Mentors
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If you would like to mentor the CITRIS Foundry innovators, please submit this form.
MENTORS
Marc Tarpenning is the co-founder and former VP of Electrical Engineering at Tesla. He ran the electrical engineering group and was the acting CFO during Tesla’s first three years. He is currently a member of the advisory board at Clearpath Robotics, Venture Partner at Spero Ventures, and was an entrepreneur in residence at Mayfield Fund before he joined Greenstart. He also held executive positions at Packet Design, NuvoMedia, and Gemstar-TV Guide.
Todd Morrill has been building and leading bioscience companies since the first biotech boom in the early 1980s. He spent seven years in investment banking for pharma and biotech, and has worked at multinational pharma, diagnostics and tools companies. His roles have included sales, product management, marketing, R&D, business development and CEO. He has been an independent Board member of three biotech companies.
Jenn Cogley is the Deputy Director of Community Relations with Bayer Corporation. Prior to her position at Bayer, Jenn was the Sustainable Business Coordinator for the City of Berkeley, and focused on growing high tech industry in the city.
Bob has more than 25 years’ experience leading business growth in life sciences including therapeutics, diagnostics, gene expression analysis platforms, disease management, informatics, imaging and process monitoring and control. Presently, he is president of A.B.E.S Partners, a management consulting company focusing on corporate strategy, M&A and fundraising for life science and software companies.
Alain Labat has more than 30 years of senior and global management experience. Alain co-founded Harvest Management Partners (HMP) in July 2010. At Harvest, he has been focusing on building their automotive practice. Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) became their first advisory client in 2011, followed by TE Connectivity Automotive in 2015, Silicon Mobility in 2016 and more recently Sirius XM Connected Cars in 2017. Prior to starting HMP, he was President and CEO of VaST Systems, co-founder of Sequence Design, and Entrepreneurial Partner at Menlo Ventures.
An experienced CEO, board member, venture capital investor and holder of the NACD Board Leadership Fellowship, Dr. Laura Oliphant is passionate about bringing new technologies to market and transforming underperforming businesses. Laura was an Investment Director with Intel Capital where she delivered more than $1 billion in strategic and financial value including a >2x cash on cash return. Immediately after leaving Intel, Laura served as the CEO of Translarity. She has since lent her expertise to other companies as consultant, advisor and board director.
David Lindeman, PhD, is Director Health, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), UC Berkeley, and Director, Center for Technology and Aging (CTA). He has worked in the health and long-term care fields for nearly 40 years as a health services researcher and gerontologist, conducting research related to health care technology, assistive technologies, chronic disease management, healthy aging, disabilities, dementia, community-based and residential services, health care workforce, and family caregiving.
Kyle Park has more than 25 years of experience in investment banking, M&A transactions, strategic advisory and leading both early-stage and public technology companies. Before co-founding Harvest Management Partners, he was Chief Financial Officer of VaST Systems, a global provider of embedded software and virtualization technology. Prior, Kyle was CFO of several start-ups including Jasper Design Automation, ReShape and etNetworks. He has raised more than $250M in venture financing in his career.
David is the founder of Redhorse Constructors and Co-Founder of the Human Needs Project (HNP). He founded Redhorse Constructors thirty years ago in Northern California, and was Custom Builder of the Year in 2007. His company built Metallica’s headquarters in San Rafael, and has also done work for Huey Lewis, Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani and Green Day. He co-founded the HNP with Connie Nielsen in June 2010 to bring a new level of quality water and sanitation services to Kibera slum, Kenya. A UC Berkeley alum, David is on the advisory board of the College of Natural Resources.
Dr. Adi Diner has been building complex hardware systems for 20+ years for the scientific, defense, biotech, and medical device industry.
Adi’s vast experience in hardware projects and the entire development cycle includes managing requirements, risk analysis, budget and schedule planning, regulatory, and testing.
Robert Roche is an entrepreneur, investor, civic leader and philanthropist with more than 30 years of experience in the United States, China and Japan. He is the founder and President of Roche Enterprises, an organization that invests in a broad range of industries with emphasis in American, Chinese and Japanese markets. Throughout his career, Robert Roche has been involved in the startup, funding and management of more than 50 companies worldwide.
Sumin Kim is a senior associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California, where he advises startups and venture capital investors. He acts as outside general counsel to his clients and guides them through business and legal challenges, including corporate governance, fundraising, and commercial contracting. Sumin led technology adoption and efficiency initiatives as a corporate attorney at Atrium, a law firm, and legal technology startup that was funded by over a hundred Silicon Valley investors. Sumin earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from Northwestern University.
Dan works at the intersection of design and culture, with a special focus on public health, disability, civic life, education, and aging. Dan currently is a senior research scientist and co-director of Tech for Social Good at the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at UC Berkeley. In addition to his work at CITRIS, Dan is a principal investigator at the Public Health Institute, and continues to work in industry as a product, experience, and curriculum designer.
Jing (Jane) Ge is the innovation and partnership manager at CITRIS. She brings experience in venture capital as well as academic research to support CITRIS Health partnerships, including a commercialization collaboration with China. Ge also works on incubating and accelerating UC Berkeley’s university research technology startups into the marketplace in clean technology, healthcare, biotechnology, AI, and semiconductors, among other areas.
OFFICE HOURS
Caroline Winnett is Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator. At SkyDeck she leads a program that hosts over 200 companies per year. Last year, she launched the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, a VC fund investing in SkyDeck startups that shares half of fund carry with UC Berkeley. Prior to SkyDeck, Caroline was a serial entrepreneur. Caroline co- founded the pioneer company in the neuromarketing industry, NeuroFocus, which was acquired by Nielsen in 2011. She is an angel investor and an Advisor and Board member for tech startups.
Jeff Malone is the Head of Operations for Design + Industry, the largest and most awarded design firm in Australia, with offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Jeff began mentoring Sky Deck companies in January 2019 and holds regular sessions via Gotomeeting on-line. Jeff has a background in both electrical and mechanical product design and development and spent more than 20 years leading international manufacturing start-ups and supply chain development. He has personally led design and manufacturing programs on everything from cosmetic packaging to city buses, over the horizon radar systems for defence and numerous med tech products.
Eugene Noh is the Recruiting Director for the Bay Area I-Corps Node which provides Lean LaunchPad training for startups at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, Stanford University, and other local universities. Previously, Eugene served at the CITRIS Foundry where he developed the Foundry Mentor Match Program and Founder Skill Series. As the Venture Lab Manager at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Eugene accelerated the growth of 12 Berkeley startups and helped them to raise their first round of outside funding.
Joe Wyatt is a corporate lawyer who represents entrepreneurs and startup companies in complex business transactions throughout their lifecycle. For almost 20 years, he has advised startup and public company clients and investors in Silicon Valley and across the nation. His clients span the technology and biotech sectors. Wyatt’s practice focuses on startup company and general corporate counseling, and equity and debt financings for startup companies and sell- and buy-side mergers and acquisitions, and legal issues and business challenges.
Daniel Xu is a registered U.S. patent attorney focusing on patents, trademarks, and other IP matters. He’s drafted and prosecuted patent applications in a wide variety of technical fields including medical devices & imaging, ophthalmic devices & treatments, dental apparatus & treatments, diagnostic kits & devices, genetic sequencing, stem cell treatments, consumer hardware, software for startups, academic & research institutions, and multinational corporations. He has experience representing investors and companies in IP due diligence associated with mergers and acquisition and investment transactions.
WORKSHOPS
Chris is an executive coach, licensed architect and passionate listener. His training as both a designer and coach informs how he works with clients by endeavoring to understand and hold where they are as valid, which provides a safe place to create what they most want in their personal and professional lives. For his entire career he has been engaging groups and individuals to craft sustainable solutions that are thoughtful and unapologetically beautiful.
As Director of Knowledge Management of CITRIS, Julie leads the development of data and information systems for the institute. Julie was previously a Partner at the CITRIS Foundry technology accelerator headquartered at UC Berkeley, where she supported a portfolio of early-stage startups based on deep science and research inventions. She has a research background in life sciences, an MBA with a sustainability emphasis, and has lectured and presented on innovation strategies.
Utilizing her partnership development, stakeholder engagement, project management, facilitation, and research skills, Elizabeth draws on her past cross-sector experience to design city policies and programs to ensure socially and environmentally responsible economic growth. Before joining city government, Elizabeth led IHS Markit’s Economic Strategy Solutions regional competitiveness consulting practice and launched the corporate Sustainable Customer Solutions initiative.
Juliette Devillard is an Energy Fellow at Greentown Labs, the largest clean technology incubator in the U.S. Her primary work centers around the Greentown Launch program and the Greentown Labs Bold Ideas Challenge. She manages inbound startup applications for the Bold Ideas Challenge and conducts research into future accelerator programs and potential new partnerships. She has also set up “office hours” for co-founders and CEOs of Greentown Labs startups to help them improve their pitching and public speaking skills.
Roger is a senior strategic adviser on innovating and growing businesses through Investments, M&A and Partnerships. Adept at building and leading technology strategic advisory businesses, he launched the US investment banking presence in Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) for the second-largest bank in Europe by establishing the group’s M&A practice in San Francisco. Before moving to the US, he spearheaded its European Technology M&A investment banking franchise, including creating a Digital corporate finance studio advising companies across industries on future-proofing their business.
Chris Myers is the Senior Lab Manager and Head Inventioneer for the CITRIS Invention Lab – a one of a kind educational maker space at CITRIS and the Banatao Institute that serves the UC Berkeley community – and teaches at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. He has worked with many companies including Intel Research, (Xerox)Parc, and Nokia Research. Chris has a passion for education and has developed and taught STEM classes for schools, museums and libraries.
Bethany is working on helping startups comply with data privacy laws through Lumas, a team of data architecture and privacy experts who are committed to building transparent and ethical frameworks that simplify privacy and compliance requirements for innovative companies. Lumas helps with strategy planning surrounding data architecture and privacy and the automation process of remaining compliant with data privacy laws (generally costing companies with legacy systems 50-100k) for a fraction of the cost. They aim to be your privacy partner as you start on your journey and grow, and help you change the world while protecting the rights of your consumers.