Jim Jen

Jim Jen is a Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. In addition to teaching, he is also the Director of the Carnegie Mellon’s Corporate Startup Lab (CSL).

In addition to his work at CMU, Jim has played an active leadership role in the growth of the Pittsburgh entrepreneurship community over the last 20 years. He co-founded AlphaLab, a nationally ranked accelerator program (and one of the first accelerators in the U.S.) and subsequently helped launch AlphaLab Gear, AlphaLab Health and the Robotics Factory with corporate and industry partners. Jim also led initial investments in more than 200 pre-seed and seed stage companies for Innovation Works and guided some of Pittsburgh’s fastest-growing tech companies, resulting in several billion dollars of exit values and additional investment.

Prior to moving to Pittsburgh, Jim led product management at multiple Silicon Valley-based companies, both venture-backed and Fortune 500. As a management consultant, Jim advised consumer-oriented companies on strategic planning and revenue growth strategies. Jim holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts, in Economics and a Master of Business Administration, all from Stanford University.

Bob Evans

Bob Evans founded Cloud Wars Media in 2017 to analyze the greatest growth market the world has ever known. After Cloud Wars Media was acquired in 2021, Bob cofounded Acceleration Economy to explore the digital and AI revolution. Before turning entrepreneur at age 60, Bob was Oracle’s first chief communications officer, where he reported to Larry Ellison. Has given keynote talks on every continent (except Antarctica, which is okay).

Rebecca NugenT

Rebecca Nugent is the Stephen E. and Joyce Fienberg Professor of Statistics & Data Science and Head of the Carnegie Mellon Department of Statistics & Data Science.  She received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington, her M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University, and her B.A. in Mathematics, Statistics, and Spanish from Rice University. Dr. Nugent is currently on the leadership team for the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making and has expertise in designing and implementing data science/AI professional development programs for business leaders in industries including health care, finance, automotive/manufacturing, and life sciences.  She was the faculty co-Director of the Moderna AI Academy and the Founding Director of the Statistics & Data Science Corporate Capstone program, an experiential learning initiative that engages faculty and students with data science problems in industry, non-profits, and government organizations.  She has won several national and university teaching awards including the American Statistical Association Waller Award for Innovation in Statistics Education and serves as one of the co-editors of the Springer Texts in Statistics.  She recently served as the co-chair for the National Academy of Sciences study on Improving Defense Acquisition Workforce Capability in Data Use and served on the NAS study on Envisioning the Data Science Discipline:  The Undergraduate Perspective.  Dr. Nugent has worked extensively in clustering and classification methodology with an emphasis on high-dimensional, big data problems and record linkage applications.  Her current research focus is the development and deployment of low-barrier data analysis platforms that allow for adaptive instruction and the study of data science as a science. 

D.J. Kleinbaum

D.J. Kleinbaum is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Emerald Cloud Lab and Emerald Therapeutics. Dr. Kleinbaum holds a PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University and a BS in Biological Sciences with concentrations in Computational Biology and Biochemistry from Carnegie Mellon University.

Rebecca E. Taylor

Rebecca E. Taylor is the ANSYS Career Development Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and, by courtesy, of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Her degrees are in Mechanical Engineering with a B.S.E in 2001 from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in 2013 with Prof. Beth Pruitt at Stanford University. During her postdoctoral training she worked in the laboratory of Prof. James Spudich in Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She joined the CMU faculty in 2016 and now combines both microfabrication and nanofabrication to create hybrid top-down and bottom-up fabricated sensors and actuators for nanobiosensing, robotics, and advanced manufacturing applications. She is the recipient of a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F32), the NSF CAREER award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award and the 2021 CMU Dean’s Early Career Fellowship.

Currie Crookston

Currie Crookston  is the Global Head of Ecosystems at Covestro. In this role he leads efforts worldwide to bring new technologies and capabilities to Covestro to help accelerate R&D and its transition to a truly circular and sustainable company.

Currie is a serial entrepreneur having started a half dozen different businesses with multiple successful exits. Prior to joining Covestro he and his wife engineered the purchase of 1.5 miles of riverfront in Pittsburgh to become a $1.5 billion dollar riverfront development. He has broad innovation experience, from molecular imaging and MRI technologies to machine learning in material science. Prior to civilian life Currie did 5 tours as a Navy SEAL. He has a degree in Naval Architecture from the U.S. Naval Academy and an MBA from the University of Virginia.

Sean Ammirati

Sean Ammirati is a Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. In addition to teaching, Sean also is the Co-Founder and former Director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab (CSL). The CSL has conducted research and developed tools to help large companies better adapt and integrate entrepreneurial best practices into their own innovation processes. Sean was also recently named one of CMU’s six Generative AI Fellows, for academic year 23-24, where his research will focus on how large language models can support entrepreneurial processes.

In addition to his work at CMU, Sean is also a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and author.  Sean has led seed investments into 20 early-stage companies including: NoWait (acq Yelp), JazzHR (acq Jobvite), Altru (acq iCIMS),  SPIDRTech (acq Versaterm), LegalSifter (acq Carrick Capital), The Zebra, Crystal, and Healthie. His first book, The Science of Growth, was released by St. Martin's Press in April 2016 and was subsequently translated and published in Korean and Mandarin.

Ivo Stivoric

Ivo Stivoric is a Vice President at X, the moonshot factory where he runs a portfolio of projects focused on radical new approaches to tackling climate, sustainability and justice issues.  For the last seven years, Ivo has incubated dozens of moonshot technologies, projects and teams, while also forging strong partnerships with organizations outside of X to help bring these nascent ideas and technologies to life.  Some of the Alphabet companies and projects to emerge from Ivo’s portfolio include moonshots for industrial robotics, connectivity, the electric grid, ocean health, the supply chain and waste.

Before joining X, Ivoe was Vice President of Research and Development at Jawbone, where he delivered new consumer and healthcare applications for wearable and sensor technologies.  Ivo has worked in the wearable computing space since 1991, including co founding BodyMedia alongside X’s Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller.  He has over 90 patents to his name and was recognized as one of 40 innovators building the foundation of the next-gen electronics industry by EE Times.  He holds an M.S. in Interaction Design and a B.F.A in Industrial Design with a concentration in sculpture, both from Carnegie Mellon.

Dave Mawhinney

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Dave was co-founder, chairman and CEO of mSpoke, an internet content and advertising recommendation engine, that was acquired in 2010 by LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional social networking site. In 2006, Morgan Stanley’s MSCI/Barra business unit acquired mSpoke’s first business line, a quantitative investment recommendation engine.



Before mSpoke, Dave was general partner of PNC Technology Investors. Earlier in his career, he co-founded three successful startup ventures, including Premier Health Exchange (acquired by Medibuy), Hawk Medical (acquired by McKesson), and Industry.Net (merged with AT&T Business Network to form Nets, Inc.). 



Dave is an active board member at 4Moms, Inc., sovaSage, Inc., Shift Robotics, Inc., The Foundation for IUP, and the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Alumni Association (ex-officio, past president). He is an Advisory board member to FifthSeason, #1Cochran, Nimble.ai, Mach9 Robotics, CoPilot, Digital Dream Labs, InnovationWork’s AlphaLab, Pittsburgh Equity Partners, and 3 Points Rising VC. Dave also served as Executive-in-residence at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, working with healthcare information technology startups.



Dave holds an MBA with Distinction from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in physics, Summa Cum Laude, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dave was a 2017 recipient of the Tepper School Alumni Award.

Estella Woo

Estella Woo leads Bosch’s North American hub for grow platform, the global internal incubator of Robert Bosch. Her charter through grow platform drives new business growth outside the existing core business of Bosch through radical innovation. Estella bridges the gap between operational excellence and business innovation. She successfully operationalized a new product business from the ground up with successful customer delivery within 12 months, growing this to a multi-million-dollar business within 4 years. During her career, she has built and managed multi-disciplinary teams throughout her broad range of experiences within the product lifecycle, from product R&D and development, through to manufacturing and fulfillment. She has coached and advised 500+ intrapreneurs around the globe and sees the speed in transformation in organizations that foster some entrepreneurial risk.

Karsten Roenner

Karsten Roenner is a seasoned executive with leadership experience in global corporations as well as in small and medium-sized companies in Germany, Norway, UK, Silicon Valley, and Japan. Since 2019, Karsten has been leading grow platform, the business incubator of Robert Bosch GmbH. grow platform (www.growplatform.com) is a global network of eight innovation-hubs with the mission to build new, large, and fast scaling businesses outside the core business areas of Bosch. Prior to Bosch, he has been co-founder and investor in several start-ups, raised numerous financings and achieved five successful exits. In all start-ups that Karsten co-founded or invested in, he took on active roles as chairman of the board, CEO or board member. Further, Karsten has almost a decade of global experience as corporate finance advisor in the technology sector, with an outstanding track record of successful sales and financings.

Jeffrey Goldman

Jeffrey Goldman is Vice President of Enterprise Data Science, leading P&G’s Global Data Science Organization.  In recognition of his sustained analytic contribution to P&G, he was inducted into P&G’s IT Distinguished Experts.  Before his current role, Jeff led Business Analytics for Global Markets and the Western European Analytics Organization and founded the Business Analytics group for China and Product Supply Analytics for Asia.   Jeff holds a BA in Economics and a Masters in Operations Research from Cornell University.  He lives in Cincinnati, with his wife and 2 sons.

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards is a Technologist, Innovator, Mentor, and Entrepreneur with 15+ years of progressive experience in multi-site, omnichannel business optimization, process improvement, and technical program management. Chris leads the Applications Engineering team and roadmap for GetGo, WetGo, and Giant Eagle Innovation and R&D.

Sunanda ParthasarathY

Sunanda Parthasarathy, is an experienced Data, Analytics and Machine Learning leader who excels at the intersection of product and analytics strategy. She is the Senior Director of Data Science at Dicks’ Sporting Goods Inc. leading the data science organization driving transformation of Dick’s through cutting edge science and data. Prior to DSG, Sunanda was the Executive Director of Analytics & Data Science at CVS Health, leading the data science teams that drove the personalization strategy of Retail Pharmacy. Before CVS, she has led teams at Wayfair and DataXu(acquired by Roku). 

 She has a PhD in Physics from Purdue University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University. She has been recognized as one of REWORK’s 30 influential women advancing AI in Boston & with the Mass TLC Emerging Executive Award, for her leadership in the data science community. 

She is an active member in the local start-up, tech and data science community and is the chapter lead of the Women in Big Data Boston Chapter & co-organizer of The Data Scientist meetup group in Boston. She enjoys bringing together leading minds in the field of data science and AI, to engage in thought leadership in this evolving field.

Andrew Li

Assistant Professor of Operations Research | Tepper School of Business 

Andrew Li is an Assistant Professor of Operations Research at CMU’s Tepper School of Business. His research develops new methods in optimization and statistics for problems in retail and personalized medicine. He also teaches and consults frequently in both spaces.

Li holds a bachelor of science in operations research (Columbia) and a Ph.D. in operations research (MIT).

Deva Ramanan

Deva Ramanan is a Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the CMU Argo AI Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research. His research interests span computer vision and machine learning, with a focus on visual recognition. He was awarded the David Marr Prize in 2009, the PASCAL VOC Lifetime Achievement Prize in 2010, the IEEE PAMI Young Researcher Award in 2012, named one of Popular Science's Brilliant 10 researchers in 2012, named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2013, won the Longuet-Higgins Prize in 2018 for fundamental contributions in computer vision, and was recognized for best paper finalist / honorable mention awards in CVPR 2019, ECCV 2020, and ICCV 2021. His work is supported by NSF, ONR, DARPA, as well as industrial collaborations with Intel, Google, and Microsoft.

He served at the program chair of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2018. He is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV) and is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI). He regularly serves as a senior program committee member for CVPR, the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), and the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV). He also regularly serves on NSF panels for computer vision and machine learning.

Jeffrey Brashear

Jeffrey Brashear is a managing director in Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy & Analytics practice. Jeffrey has more than 25 years of experience helping clients develop and execute strategies to take advantage of disruptive technologies. Most recently, he has focused on helping clients clarify their understanding of artificial intelligence (AI), it’s value proposition to them, their paths to closing enablement gaps in human and technical capabilities, and their options for establishing and refining governance to help safeguard against AI’s unique challenges.

Michael Luk

As dean of Deloitte’s AI Academy, Dr. Michael Luk is educating and reskilling a global workforce with immersive training in capabilities needed for the digital economy now and in the future. He is also the Chief Technology Officer of recently acquired SFL Scientific, a world-class team of data scientists, engineers, and managers at Deloitte, providing clients with innovative, practical solutions.

With over a decade of experience in Artificial Intelligence/Data Science, Michael has extensive experience in machine learning, deep learning, and AI. The majority of his work has been focused towards building and integrating large-scale enterprise models, frameworks, and solutions that provide a demonstrable return on investment. Michael holds a Ph.D. in particle physics from Brown University and earned a Master of Advanced Study in applied mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Jonathan Valenti

Jonathan Valenti  is a principal in the Financial Services practice of Deloitte focused on Customer Strategy & Applied Design and lead for Deloitte Digital's Applied Innovation offering. He brings 20 years of experience consulting organizations on various strategy projects and transformation programs, including those for growth strategy, customer segmentation, customer experience design, digital transformation, and innovation.

Jennifer Van Dam

Jennifer Van Dam is a strategic thinker with a passion for building communities both on and offline, particularly for early-stage startup teams. Jenn has previous experience leading Digital & Community Engagement at Innovation Works and as Director of Platform at Genius Guild. Currently, Jenn leads Platform at HubSpot Ventures, where she continues to leverage her expertise in community building and strategic thinking. Jenn actively supports the HubSpot Ventures portfolio companies in scaling their operations within the HubSpot ecosystem, providing guidance and resources to help them succeed. 

Jenn holds a BA from Chatham College for Women at Chatham University. She has been recognized as one of HBCUvc's 31 Under 31: The Future of Venture Capital, highlighting her exceptional contributions to the venture capital industry. Additionally, she holds a certificate from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in leadership and negotiation, further enhancing her skill set and ability to drive impactful outcomes.

Alexander Zorub

Alexander Zorub is an EIR & VC with UPMC Enterprises, the venture arm of UPMC, a ~ $26B a year in revenue leading health system operating in multiple states and countries. He has founded multiple companies, invests as an Angel across stage and space, and graduated from Duke & Wharton.  

Matt Harbaugh

Matt Harbaugh co-founded and currently serves as Managing Director at Mountain State Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm with a portfolio of high- growth companies in sectors ranging from software to life sciences. In addition, he also founded the U.S. Research Impact Alliance, a nonprofit working to advance the commercialization of energy and climate-related innovations throughout the United States. Mr. Harbaugh’s previous roles include serving as the CEO of a Carnegie-Mellon University spinout that was acquired by Facebook, and serving as the Chief Investment Officer at Innovation Works, Inc., one of the most active seed-stage investors in the United States. Mr. Harbaugh received J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from the George Washington University and his undergraduate degree from Duke University.