Mike Cassidy

MBA ’91, Harvard University
BS & MS, Aerospace Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mike is the CEO of Apollo Fusion, a startup that designs satellite propulsion systems and hybrid fusion power plants. At Google he was a Vice President, and he was the Project Leader of Project Loon. Mike was the CEO and co-founder of several successful companies and served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital.

Tom Clay

MBA ’97, Harvard University
BA, Mathematics, Princeton University

Tom, a former U.S. Army Ranger, is the CEO of Xtalic, a company that engineers stable metal alloys at the Nano-scale. He is on the Board at Mcor Technologies and was the CEO, President and a Board Member of Z Corporation, a leading pioneer in 3D printing, where he grew the company from early commercialization to market leadership. He is interested in education and workforce development, and serves on the School Committee in Westford, MA and as a Trustee at Mount Wachusett Community College.

Sam Clemens

MBA ’04, Harvard University
BS, Applied Mathematics/Economics, Yale University

Sam is the founder and CPO of InsightSquared. His career includes work in VC, management consulting and product leadership at several startups, including HubSpot and Bzzagent.  Sam advises students and companies on product management and agile product development. He is also a Venture Partner at the early-stage venture firm Accomplice.

Ann Dewitt

MBA ’09, Harvard University
PhD ’01, Chemical Engineering, Systems Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BS ’96, Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ann is a General Partner at The Engine, an MIT-launched venture capital firm that invests in early-stage “Tough Tech” companies in the Boston area. On behalf of The Engine, she serves on the boards of Vaxess Technologies, Kytopen, Lucy Therapeutics, Cambridge Crops, Syzygy Plasmonics, and E25Bio. She has also served as a board director of WEST, a learning community for women in the enterprise of science and technology and serves on the Life Sciences Council of Springboard Enterprises, which focuses on building women-led businesses. Earlier in her career, she worked at 3M Company, Flagship Pioneering, and Sanofi in a variety of roles including engineering management, venture capital, and business development and licensing. She is as passionate about supporting mission-driven founders build their companies as she is about supporting her spouse and two vivacious children.

Bill Doyle

MBA ‘92, Harvard University
S.B., Materials Science and Engineering, MIT

Bill is the Executive Chairman of Novocure Ltd., a commercial stage oncology company pioneering Tumor Treating Fields therapy for solid tumor cancers and the Executive Chairman of Blink Health LLC, an e-commerce platform providing access to prescription drugs for all Americans. Bill is also the lead independent director of Minerva Neuroscience and a director of Optinose, Inc. Previously, Bill was a member of Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Group Operating Committee with responsibility for licensing and acquisitions and R&D.

Eric Dunn

MBA ’83, Harvard University
AB, Physics, Harvard University

Eric is currently the CEO of Quicken Inc. Prior to his current role, Eric served as a Senior Vice President, CFO and CTO at Intuit. Earlier he worked for IBM, Bain & Company, and was a General Partner at Cardinal Ventures. Eric has served on the board of directors for dozens of companies. He is also a helicopter pilot and flies a Robinson R44.

Victor Echevarria

MBA ’08, Harvard University
BS ’02, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

Victor is a Partner at Jackson Square Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that invests in software businesses. A founder turned investor, his investments include 1upHealth, WELL Health, and Trust & Will. Prior to joining JSV in 2018, Victor founded Remedy Labs, a healthcare fintech company focused on patient and payer billing accuracy. He was also an early team member at TaskRabbit, where he ran marketing and business development, conceptualizing and launching the company’s B2B offering.  Victor lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

Bruce Evans

MBA ‘86, Harvard University
BE, ’81 Mechanical Engineering and Economics, Vanderbilt University

Bruce is currently a Senior Advisor to Summit Partners. He is also Chairman of Summit Partners’ Board and is a former Managing Partner of the firm. During his 32 year venture capital career, he has served as a member of the boards of directors of 35 companies, including 14 public companies. He is currently a director of two public companies, Analog Devices and Casa Systems, and two private  companies.  In addition, he is Chairman of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust.

Jennifer Fonstad

MBA ‘97, Harvard University
BSFS, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Jennifer is a serial entrepreneur and veteran venture investor with over two decades of experience in Mobile and Enterprise technology, including Healthcare IT. She co-founded Aspect Ventures in 2014, an early stage, mobile focused investment firm with $350MM under management. Prior to Aspect, Jennifer was a Managing Director with Draper Fisher Jurvetson for 17 years where she helped grow the firm from $150MM under management to over $3.5Billion before she left to found Aspect.

Bridget Frey

AB ’99, Computer Science, Harvard University

As Redfin’s Chief Technology Officer, Bridget leads the software engineering team, which she has grown to more than 150 engineers in Seattle and San Francisco. She started coding when she was five on an Apple IIe, and has built software and led teams at high-growth tech companies for almost twenty years. Bridget specializes in big data, analytics engineering, and systems architecture. She is a thought leader on engineering culture and issues facing women in technology, and nearly 32% of Redfin’s technology team are women.

SEAS Alumni Profile

Rafael Garcia

AB ’09, Applied Mathematics/Computer Science, Harvard University

Rafael is the co-founder and CTO of Clever, an educational technology platform that is used by nearly half of the school districts in the U.S. Prior to Clever, Rafael was an Algorithmic Trader at Jump Trading.

SEAS Alumni Profile

Dayna Grayson

MBA ’06, Harvard University
BS, Systems Engineering, University of Virginia

Dayna, Co-Founder and General Partner of Construct Capital, was one of the first venture capitalists to build a portfolio around the transformation of industrial sectors of our economy. She co-founded Construct to expand this focus and pursue the next generation of massive companies to be built in the tech sector. Prior to launching Construct, she was a partner at New Enterprise Associates where she backed companies creating new advances in manufacturing, automation, and vertically integrated consumer brands. She led investments in companies including Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM), Onshape (acquired by PTC), Framebridge (acquired by GHC), Tulip, Formlabs, and Guideline.

Stephanie Hannon

MBA ’04, Harvard University
MS, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
BS, Computer Systems Engineering, Stanford University

Stephanie is the CPO for Strava, a fitness-tracking social media startup. Prior to Strava, she was the CTO for the 2016 Hillary for America Campaign. Stephanie worked at Google as the Director of Product Management, Civic Innovation and Social Impact. She also worked as a Product Manager at Facebook. Stephanie is on the Board of Directors at the Girl Scouts of Northern California.

Jeff Henderson

MBA ’91, Harvard University
BSEE ‘88, Engineering, Kettering University

Jeff is Chairman of the Board at Qualcomm, also serving as Advisory Director at Berkshire Partners. He serves on the boards of Becton Dickinson, Affordable Care, Halozyme, and FibroGen. He began his career in finance at General Motors, later becoming President of Eli Lilly Canada, the Controller and Treasurer at Eli Lilly and Company and Chief Financial Officer at Cardinal Health.

Lara Hodgson

MBA ’98, Harvard University
BS, Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Lara is the co-founder, President and CEO of NOW Corp, a B2B payments company that enables businesses to get paid immediately with their NOWaccount® in a way that feels like accepting a credit card for payment when a card is not offered. She also founded Nourish, a patented line of spill-proof bottled water for kids and ready-to-serve bottles for babies. Lara is a founding Board member and Chairman of the Board of the Atlanta Heights Charter School and a member of the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees. Lara serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. She is an avid runner having been a scholarship member of the Georgia Tech Track and Field Team.

Minnie Ingersoll

MBA ’02, Harvard University
BS, Computer Science, Stanford University

Minnie is the co-founder and Advisor of Shift Technologies, Inc., an online platform disrupting the car-buying process. Previously, she spent 12 years at Google working to develop their fiber network. She also serves as the COO for Code for America.

Chad Laurans

MBA ’06, Harvard University
BS, Electrical Engineering, Yale University

While at HBS, Chad and Eleanor Laurans (MBA ’06) co-founded SimpliSafe, a no-contract, easily-installed, wireless home security system. Chad designed the original product himself and grew the company under the radar of long-established competitors. The company grew with only a single angel investment in 2006 until receiving $57M in 2014 from Sequoia in a Series A funding.

Aileen Lee

MBA ’97, Harvard University
BS, Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Aileen is the founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage focused fund. They seek to back exceptional teams building technology that re-imagines work and personal life in large and growing markets – what they call “Life 2.0”. She was formerly a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the CEO of RMG Networks.  A graduate of MIT, Aileen has an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

Jessica Lin

AB ‘09, Government & Secondary, African Studies, Harvard University

Jessica is co-founder and VC at Work-Bench, an enterprise-focused venture fund and community. Her career includes work in both the corporate and startup worlds in Learning & Development at Cisco Systems, and leading an innovation and design fellowship in South Africa at Harvard University. Jessica is also a longtime GED instructor, and is passionate about transforming workforce development through tech.

Jeremy Lizt

AB ’97, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University
Dpl, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford

Jeremy co-founded and was CTO of LiveRamp, a data connectivity company that was acquired by Acxiom for $310M. He serves as an advisor to TravelJoy, DataVant, and POPVOX and was previously Vice President of Engineering at Rapleaf and a Senior Development Manager at Oracle Corp.

Paul Maeder

MBA ’84, Harvard University
BSE, Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences, Princeton University
MSE, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

Paul is the Chair and General Partner of Highland Capital Partners, investing in online higher education, robotics, and software. He has served as a director for many private and public companies and manages Highland’s investments in Avidyne, Blue Tarp Financial, Carbon Black, Jaunt, Rethink Robotics and 2U.

Kevin McNamara

AB, ’12 Computer Science, Harvard University

Kevin is the founder of Parallel Domain, a “synthetic data generation platform for training and testing the world’s next generation AI.” Before founding Parallel Domain, he worked at Apple where he focused on autonomous systems and simulation technology. He also worked as a technical artist at Microsoft Game Studios and was a technical director intern at Pixar Animation Studios where he worked on the film Brave. Kevin loves music and has played the drums in all kinds of bands from punk rock to jazz bands, including the Harvard Jazz Band during his four years as an undergraduate.

Guy Miasnik

MBA ’99, Harvard University
BSc, Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Guy was co-founder and CEO of AtHoc, a networked crisis communication company that was acquired by Blackberry. At Blackberry, Guy was a Division President and later its Chief Strategy Officer, working on the turnaround of the company into an enterprise software business.

Scott Miller

MS Ocean Engineering, MIT
BE Engineering, Dartmouth

Scott is the Managing Director of Dragon Ventures, where he focuses on helping hardware companies navigate the journey from protype through production via Consulting, Advising and Angel Investing. Previously, Scott was the CEO and Co-Founder of Dragon Innovation, a company dedicated to helping hardware companies of all sizes scale from prototype through production. Scott is a mechanical engineer by training, with extensive experience designing and manufacturing software controlled electro-mechanical systems. He began his career building robots, including biomimetic robotic tuna fish at MIT, undersea remotely operated vehicles at Deep Sea Systems, and full-size walking dinosaurs at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D. Scott joined iRobot early in their life cycle and spent 10 years progressing from a Sr. Mechanical Engineer to Vice President roles.

Sunil Nagaraj

MBA ’09, Harvard University
BS, Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sunil Nagaraj is Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures where he invests in seed-stage startups in the areas of smart hardware and machine intelligence applications. Prior to Ubiquity, Sunil spent 6 years as a VC with Bessemer Venture Partners where he was part of investments in Auth0, Defense.Net (acquired by F5 Networks), Rocket Lab, Spire, Tile, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), and Zapier. He was previously founder/CEO of VC-backed online dating startup Triangulate. He has also worked at Bain & Company, Cisco, and Microsoft. Sunil is current Co-Chair of the NextGen Partners as well as the NextGen Board of the Computer History Museum.  He also serves on the board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Harvard Business School California Research Center, and the Volunteer Council of the SETI Institute.

Dan Nevius

SB ’11, Electrical Engineering/Computer Science/Astrophysics, Harvard University
MPhil, Engineering, University of Cambridge
MSc, Space Science & Engineering, University College of London
MBA’17, Harvard University

Dan Nevius is a Co-Founder and COO of Analytical Space, a Boston-based startup building a network of small satellites that use optical communication to provide a data relay service for remote sensing satellites. Before starting Analytical Space, Dan was the Director of Special Projects at Planetary Resources, worked briefly at BCG in the London Office and interned at the Space and Science Branch of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

SEAS Alumni Profile

Deep Nichar

MBA’00, Harvard University
M.S.E.E.’92, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B. Tech ’90, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Deep is a Senior Managing Partner at SoftBank Vision Fund where he leads investments in life sciences, software and frontier technologies.  Deep has over 20 years of experience helping build and grow internet and software businesses. Prior to SoftBank, he served as SVP of Products and User Experience at LinkedIn and held a number of leadership roles at Google. Previously he was the Founder of enterprise software company Patkai Networks. Deep has co-authored 14 patents, and is a recipient of the Google Founders Award, which is given to employees who made extraordinary contributions to the company.

Steve Papa

MBA ’99, Harvard University
BSE, Engineering and Economics, Princeton University

Steve is the founder and CEO of Parallel Wireless, which is rebuilding the global cellular network; founding Exec Chairman of Toast which is reimagining restaurant technology; and a board member of Desktop Metal revolutionizing 3D metal printing. As founder and CEO of Endeca, he pioneered Guided Navigation and led Endeca through its acquisition by Oracle in 2011 for $1.1B. Before founding Endeca, Steve was part of the MIT $50K team that created Akamai, an associate at Venrock, and an early member of the Inktomi team.

Luke Porisch

BS, Mechanical Engineering, U.S. Airforce Academy
SM ’05, Engineering Sciences, Harvard University

Luke was the first employee at the fermentation campus of Valent BioSciences, which researches and produces biopesticides from natural components. For six years he was Engineering Manager at Valent’s 100-employee plant. Prior to Valent, Luke worked as an engineer with the U.S. Air Force, Spectranetics and Rockwell Collins. He is now transitioning to lead his local community bank, St. Ansgar State Bank.

Prem Ramaswami

MBA ’13, Harvard University
BS ’04, Electrical & Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon

Prem Ramaswami is Head of Product at Sidewalk Labs where he focuses on using digital technology to radically improve the quality of urban life. Previously, Prem served as a Product Lead on Google Search’s Social Impact verticals including launching Health Search and helping create the first FDA approved deep learning, medical screening algorithm. He also launched the Internet Bus Project in India, worked on Google’s Network Infrastructure team launching Google Public DNS, and founded Google.org’s Crisis Response team. During his time at HBS, Prem developed and taught an introductory course on Product Management, which he also taught at Stanford University. Prem was a Baker’s scholar and a recipient of the Dean’s award. In 2016, Prem completed an executive medical training at Harvard Medical School.

Vivek Ranadivé

MBA ’83, Harvard University
BS/MA Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vivek is the founder and former CEO of TIBCO Software, a multibillion-dollar real-time computing company and of Teknekron Software Systems, best known for automating Wall Street and most of the world’s capital markets. He is the Owner and Chairman of the Sacramento Kings and has written three New York Times bestselling business-related books, including The Two Second Advantage.

Diego Rodriguez

MBA with distinction ’01, Harvard Business School
BS, Mechanical Engineering & BA, Values Technology Science & Society, Stanford University

Diego is the Chief Product & Design Officer at Intuit. Earlier in his career he worked as a design engineer at HP and at IDEO, where he became a Partner and Global Managing Director. He led the growth of IDEO’s own new ventures, such as IDEO U, CoLab, and Creative Difference. Diego was a founding faculty member of Stanford’s d.school and is a Professor of the Practice at Boise State University. He was a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School.

Corey Thomas

MBA ’02, Harvard University
BE, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University

Corey is the Chairman and CEO at Rapid7, a computer and network security company. He is also the Director at LPL Financial Holdings Inc. and a Board Member at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Early in his career he worked as a Consultant at Deloitte Consulting, moving to Product Manager at Microsoft and later Vice President at Parallels. Corey was elected to the Cyber Threat Alliance Board of Directors and the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Strategy Council and is a former Board Member at The Home for Little Wanderers in Boston.

Catherine Ulrich

AB ’05, Biomechanical Engineering, Harvard University

Catherine (Kit) is the Managing Director of FirstMark Capital, an early stage VC firm in NYC. Prior to joining FirstMark Capital, she was the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Shutterstock and held several senior roles at Weight Watchers, including CPO, and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Development.

SEAS Alumni Profile

Sudha Varadarajan

MBA ’07, Harvard University
MS ‘99, University of Illinois
BE, Computer Science, P.S.G. College of Technology

Sudha was a Co-founder and CTO of Skava, a leading mobile-commerce company acquired in 2015 by Infosys. Well before the Apple iPhone, she had the vision of developing multi-player mobile games back in 2003 at a time when people considered phones only for making calls and sending text messages. In 2007 when smartphones arrived on the market, she saw the need to help retailers use this new medium and relaunched her mobile platform for retailers. Before Skava, Sudha worked for Microsoft as a Software Design Engineer and at Brience as an Engineering Manager.

Russ Wilcox

MBA ’95, Harvard University
AB, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University

Russ is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded and led E Ink, Piper Therapeutics and Transatomic Power. He is currently a Partner at Pillar VC, investing in early stage and newly formed companies in the Boston area. Russ spent a year traveling with his family to 32 countries around the world.