summit, and EFMA. As a prominent industry
influencer, Scarlett is a contributor to the Huffington Post, Forbes, The
Financial Brand, and WeWork and has been quoted in dozens of other
publications including Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, American Banker, the
Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Jon Stein is the CEO and founder of Betterment. Passionate about making life better, and with his experience from his career of advising banks and brokers on risk and products, he founded Betterment in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School, and he holds Series 7, 24, 63, and is a CFA charterholder. His interests lie at the intersection of behavior, psychology, and economics. What excites him most about his work is making everyday activities and products more efficient, accessible, and easy to use.

Arjun is the Co-Founder and CEO at Wise, a 2019 Techstars NYC company. Arjun brings product and technology leadership with over 15 years of experience in building and launching successful consumer and SMB products in Silicon Valley, across various industries. Prior to Wise, he was the Director of Product at Mojio, the leading platform for connected cars. Before Mojio, Arjun founded Gpass and TeamsID, SaaS products that offer a simplified approach to password management. Prior to Gpass, he was an engineer and product architect at SplashData, an award winning productivity SaaS company. Arjun is consumer and SMB SaaS expert, focused on product, demand gen and growth. BS and MS in Computer Science and 2018 Stanford GSB Igniter.

Laurel Taylor is a former Google Head of Industry and the founder and driving force behind FutureFuel.io. Laurel’s mission is to reduce student debt by $1.5B by 2021. When presented with a 9% interest rate on a student loan to fund her stint at MIT, with a credit score north of 800, she knew there was both an arbitrage opportunity and a serious need to innovate.

Kabeer Chopra is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Burrow, a direct-to-consumer start-up that makes clever furniture for modern life. In 2018, Burrow opened a flagship showroom in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, was named one of the 10 most innovative retail brands in the world by Fast Company, and the Burrow sofa was named of the 50 best inventions of the year by TIME. Kabeer is passionate about the intersection of retail and technology and sets the vision for the brand and digital experience at Burrow. Previously, he co-founded an in-store mobile experience platform and has also launched e-commerce and mobile applications for several startups. Previously, he managed global retail analytics for Michael Kors and played a pivotal role in their digital innovation team. Kabeer has a B.Eng from McGill University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Kabeer enjoys playing cricket and lives in New York City with his wife, Tanwee.

Katie Hunt is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of SHOWFIELDS, The Most Interesting Store in The World. She began her career as the third employee of Warby Parker, served as the Chief Brand Officer for Hinge, where she led the charge for their relaunch and rebrand, and has worked extensively with startups in branding, product development, marketing, operations and fundraising. Additionally, Katie is the Co-Founder of The Fund, which is a VC fund made up of a community of over 80 New York founders and operators that invests and mentors early stage companies in NYC.

Anne-Laure Garabedian started her career in Digital within a big French energy company in Paris and has been working with CHANEL for the past 8 years. She spent 6 years in the UK building the digital team for the brand, and the past 2 years in the US launching a variety of projects around Digital & Analytics innovations. More recently, she joined the Global Retail Innovation practice focusing on the Future of Retail for Beauty, and how to use Digital & Tech at the service of a more seamless client experience. Anne-Laure has a Master’s Degree in Business from HEC School of Paris, and lives in Jersey City with her husband and their 2 kids.

Olivier Zimmer co-founded Spate, a machine intelligence solution for finding the next big trend in beauty and consumer goods. Spate analyzes over 3 billion consumer behavior signals from across the web to identify new whitespace opportunities for brands.

Previously, Olivier spent 10 years at Google where he and his Spate co-founder started Google's Trendspotting division while leading the data science team. He spotted trends such as face masks, turmeric and cold brew before it was a thing.

He moved to the U.S. via a prestigious grant provided by the Belgian Royal family; he graduated from the Free University of Brussels and from the University of California Berkeley.

Dr. Robin Berzin, MD is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Robin completed medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She has also trained in functional medicine with the Institute for Functional medicine, where she is an advisor on digital technology. In 2011 she co-founded the physician communication app Cureatr and subsequently has advised numerous startups in the health care space. Robin founded Parsley Health in order to make whole-body, transformative medicine accessible to everyone through better services and smart technology.

When she is not at Parsley you can find her at home in Brooklyn, upstate with her husband, son and two rescue dogs, or at her favorite vinyasa yoga class.

Dr. Christina Jenkins is a Lead Venture Investor in Portfolia’s FemTech fund, focusing on early-stage healthcare startups that are game-changers for women’s health and well-being. She is a Board Observer of Madorra, Inc., and provides strategic advice to health systems and startups for success in a value-based, opaque environment. Prior to this, Christina was the founding CEO of OneCity Health, a subsidiary built over her tenure to $350M, piloting and scaling novel tech platforms, social services, and clinical models to improve quality and cost for 1M New Yorkers. She is an internist trained at Northwestern and Mount Sinai, a Class 10 Kauffman Fellow (NEA), and a former Bloomberg appointee to the Board of NYC Health + Hospitals.

Brent Stackhouse is the Managing Director of Mount Sinai Ventures, the venture investment arm of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. His responsibilities include diversifying the portfolio of strategic investments to enhance Mount Sinai’s transition to population health management. He is experienced in public health and health information technology, and represents Mount Sinai on the board of several portfolio companies and the Mount Sinai ambulatory and telehealth strategy committees. Additionally he launched the Strategic Ventures Group, a national consortium of corporate venture and innovation team leaders from over 25 hospitals.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Brent was the Executive Director of Strategy at the Primary Care Information Project at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In this role, Brent oversaw the strategy and operations for the bureau responsible for expanding the adoption of electronic health records and the use of health information technology for care coordination and quality improvement across New York City. He was responsible for developing and managing programs for key stakeholders including Accountable Care Organizations, health systems, insurance companies, as well as State and Federal partners.
Prior to his career in health care, Brent worked in investment banking and commercial real estate finance. He has a Bachelor in Science from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Rami A. Rafeh is the Vice President responsible for Provider Strategy and Collaboration at Premera Blue Cross. He leads Premera’s collaboration with healthcare providers and other partners to develop innovative solutions that meet the needs of Premera’s customers.

Rami joined Premera in 2019 after spending several years working for Healthfirst, a healthplan that insures over 1.4M New Yorkers as the Regional Director of Network Management and Director of Growth Strategy & Business Development. Prior to that, Rami spent more than a decade at Pfizer on the Worldwide Business Development & Innovation team as well as various positions in the Chief Medical Office.

Rami believes strongly in solving systemic healthcare issues by investing in primary care, addressing access problems through technology and curbing costs with business model innovations. He has mentored, invested and founded his own healthcare startups and believes that healthcare is ripe for disruption.
He has Bachelor’s in Biology from Binghamton University, a Master’s in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Stem Cells from the University of Medicine & Dentistry of NJ, and a Master’s in Heath Policy and Management with a concentration in Health Information Technology from Columbia University.

Deena is on a mission to partner with the world’s most audacious founders taking on the most challenging problems. She is an operator at heart with a passion for partnerships and company building. She is particularly interested in breakthrough approaches in health, home, and access that can positively transform lives.

Deena believes humanity-focused venture investing is about more than just capital, approaching company building with support and empathy for founders and a lens towards the ethical and societal implications of technologies.

Prior to joining Lux, Deena led strategic partnerships for early stage products in healthcare, research, machine intelligence and search at Google. There she also directed social impact investments at Google.org and supported a portfolio of more than 300 companies to achieve business development and growth opportunities with GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Before she became an investor, Deena had diverse people-centric global experiences as an aspiring anthropologist, journalist, diplomat, aid worker and technologist. She was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010. Her non-traditional path to venture capital landed her in roles that brought people together to foster partnerships through diplomacy, public service, and technology. It has also cultivated Deena’s deep conviction in the power of founders of new ventures to positively transform the future and an unparalleled network to help them achieve it.

Deena serves on the Boards of several non-profits including Tarjimly, TechWadi, and AMIDEAST. She is a Kauffman Fellow and a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. Financially independent since the age of 18, she funded her undergraduate and graduate degrees through a variety of merit scholarships and side hustles, including co-founding her first internet company while still in college. Deena earned a joint BA in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard (where she delivered the graduation address) and an MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

Craig is Head of Engineering at Sidewalk Labs, leading the engineering team – which focuses on developing new urban technologies – and working with portfolio companies to develop their engineering teams and technology. Before joining Sidewalk Labs, he founded Google’s first remote engineering center, located in New York City. In his role as Engineering Director at Google, he oversaw the development of products including Google Local (now Maps) and Froogle (now Google Shopping), as well as features of web search such as Question Answering and Web Definitions.

As engineering director of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, he co-founded Google.org’s Flu Trends and Crisis Response projects, providing maps, imagery and a missing persons service after crises in Japan and elsewhere.

Prior to joining Google in 2000, he was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford University. He is the author of 44 peer-reviewed academic publications, and was awarded a Career Grant by the National Science Foundation for work combining information retrieval and computational biology.

A native of New Zealand, he earned a BSc in Computer Science from Canterbury University and a PhD in Computer Science from Waikato University. Passionate about great coffee, he co-founded Happy Bones café in Little Italy with his wife Kirsten and partners from New Zealand.

Ro is the CEO of Carmera, the world’s only 4-dimensional index of city streets, accessible to anyone. Before Carmera, he created data products and helped grow web commenting network, Disqus, to 2 billion users. Prior to that, he held digital roles at Disney. Earlier on, Ro was a management consultant for corporations and NGOs in San Francisco, Sao Paulo, New York and Mozambique. He also advises startups such as Autonomous Tractor Corp. Ro studied Civil Engineering/Operations Research at Princeton and received an MBA from Northwestern. Ro was born in Calcutta, India and lives in Brooklyn, NY with his family.

Shawn is co-founder and CEO of Looking Glass Factory, a Brooklyn-based company creating the holographic future we all were promised growing up, starting with the world's best-selling holographic display, the Looking Glass.

Prior to Looking Glass, Shawn got his start with a classic laser interference pattern holographic studio he built in high school, followed by training in advanced holographic film techniques under holography pioneer Steve Benton at MIT. For this work, he has been awarded dozens of patents around the world, the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award, noted as one of the ‘20 Best Brains Under 40’ by Discover Magazine, and listed on Inc Magazine’s ’30 Under 30’.