Lyle Adams

As an operator with expertise in operations, analytics, product management, expansion, strategy, and user growth, Lyle focuses on helping early-stage companies grow and scale by tackling their operational challenges. After a brief professional soccer career, Lyle began his tech career at LivingSocial. Lyle was an early employee at Uber, having joined the company in June 2012. During his time at Uber, Lyle helped grow the Washington, DC market, implemented Analytics Bootcamp, and built the first internal analytics training platform. Lyle holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Wake Forest University and an M.S. in Sports Management from Columbia University.

Lisa Benson

Lisa Bensonis a Vice President of IMG Models, New York. She oversees the careers of several of the industry’s top names, with a focus on developing each of them into 360-degree brands whose careers evolve alongside the fast-paced and increasingly digitally-driven fashion industry. Lisa’s client roster touts names such as Chrissy Teigen, Lily Aldridge, Chanel Iman, Halima Aden, and Georgia Fowler to name a few.

Lisa started her career at IMG in 2002 as a receptionist and was quickly promoted to become Ivan Bart’s assistant after mastering the switchboard. Since then, Lisa has worked her way up the ranks to become a key part of the IMG Models senior leadership team. During her tenure, Lisa has secured countless covers for her clients in top publications such as Vogue, V Magazine, Sports Illustrated, CR Magazine and Vanity Fair. She has also been at the helm of several deals with industry leading brands including Victoria’s Secret, Estée Lauder, H&M, Google and Bobbi Brown.

Lisa studied Finance and International Business at Pennsylvania State University, where she was a star player on the Division I golf team. She currently resides in Manhattan, New York.

Natalie Bruss

Natalie is the founder of BrussCo, a bespoke brand advisory and venture studio focused on empowering companies to see around the corner—and connecting them with the right people, places, and partners to get there. We identify strategic opportunities and creative advantages that others do not see. From trend forecasting and marketing strategy to branding and partnerships, BrussCo works with companies to force multiply ideas in the gray areas where venture capital, marketing, media, and brand meet today.

Previously, Natalie served as a Partner at Fifth Wall Ventures. At Fifth Wall, Natalie leveraged her background as a connector and marketer to create partnerships for LPs and portfolio companies, as well as overseeing marketing and brand strategy for the firm itself. Prior to Fifth Wall, Natalie spent nine years as Vice President of Digital Strategy and Partnerships at ID, where she built and ran the digital division.

Natalie started her career as a trend forecaster and connector, bringing together innovators and expanding new ecosystems across technology, entertainment, media and consumer brands. She’s been honored as one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 35 under 35, Fast Company’s MCP1000, Variety’s New Leaders, Forbes 30 Under 30, and been named one of the Top Five Women in Commercial Real Estate 2018 among many other accolades. Natalie began her career at Creative Artists Agency and subsidiary The Intelligence Group.

Natalie has participated in and moderated panels for numerous industry conferences including PSFK’s Future of Retail, CES, HIVE, SXSW, Cosmopolitan Magazine, in addition to speaking for classes at MIT, USC and Harvard. In 2012, Natalie worked with the White House to curate their first-ever “21st Century Innovators and Communicators” summit.

Natalie grew up just outside of Washington, DC and has worked with a variety of philanthropic organizations including Stand Up To Cancer (she negotiated Facebook and SU2C’s partnership in 2010, making SU2C the first charity to allow donations via Facebook Credits, as well as FB’s first-ever philanthropy live stream in 2016), Sean Penn’s JPHRO, Ben Stiller’s STILLERSTRONG, Sean Parker’s cancer efforts, and Star Wars Force For Change. She is a proud investor in Omaze, which has granted more than $100M to charity through once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and currently co-chairs the NextGen board of the Motion Picture Television Fund.

Andi Cross

Andi Cross has a background in venture, strategy, growth, product, digital and impact. She’s held roles at both large-scale and startup organisations—helping enterprise businesses differentiate and evolve, in addition to starting companies from the ground up.

Andi runs a consulting company called Ohana, where she and her team help businesses share their impact with the world. She works with founders and executives to identify the best strategies that allow their vision to thrive. Working with early-stage startups, mature businesses and non-for-profits, she identifies the pain points and fills in the gaps. Andi also acts as Strategy Director & Chief Strategy Officer for three ocean conservation groups through Ohana—SeaLegacy, Oceans 2050 and Beneath the Waves. She oversees all innovation, transformation and strategy efforts while managing remote teams across disciplines and around the world.

Today, Andi continues to collaborate with established venture capitalists and startup studios globally, developing and executing holistic strategies for early-stage startups. Oftentimes, the founders she works with do not have the background, knowledge or resources, so they ask her to be an extension of their leadership team and serve as an advisor. One of her key partners is Hatzimemos & Libby—a strategy and venture firm based in New York City—where she is a long-standing venture partner. She also is part of the brain trust with Tembo Group (an APCO Worldwide Company) acting as an advisor for a roster of impact clients.

Prior to this, she was the VP of Strategic Growth at Huge—one of the leading digital design companies in the world. In this role she oversaw the global business development and strategic operations teams. Her core function was to ensure the agency’s 12 offices were on track for rapid growth, while also operationalizing the business development discipline. As a strategist by trade, she also helped build out the business and brand strategy offerings, as well as a new venture arm alongside C-Suite.

Andi was the Head of Strategy & Business Development at Axcess Worldwide—a strategy firm with expertise in the luxury & lifestyle space. She helped transform the business into a full-service offering, expanding beyond luxury into the world of mass consumer businesses. Her client portfolio included companies such as Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Las Vegas Sands Corp., Intercontinental Hotels Group, Jamba Juice, Majestic Steel, Hyundai, Fisker Automotive, Norwegian Cruise Lines, to name a few.

During her time at Axcess Worldwide, she co-founded a lifestyle company—Bad Kids Collective—that ran successfully for five years. The company focused on dance music culture in metropolitan markets and consisted of three units—event production, fast fashion and content creation. The business was started online and saw rapid expansion due to its loyal following consisting of fans, DJs, influencers and partners alike. Andi was featured in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, Elite Daily, Time Magazine, The Today Show & Buzzfeed for work in entrepreneurship, venture, innovation and disruptive strategy.

Andi has also held roles at Ogilvy & Mather in Business Development and Victoria’s Secret Beauty in Product Development & Creative Operations in her early years living in New York. In 2009, she graduated from The George Washington University with a BBA. She studied abroad in Milan, Italy and has multiple certificates from Harvard Business School’s online program in leadership and entrepreneurship. She currently splits her time between Australia and America and was recently accepted into National Geographic’s Explorers Club.

David Dietz

Social entrepreneur, impact investor and story teller David Dietz is the Director of Impact Initiatives NEXUS, a global thought community that brings together leading next-gen social entrepreneurs, philanthropists and social innovators from the world’s most influential families to catalyze new leadership and accelerate solutions to our world’s most critical problems. At NEXUS David has overseen the launch of task forces to provide emergency aid to the Grand Bahama and to provide PPE to frontline workers during the COVID Pandemic as well as forums, The NEXUS Impact Accelerator and The SUPR Initiative to eliminate single-use plastic in major sports stadiums across the country.

Prior to NEXUS, David was the founder of Modavanti, the world’s largest online sustainable fashion retailer. Modavanti was named best in Ethical Fashion by Instyle Magazine, and Honoree for Best for NYC by B Corp and the City. Additionally David serves as a board member of Georgetown University’s Entrepreneurship Alliance working to expand Georgetown’s entrepreneurial community. Previously David served as a conflict journalist in the Middle East where he reported on the Arab Spring. He has spoken at the White House, The UN, The Web Summit in Dublin and SXSW. David holds his degree from Georgetown University with a major in Arabic Studies and a double minor in Economics and Government.

Justin Kamine

Justin spearheads the business development and public partnerships for KDC. He joined KDC in 2011, which has developed over $3.5B of infrastructure to date.  Since then has been at the forefront spearheading the development and business cases for sustainable and environmentally progressive technologies while building a network of people that believe in the mission of sustainability at scale.

He was recently awarded Forbes 30U30 for Food, while also being ranked 50 Most Impactful Entrepreneurs in the U.S. He leads much of the public outreach for KDC and won the Clean Tech Equity Award presented by the Prince of Monaco and is a founding member of the Forbes Impact Summit focused on bringing together entrepreneurs, investors and impact focused funds to drive real meaningful change.

Justin is a Board Member of Earthday, the largest civic platform focused on Earth, the cofounder of UPGRAID, a plant based healthcare company, a board member and investor into Loliware – the world’s first seaweed based bioplastic – and an investor into Salted, an on-demand healthy food nationwide network of ghost kitchens, providing healthy and affordable foods to cities previously considered food deserts.

He graduated from Lafayette College in 2011, with a major in Environmental Public Policy and Economics.

Carolyn Liikala

Carolyn is focused on building innovation vehicles like venture labs, incubators, and investment initiatives, advising startups and Fortune 50 corporations on innovation strategies and strategic partnerships, and bridging connections between public and private sectors in several markets.
Carolyn leads Innovation for Caruso, one of the largest privately held real estate firms in the US with a portfolio of luxury commercial, residential and hospitality properties. She is focused on establishing the firm’s innovation strategy.

Previously, Carolyn was a Partner at Silicon Foundry, a membership-based corporate innovation advisory platform, where worked with executives from companies like Estee Lauder Companies, British Petroleum, Belgium Post, Royal Bank of Scotland and other international entities.

Prior to this, Carolyn launched accelerators for RocketSpace, a San Francisco based corporate innovation firm. She served as the Director of Growth, Strategy and Data and Head of TERRA, a food and agriculture accelerator backed by Nestle, Rabobank, BASF, and others. Earlier in her career, Carolyn managed startup portfolios for EvoNexus, a non-profit startup technology incubator and accelerator backed by Qualcomm, Flex, ViaSat, and others.

In addition to her private sector work, Carolyn enables collaboration between the public sectors and the innovation economy internationally through work with Public Private Partnership groups like Solutions International, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission and Colombian government groups.

Carolyn enjoys highly creative problem solving and making room for new ideas, fresh perspectives, and emerging technologies to thrive. She’s passionate about building organizations and cultures that are grounded in transparency, diversity and autonomy with a “striving for the greater good” mentality. Carolyn operates with a global perspective and understanding of multicultural nuances and foreign business protocols. She’s trilingual in English, Spanish, and Italian with dual US and European citizenship.

Mike MacCombie

Mike MacCombie is an Ohio-born investor who works at the intersection of behavior science, experience design, and storytelling to help startups grow from their first product to exit.

As Director of Platform at ff Venture Capital, a New York City-based early stage firm, Mike is responsible for creating partnerships, communities, and systems to accelerate the growth of over 80 portfolio companies, such as Omaze, IndieGoGo, Owlet, Movable Ink, and Socure. The ffVC platform includes 16 function-specific peer learning groups ranging in topics from pricing strategy to data science, a community of over 900 institutional investors across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, and systems for finding high-potential founders weeks and months before they fundraise.

Before joining ffVC, Mike worked as a behavioral consultant for organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to professional sports teams and tech conferences, creating communities, experiences, referral programs, and brand narratives to inspire increased loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing among high value audience segments.

For the last three years, in his free time Mike has been building a referral-only community curated purely by personality for people in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, with the aim of developing it into the most generous community in the world.

Outside of ffVC, Mike is a mentor for the Techstars NYC accelerator and Quake Capital, a pre-seed accelerator in New York, Austin, and Los Angeles.

Mike is an advisory board member of the Vinetta Project, a nonprofit channeling funding towards a community of female entrepreneurs across the country, and is a board director of NYC Blend, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the accessibility of networks and mentorship to underestimated founders in New York. He has also spoken internationally on startup ecosystem building in countries such as Haiti and Ghana.

Mike received his BA in Economics, Public Policy, and Education from Brown University in 2011. In his free time, Mike can be found running around the waterfronts of Manhattan, carving landscape art out of Amazon delivery boxes, and watching every new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Daniela Saltzman

Daniela is the founder and CEO of Saltzman & Co., a communications advisory firm that enables companies to generate value from sustainable products and services. Clients range from a global media company, investment firms, and early stage businesses.

From 2010-2017 she was with Generation Investment Management, a leading sustainable investment firm co-founded by Vice President Al Gore and David Blood with $20bn+ in assets under management. She led Generation’s advocacy work on Sustainable Capitalism and was the Director of The Generation Foundation. Prior to joining Generation, Daniela was with Goldman Sachs in the investment banking legal group. Daniela has been actively researching and publishing on the profitable intersection between business and sustainability since 2003.

Daniela received her B.A. from Brown University (honors) and her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

While at Brown, Daniela developed and helped teach a pioneering course on Social Entrepreneurship and wrote an honors thesis titled Corporate Social Responsibility on Wall Street: A Must. During her graduate work at Harvard Business School, she was part of a leading team of researchers on the topic of corporate sustainability disclosure and was a co-editor of The Landscape of Integrated Reporting: Reflections and Next Steps (Boston: Harvard Business School, 2010). Daniela has authored several white papers and articles that have appeared in numerous publications including Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Daniela serves as an advisor to Mission 2020, Christiana Figueres’ initiative to accelerate global climate action and curb emissions.

Cory Sullivan

As the son of a farm-girl from Iowa and 25-year Manhattan restaurant veteran, food has always played a central role in Cory Sullivan’s life. However, it wasn’t until after graduating from Deerfield Academy during his freshman year at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania that he grew to appreciate the power of food to inspire and connect people; coincidentally, it was the premiere that year of the 1st season of Top Chef that incubated his interest in cooking. Following the conclusion of his studies in Marketing and Management, he opted to return home to the New York area and begin a career in the hospitality industry.

At the advice of many of his father’s former colleagues, he opted for the Front of House and dove right into the deep end as the opening expediter at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Maialino; two years later he was running the bar program at the iconic Union Square Cafe. When an opportunity arose with Tom Colicchio to marry his passions for food, sustainability and social impact, Cory jumped at the chance to move into a corporate role at Crafted Hospitality. This endeavor would lead to countless trips to Washington DC to lobby members of Congress on food system reform and ultimately, launching a small investment fund with Tom focused on early stage companies at the intersection of food and technology.

In 2019, Cory co-founded Health Hospitality Partners (HHP), a boutique real estate development firm operating exclusively in the healthcare space, as Chief Operating Officer. HHP partners with hospitals to rethink how they leverage the positive power of food to drive outstanding customer experiences and improved public health outcomes, all while bolstering their bottom line at zero cost to partner sites.

Cory achieved the rank of Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America and was the president of the Phi Delta Theta chapter at Penn. Every August, he spends a week in Maine with Experience Camps as a counselor in a cabin of 11 young boys who have experienced the death of a parent or sibling, providing guidance and support through their grief journey. Outside of the work his interests include golf, skiing, Pilates, meditation and perusing farmers markets for that night’s dinner ingredients.

Annie Day Thorp

Annie Day Thorp is a marketer and entrepreneur focused on direct-to-consumer brands. Most recently, she was the founding Chief Marketing Officer of women’s work wear brand MM.LaFleur. She scaled the venture-backed brand an average of 300% y/y over four years, led their pivot to a stylist-enabled business model, and helped to lead fundraising, communications, and HR. Prior to MM.LaFleur, she worked in marketing for Amazon-owned Quidsi (the Diapers.com family of sites). Annie started her career in Online Sales and Operations at Google.

Annie currently sits on the board of designer shoe brand Sarah Flint, and is an advisor to DTC brands Haute Hijab, Service First Jewelry, and Paper Cape children’s clothing.  Annie earned her BA with honors in Social Studies from Harvard College. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their three children.

Roshan Patel

Roshan Patel is the Founder & CEO of Walnut, a lending platform that makes healthcare more affordable for patients by breaking up large medical bills into small, monthly payments. Before Walnut, Roshan served as the Senior Analyst at H/L. Prior to joining H/L Ventures, Roshan was an Associate at Space Capital, a venture fund focused on early-stage companies in the Space industry, where he led the sourcing and diligence of new investment opportunities for the firm. Prior to that, he was an Quant Trader at Trillium, a boutique hedge fund in New York City. He is also the founder of Equality VC, a non-profit organization that provides strategic advice and fundraising support to early stage companies with under-represented minority founders. Roshan holds an MS in Finance from Vanderbilt University and a BS in Mathematics from George Washington University. He currently sits on the Board of Children’s Scholarship Fund and is a Mentor at Venture for America.

Sheena Paul

Sheena Paul is Chief Operating Officer of World Class, a private real estate investment firm headquartered in Austin with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. Ms. Paul was a member of the founding team of World Class, and is involved in all phases of development and operations for the company. Her primary responsibility is the development and execution of firm-wide initiatives at World Class and its subsidiaries. She has managed over $1 billion in acquisitions, financings, and operations of real estate assets across the United States.

Prior to rejoining World Class to found its New York office, Ms. Paul was an attorney in the New York office of global law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she practiced in the restructuring and international banking groups. She was recently named Cover Woman for Austin Woman Magazine’s May 2018 Edition, and has previously been awarded as a Woman of Influence by Real Estate Forum Magazine, and the Rising Star: Profiles in Power by the Austin Business Journal. Ms. Paul is also an active philanthropist who currently serves on the Duke Law Alumni Association Board, and the marketing advisory board for the Global Wildlife Conservation, and has previously served a number of philanthropic organizations in both advisory and legal roles.

Ms. Paul holds a Juris Doctorate from Duke University School of Law, where she received distinction as a Mordecai Scholar. She also holds a bachelor of business administration in the Business Honors Program and in marketing, as well as a bachelor of arts in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.

Tanya Perkins

Tanya Perkins helps startups grow by making sure that the people, processes and technology are in place so that teams can succeed.

Tanya’s work with H/L Ventures focuses on sourcing companies in which to invest and supporting portfolio companies in operations, human relations and other aspects of venture building. Her background in operations includes 6.5 years at the Federal Reserve where she oversaw trading on the Treasury desk and helped build the technology and processes behind major monetary policy programs. Tanya’s experience in venture building includes working at Oscar Health Insurance, running operations at a govtech platform and founding startups. Tanya is currently the COO of a Tembo Health, a venture-backed telemedicine startup.

In her free time, she helps college students start socially-minded ventures as an Advisory Board member of The Resolution Project and volunteers through the Daughters of the American Revolution. Tanya’s education includes an MBA/MPP from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and an AB from Harvard University.

Andrew Welters

Andrew Welters is a venture capitalist with a background in founding, operating, and advising early state healthcare and technology companies. Mr. Welters identifies, funds, and grows companies that improve the human experience and work to close the inherent gaps across industries.

In 2013, he founded BTLR, an advanced, fully customizable concierge service designed to enhance the experience of your most high-value patrons and fans, and drive revenue growth in sports and entertainment venues.

Welters launched 5Lion Ventures in 2014, an early stage venture firm focused on Seed+ and Series A. The firm’s core belief is that “people are business.” Mr. Welters and his team manage a portfolio of companies across the healthcare, technology, software, and communication industries. Through their network, 5Lion has brought strategic relationships to deliver significant growth to their portfolio companies. 5Lion combines vision and execution to solve the issues that others believe are impossible.

A native Washingtonian, Mr. Welters serves on the board of the Washington Jesuit Academy and their development committee. He also serves on the Advisory Council of AnBryce Foundation. Mr. Welters received a B.A. in History from the University of Notre Dame and was later appointed by President Fr. John Jenkins to the advisory council of the IDEA Center, a center for innovation and entrepreneurship. Mr. Welters is a Venture Partner at the venture firm H/L Partners in New York City.