Title: Associate Arts Professor, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Date: January 10, 2018

John Tintori is a Associate Arts Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has edited over a dozen feature length films, including EIGHT MEN OUT directed by John Sayles’ TRUE LOVE’ and DOGFIGHT, directed by Nancy Savoca, and MISTER WONDERFUL, directed by Anthony Minghella. In addition to his feature credits, John has edited numerous TV commercials, music videos, and short films, including TREVOR, which won the Oscar for Best Dramatic Short Film in 1995. Some of his other credits include: Associate Editor on THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, Script Supervisor on MATEWAN, Key Grip on LIQUID SKY, and Editor on DAVID BLAINE: FROZEN IN TIME for ABC.

John has written several screenplays, including WISE CHILD and MURDER MOST FOUL for Columbia Pictures, and INTERSTATE for HBO, which was based on the novel by Stephen Dixon. He co-directed, with Mary Cybulski, HELLCAB, an independent feature film starring John Cusack, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, and Gillian Anderson.

John is a member of the Director's Guild of America, the Writer's Guild of America, and the IATSE. He has been a member of the Tisch/Kanbar faculty since 1997. John has served as Chair of the Graduate Film Program at NYU since 2005, and was Chair of the Graduate Film Program at TischAsia in Singapore during its inaugural year of 2007/8. Joining forces with his colleagues in the Stern School of Business, John and Professor Sam Craig created the Dual MBA/MFA Degree in Producing, which accepted its first class in September 2008.

Education: University of Michigan, BGS (Bachelor of General Studies)

Source: https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/grad-film/101400504

Title: Professor of Theatre, Williams College
Date: December 5, 2017

At Williams since 1986, Eppel teaches acting, directing, dramatic literature, and directs departmental productions. He is a founding member of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg (South Africa’s first fully non-racial theatre which was started in 1972). His professional acting credits in South Africa span almost fifteen years in all of the major and fringe theatre companies in that country, as well as in film, TV and radio. In the United States since 1983, he has worked professionally with the New York Shakespeare Festival ; The American Ibsen Theatre; StageWest as an Associate Artist and director; and various fringe companies in New York City including the Ubu Rep and The West Bank Cafe Theatre. He most recently completed a season as an actor with Shakespeare Santa Cruz in California.

Title: eCommerce Entrepreneur
Date: March 17, 2015

Thomas Cornelius started his first internet business Addashop in 1997 which partnered with a European group that went public as one of the first European internet companies with a valuation north of $ 1 billion. The Addashop platform supported some of the early companies entering the ecommerce space that leveraged Addashop's integration into central distribution partners like Ingram.

Thomas has won various awards for his applications including Best Consumer Value Award (Jan. 2015), The One to Watch Program Award (Apr. 2014), Best Cash Innovation Award (Feb. 2014), and in January 2014 The Gotta-Have Mobile App and Killer Technology awards.

Title: Entrepreneurial Senior Executive
Date: October 20, 2015

Bev Seay is an Entrepreneurial Senior Executive with global experience and Fortune 500 track record. She is a recognized leader in innovative and creative technologies with strong university ties through personal commitment and industry collaboration. As a long time supporter of Flashpoint, Ms. Seay is also an advisor, coach, and mentor to university students and entrepreneurs. Ms. Seay has proven expertise in domestic and global business operations with a unique blend of strengths to include start-up, turnaround, high growth and acquisition. Not only is she adept at using extensive personal network to develop funding sources, build partnerships, and close deals, Ms. Seay has led the innovation of pioneering approaches in systems engineering, modeling and simulation, and the delivery of complex, composable software and hardware systems.

Bev received her Master's of Science in Computer, Information and Control Engineering as well as her Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Title: Managing Director, Innovation Portfolio Partners
Date: October 22, 2015

Karl Ronn is Managing Director of Innovation Portfolio Partners, a Silicon Valley based firm that helps CEOs and the Top Management of Fortune 500 companies find and develop new to the world products and services. He also co-founded VC-backed Butterfly Health that introduced Butterfly body liners nationally in September and is developing a software company building diagnostic competency for physicians using virtual human simulations of top medical school cases.

Prior to starting his own innovation firm, Karl was Vice President of Research & Development and General Manager of New Business for The Procter & Gamble Company. Swiffer, Febreze and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser are billion dollar businesses he helped to create and grow.

He is on the advisory boards of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Toledo, and Enviroscent. He is a member of TED conference and has been a speaker at the Mayo Clinic, Consumer Medical Conference, AMA and other innovation forums. His market creation book, The Reciprocity Advantage, was published in September 2014.

Title: General Counsel, Etsy
Date: November 3, 2015

Jordan is Etsy's General Counsel, bringing over 30 years of legal experience to oversee the global legal team and lead all legal matters for the company.

Before Etsy, Jordan served as the general counsel for New Island Capital Management, Silver Spring Networks, Opsware and Geoworks. A true creative at heart, Jordan considers himself a musician first, a crafts-maker second and a lawyer third.

Jordan holds a B.A. in Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Title: Managing Partner, iBusiness Partners
Date: November 17, 2015

Mr. Langs has split his work life between operations and advisory for leading edge technology companies for over 20 years. He has operations experience as a senior executive and board member of private and public technology companies, and the other half advising similar companies as lawyer, investment banker and corporate development consultant. He has extensive operations experience on the revenue side of small-cap to multi-billion dollar public growth companies and has substantially influenced revenue and balance sheet value prior to partial liquidation events such as financing, sales, public offerings, and sister listings on international public exchanges. Some public companies he was senior executive of include EVP at ACD Systems (ASA.TO) $45 million, EVP at Musician.com for Guitar Center (GTRC) $1.2 billion, SVP of business development at MP3.com (MPPP) from 25 people to $4 billion IPO, and VP of business development for Sybase New Media and Telecom (SY) $6 billion, Investment Banker for Chemical Bank in New York (now JP Morgan Chase), and Senior Consultant for Arthur D. Little in Boston (selecting acquisition targets, special diligence of pending acquisitions, and post merger integration work in US, Asia and Europe).

Title: Founding Partner, Marto Capital
Date: December 1, 2015

Katina is a financial services veteran with 20 years of international experience in the financial and technology industries leading fast growth organizations.

She is a founding partner of Marto Capital, and a Founder and Board Member of AcordIQ. From 2005 to 2014, she served as a Senior Executive and Management Committee Advisor at Bridgewater Associates during the company’s rapid expansion into the largest and one of the top performing money managers in the financial industry. Katina oversaw and built out Bridgewater’s critical areas to enable the companies growth including Operations, Technology, Fund Compliance and Legal, HR and Talent Management, Client Service Reporting, Risk Reporting and Metrics. Katina is an angel investor and advisory board member for a number of start-ups, and a frequent contributor to Forbes. She graduated summa cum laude with a BA in International Relations from Brigham Young University and received an MBA from Harvard Business School ('05).

Title: Managing Partner, Global Operations Group at TGP
Date: December 19, 2017

Steve Ellis is the Managing Partner of the Global Operations Group and Portfolio Business Building for TPG Growth and The Rise Fund. Steve has over ​three decades of leadership and global experience​.​ He was the former CEO of​ Asurion, the world’s leading provider of mobile device protection services and advanced technical support solutions​ that employs well over 16,000 employees. At Asurion, Steve developed and launched a suite of innovative new products and services that have propelled the company to record levels of revenue of profit. In 1993, Steve joined Bain & Company (from a Silicon Valley strategy consulting firm Steve co-founded in 1989) where he then held a n​ear​ 20 year​ tenure​ serving in a number of distinguished senior leadership positions, including ​the title Worldwide Managing Director (CEO) from 2005 to 2012. At Bain, Steve​ doubled ​the company's​ revenue and expanded its global footprint. His roles​ have​ included ​Managing Partner for Bain’s West Coast offices and Chair of Bain’s North American Operating Committee. ​ Further, ​​he had a seminal role in building Bain's​ Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice and dro​v​e the growth of the firm’s industry-leading Private Equity Group. ​ ​Steve​ led a number of ​their direct investment funds including venture, late-stage growth and private equity co-investment.

​Steve​ currently serves on the Board of Directors for Charles Schwab and The Bridgespan Group ​(​the world’s leading non-profit advisory firm serving foundations, philanthropists and other non-profits)​. In addition to several non-profit Boards, ​Steve​ serves as an advisor to the Chancellor office of UC Berkeley and has​ also​ served on the Advisory Committee for the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Steve received a B.A. in Economics and History with honors from the University of California at Berkeley. He also​ earned an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business​ where ​he’s a regular guest lecturer.

Title: Founder and former CEO, UpStart Communications
Date: March 22, 2016

Toby Rubin is the Founder and former CEO of UpStart - an accelerator in the Bay Area. Her first career began as a civil rights attorney in Mississippi, advocating on behalf of students with disabilities in education matters. She continued this work in her own practice when she moved to San Francisco in 1981. At the end of eight years of litigation that included a favorable 8-0 decision of the Rehnquist led U.S. Supreme Court, Ms. Rubin embarked on a second "career" in non-profit lay leadership. She rose to hold the President or Vice-President position in 8 local and national Jewish and secular non-profits. She is especially proud of her leadership of the San Francisco based Federation's community-wide Teen Initiative that transformed teen professionals and programming around the bay area.

In 2002, Toby joined the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE)​ staff to direct the ti-ke-a Fellowship for Educators of Jewish teens. While there​, Toby conceived and established two groundbreaking projects for the Bay Area: the Jewish Service Learning Project, (dedicated to helping Jewish community professionals integrate service learning into their program mix) and the Jewish Professionals Co-op, the precursor to UpStart. From 2006-2008, Toby served as Associate Director of the BJE.
​
Ms. Rubin holds a Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law, a Bachelor degree in political sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and​ is a graduate of the Wexner Heritage Fellowship.​

Title: CEO, ZAG Communications
Date: March 15, 2016

Zenobia Godschalk is the CEO of ZAG Communications, a PR and marketing agency serving high-growth technology companies. She was previously a sell-side analyst with Morgan Keegan, where she was a member of The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ranked Software Analyst team. Prior to that, she served as head of corporate communications for Opsware Inc (NASDAQ: OPSW), founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, which was acquired by HP for $1.6B. Zenobia graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Economics, minor in Industrial Engineering. Zenobia serves on the executive team of WIT's 'Girls Get IT' program, and as a ‘Science Cheerleader’ – a volunteer group of current and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders pursuing science and engineering careers and inspiring young women to consider careers in science.

Title: Private Equity Investor
Date: March 8, 2016

Steve Chamberlain has been a private equity investor in mostly tech startups for the past 16 years. He has made 24 investments over the years that included successful exits with WebMD, N2 Broadband, ViTrue and Repay OnLine. He has 9 that are currently active including Springbot, NDN, Insight Pool, Uncle Maddio’s Pizza, The Clymb, Mana Health and CPO Commerce. Prior to this Steve was the co-founder and Executive Vice President of Turner Home Entertainment where he oversaw five major business units for TBS. He also oversaw The Beatles Anthology for Capitol EMI which became the most successful music compilation series in history.

Title: Vice President of Corporate Development, NCR Corporation
Date: October 18, 2016

Linnea Geiss is the Vice President of Corporate Development for NCR Corporation, which includes Mergers and Acquisitions, Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, and New Market Development initiatives. Prior to joining NCR, Linnea was an investment principal at Arcapita Ventures, a growth-stage venture capital fund, and she began her career at Radiant Systems. Linnea holds a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Duke University and a MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a current member of the Board of Directors of the Atlanta CEO Council, a former member of the Advisory Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta, and served as the Chair of the Southern Capital Conference from 2010 – 2012.

Title: Managing Partner and Founder, Blue Mesa Partners
Date: November 1, 2016

Marc is a serial entrepreneur, veteran dealmaker, senior advisor, happily recovering deal lawyer, and former Managing Partner of a full-service corporate law firm.

Marc has held the title of Director for several public companies and numerous private companies, primarily located in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, or Cleveland. Currently, he is on the Board of Directors for CardinalCommerce (authenticated payments), Cohesant (water infrastructure), Within3 (digital healthcare collaboration), Thuuz (real time sports), and CadenceCounsel (Ad Hoc Counsel on demand). He is also Senior Advisor to LoungeBuddy (travel app) and former Senior Advisor for Twitch (sold to Amazon 2014).

He has been on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than 20 years and also on the board for the Rex Foundation (non-profit founded by the Grateful Dead). Moreover, Marc has been a prolific author and teacher in areas of business, securities, finance, and negotiation.

Marc has his B.A. from Yale and J.D. from Boston University.

Title: CTO and Co-Founder, Hired
Date: November 29, 2016

He has been passionate about software development since writing his first game at age 7. Between ages 13 and 18, Allan earned his 10,000 hours coding online games (in C) with thousands of players. In college, Allan founded a web development company, Webmasters International, and bootstrapped it to profitability with 50+ employees. Most recently, Allan co-founded Talkable, the leading social referral platform for ecommerce companies. Talkable is backed by YCombinator, 500Startups, and a group of prominent angel investors.

Title: Chief Product Officer, Lytro
Date: November 17, 2016

Ariel Braunstein is Chief Product Officer for Lytro, setting product direction and driving the company's end-to-end product management process.

Ariel has a long track record of building successful consumer software and hardware businesses. Prior to joining Lytro, Ariel Founded and served as CEO of Knowmia, a video platform for education. Ariel was also Co-Founder and Head of Products at Pure Digital Technologies, which developed the iconic Flip Video line of pocket camcorders. When Pure Digital was acquired by Cisco in 2009, Ariel headed all products for Cisco's Consumer Products Division and oversaw Flip Video as well as networking devices and software from Linksys, Pure Networks and other consumer brands. Previously Ariel ran Interact Inc., a gaming platform startup out of Israel and led product development for FamilyWonder.com which was later sold to Sega of Japan.

Title: Global Marketing Director in Innovation, Beam Suntory
Date: November 14, 2017

Kevin Burke is the Global Marketing Director in Innovation at Beam Suntory, the world's third largest premium spirits company.  Previously, he was the Global Brand Director at the Coca-Cola company who led strategy, expansion, and innovation on the Glaceau vitaminwater, Glaceau smartwater and Aquarius businesses.  While in Batch 5, Kevin led a corporate team from Coke through the Flashpoint process that identified unmet consumer needs and insights which lead to the creation of 9 innovative product ideas for the Coca-Cola Global innovation pipeline - some of which are in market today around the world.

Title: Former CEO, RhodeCode
Date: October 10, 2017

Matt has over 25 years of successful leadership in high growth startups across diverse markets (cloud, data center, security software, semiconductor, enterprise). He’s been an early stage CEO seven times with five of those companies achieving successful exits.

Most recently, Matt was CEO at RhodeCode, an early stage company with offices in Berlin and Silicon Valley. RhodeCode’s source code management system is used by large global enterprises to manage their complex and large scale needs. Matt’s prior CEO roles include Abaca Technology (email security company acquired by Proofpoint), Fat Spaniel (renewable energy software company acquired by Power-One), Q-layer (pioneering cloud data center automation startup acquired by Sun Microsystems), Determina (innovative enterprise security software company acquired by VMWare), and several other companies. Earlier in his career, he held executive sales and marketing roles at StrataCom, Cisco, and other companies. He has also been an EIR at Greylock, Benchmark, and Artiman Ventures.

Title: Serial entrepreneur and Investor
Date: October 3, 2017

Dave is a serial entrepreneur and investor based in Atlanta. His investments, developments, and startups have generated value in excess of $500 Million over the past 20 years.

In 1994, Dave co-founded a hotel company called Sun Suites, which became the second-largest economy extended stay hotel chain in America. Today, Sun Suites and its affiliates own and manage more than 175 hotels across the country.

After leaving Sun Suites, Dave became CEO of WebTone Corporation, which became a leading banking software company. In 2004, WebTone was sold to for more than $90 million to Fidelity Financial Corporation.

In addition to being a founder of companies, Dave is a frequent investor in local technology startups. Success stories from these investments include Mansell Group (sold to Riverside Capital), Avalon Communications, SecureWorks (sold to Dell), ESC (sold to TSYS) and Signup4.com. Dave also lead the acquisition of more than 100 commercial properties throughout the Southeast and was named the Top Five Producer by the Atlanta Board of Realtors.

Title: Author, speaker, and comedian
Date: September 19, 2017

Paul Ollinger is an author, speaker, and comedian whose material addresses the excitement, stress, and contradictions of the modern business world. Paul launched his career in the digital media industry in 1997 with LAUNCH.com, and went on to work at Yahoo! and Facebook. He was among the first 250 employees at Facebook serving as the Western Region VP of Sales. After Facebook, Paul was President of social ad tech company SHIFT, which was bought by Brand Networks in 2015. He has served as an advisor to Gunslinger Studios (gaming), 8Tracks.com (music), Atomized (marketing visualization), and LeanKit (project management). In addition to his 15 years in digital media leadership positions, Paul has been heavily involved in the stand-up comedy world, performing over 700 shows, and opening for such comics as Norm MacDonald, Bob Saget, Roseanne Barr, and many more. Paul’s writing has appeared in Huffington Post, Digiday, Poets & Quants, and on his satirical business blog, Banner Ad Confidential. His first book, You Should Totally Get an MBA, was released in 2016.

Title: Founder and Executive Director, RefugePoint
Date: September 12, 2017

Sasha Chanoff is the founder and executive director of RefugePoint, a humanitarian organization that finds lasting solutions for the world’s most at risk refugees. He co-authored a new book titled From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions with a foreword by David Gergen. He is a recipient of the Charles Bronfman Humanitarian Prize, the Harvard Center for Public Leadership Gleitsman International Activist Award, and is a White House Champion of Change. He serves on the steering committee of New England International Donors and is an advisor to the Good Lie Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Warner Bros. film The Good Lie about the resettlement of the Sudanese Lost Boys. Sasha has appeared on 60 Minutes and in other national media outlets, and has received social entrepreneur fellowships from the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Ashoka, and Echoing Green. His book is about defining moral decision points in leadership, and is based on a life and death dilemma Sasha faced during a US rescue operation into the Congo to evacuate massacre survivors. The story is a featured video on the Women in the World / NYT website. Sasha has also told this story on the TEDx stage, for NPR’s Moth Radio Hour, and in other forums. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

Title: Co-Founder and President, Nextel
Date: September 5, 2017

Meade has spent the past 19 years as an angel investor in Atlanta. He formed a holding company for telecommunication interests and currently serves as President and CEO.

Meade co-founded and was President of PowerFone, Inc. from 1992 through 1994, when it was merged into Nextel. Prior to PowerFone he purchased and was President of Johnson Communications Corporation from 1986 through 1992, when it was acquired by Nextel. From 1980 to 1984 Meade was with Kimberly-Clark Corporation, where he rose to Vice President and General Manager of the Service and Industrial Division. Prior to that experience, he spent six years at Scientific-Atlanta in a number of sales, marketing and operations management positions. He received his BEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Harvard University

Title: Distinguished Fellow, Center For Startup Engineering
Date: August 29, 2017

Eric Gold is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Startup Engineering at Georgia Tech.

He formerly served as the lead behavioral economist at Fidelity Investments, the largest mutual fund company in the U.S. - a role he held for a decade.

Having extensive expertise in areas of behavioral finance, software design, human-computer interaction, and decision information systems, Eric founded Gold Objects, Inc. in 2006, a software and consulting company. He also has expertise in how to apply behavioral economics to startups and entrepreneurship.

Title: Co-Founder and CTO, Springbot
Date: August 22, 2017

A graduate of Georgia Tech, Joe is Springbot's resident office nerd and adrenaline junky, otherwise known as the co-founder and CTO. His passion is helping eCommerce stores grow, one data-driven marketing action at a time... while still making time to jump out of the occasional plane. As Springbot's resident eCommerce marketing expert, Joe specializes in creating data-driven marketing and advertising technology platforms to help online stores increase customer acquisition and grow their overall revenue. Joe is a graduate of Flashpoint's Batch 2.

Title: Operating Partner, Council Capital
Date: August 15, 2017

James R. Balkcom, Jr., or "Jim", serves as an Operating Partner at Council Capital. He has 30+ years of experience in corporate governance and finance and has extensive expertise in management assessment, development, and mentorship , and in creating and leading high-performance boards of directors.

Jim served as the President and CEO of both Techsonic Industries, Inc. (Humminbird) and Pameco Corp.,
and he has served as Chairman (at various levels) for TalentQuest, Inc., iKobo, Inc., EndoChoice, Inc., and Commercesouth, Inc., just to name a few.