Jim Jen

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.

Dr. R. Ravi

Ravi received his bachelor's degree from IIT, Madras, and Master's and doctoral degrees from Brown University, all in Computer Science. Ravi has been at the Tepper School of Business since 1995 where he served as the Associate Dean for Intellectual Strategy from 2005-2008, and Chair of the Future Educational Delivery Committee that launched the online hybrid Tepper MBA in 2013. Ravi's main research interests are in algorithms for combinatorial optimization, and their applications in the intersection of business and technology. Ravi is interested in networks and their effects in business, a subject on which he introduced a new MBA class. He is also interested in customer-centric marketing and how to accomplish this using optimization methods on large data sets, on which he co-developed another new MBA class and co-wrote a book.   On the academic side, Ravi's research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Naval Research and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He has supervised over twenty doctoral students and developed over half a dozen new graduate classes. He currently serves as area editor for the INFORMS flagship journal Operations Research in charge of the discrete optimization area. He has held the title of Rohet Tolani Distinguished Professor between 2014 and 2018, and Carnegie Bosch Professor between 2006 and 2013. He was elected a fellow of the INFORMS in 2017. Ravi is currently Director of Analytics Strategy at the school, and an Amazon Scholar.

Phil Bronner

Phil Bronner is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Ardent Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund investing in B2B fintech, marketplaces, and vertical saas+. He is currently on the boards of Verituity, ExecOnline, and OneMain Financial (OMF). He is also an investor in Givebutter, Financepeer, Method Financial, Collective, LendFlow, and Pickleheads. Before co-founding Ardent Venture Partners, Phil was the Founder/Managing Member of Summer League Ventures (SLV). Active SLV deals include Morning Consult, Ordway Labs, Gather.ai, and Anno.ai.

Before SLV, Phil was a General Partner with Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Throughout his 15-year career, he led 16 investments totaling over $100 million. Investments include 2U (Nasdaq: TWOU), Infoblox (Acquired by Vista Equity Partners), SolidFire (Acquired by NetApp), AddThis (acquired by Oracle), Webs (Acquired by Vistaprint), Approva (Acquired by Infor), LifeShield Security (acquired by DirectTV), ClearStandards (Acquired by SAP), Social Gaming Network, and Logic Library (Acquired by SOA Software). Following his time at Novak Biddle, Phil founded Quad Learning, a venture-backed startup acquired by Wellspring Higher Education. He also served as a Management Consultant at McKinsey & Co. and worked as a Software Engineer at IBM.  

Phil earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Law, and an MBA from the Wharton School.

Will Allen

Mr. Allen is a founding partner at Magarac Venture Partners (MVP), an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in market-defining technology companies. As a founding partner, Mr. Allen brings strategic creativity and analytic rigor to help scale portfolio companies for high performance. He focuses on Fintech, Data Infrastructure and Healthcare investments. In addition, he is responsible for portfolio management. He leads the design integration of the firm’s inclusion investing initiatives by establishing the firm’s financial commitment of 33% of AUM to diverse entrepreneurs. 
During his collegiate and professional football career was when Allen developed his skills in leadership, decisive analytical assessment, focus, discipline and driving a team/culture-oriented environment. He was member of the 2002 National Championship Team at The Ohio State University. He earned All-American honors his senior year. He competed at the highest professional football level, playing 12 years in the National Football League for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was captain. 

Mr. Allen earned his master’s degree in business management and analytics from the University of Dayton, and a bachelor’s degree in strategic communication from The Ohio State University. His board service includes the Allegheny Conference, Highmark/AHN, The Pittsburgh Foundation, BEAM and tech companies. 

Andrew Fischer

Andrew is the Founder & CEO of QuAIL Technologies, which develops AI and Quantum Computing software for investment management. Previously, he was an Investment Strategist at BlackRock, focusing on systematic equity and cross-asset strategies leveraging Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In this capacity, Andrew worked alongside industry leaders and former national policy advisors, providing key insights derived from big data analysis with the help of AI. Before BlackRock, Andrew was a Quantitative Trader at Bank of America, where he managed investments across a broad range of financial products within Emerging Markets, Commodities, FX, Rates, and Equities. Andrew is a graduate of Harvard University (’16) with post-graduate study at HBS, MIT, and Colorado State University, where he received a Master's in Artificial Intelligence.

JJ Xu

JJ Xu is the Founder and CEO of TalkMeUp, an AI-driven company specializing in corporate communication training. With a strong background in channel sales management, marketing strategy, and business development, JJ has leveraged her expertise to create a platform that offers personalized coaching and actionable insights for improving communication skills. Her work at TalkMeUp highlights the transformative impact of AI in the professional development and corporate training sectors, showcasing how technology can be harnessed to enhance individual and organizational performance.

Sankalp Arora

Sankalp Arora is the CEO & Co-Founder of Gather AI. With 14 years of experience, Sankalp developed safety and sensor planning for the world's first safe autonomous helicopter, funded by DARPA, a project that won the Howard Hughes award, AUVSI Xcellence award and was nominated for the Collier Trophy. He is a recipient of the Qualcomm Innovation fellowship and Swartz Innovation fellowship and has a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

In 2023, Gather AI and Sankalp received several awards, including CB Insights' annual Retail Tech 100, SupplyChainBrain’s Great Supply Chain Partner Awards, Peerless Media’s NextGen Supply Chain Awards, Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive Top Tech Startup Awards, and the Pittsburgh Inno Fire Awards.

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.

Vanessa Jameson

Vanessa Jameson  is an Engineering Director at Duolingo who leads engineering for the company’s recent expansion into new subjects. In this role, she co-founded and led the development of Duolingo’s new Music course. Prior to Duolingo, she was a startup founder and Google engineer.

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.

Niki Kittur

Aniket Kittur is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research on crowd-augmented cognition looks at how we can augment the human intellect using crowds and computation. He has authored and co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers, 14 of which have received best paper awards or honorable mentions. Dr. Kittur is a Kavli fellow, has received an NSF CAREER award, the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, major research grants from NSF, NIH, Google, and Microsoft, and his work has been reported in venues including Nature News, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Slashdot, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He received a BA in Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton, and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA.

Bryan Routledge

Bryan Routledge is an associate professor of finance at the Tepper School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1996 and a bachelor of commerce from Queens University in 1987. His research focuses on a broad selection of topics in finance. Current research applies quantitative text analysis and natural language processing to economic and financial research questions (e.g., how management discussion and analysis conveys risk, and how Twitter can track public opinion). Other recent research investigates the quantitative properties of asset prices and macroeconomics such as the positive correlation of asset returns with future economic growth, understanding the connection between risk attitudes and asset pricing dynamics, and the risk and return properties of oil prices. He has taught a wide variety of courses at the Tepper School in many of their programs. Current teaching includes the introductory finance class to MBA students, Financial Economics for MSCF students, and a more specialized class called “Alpha: Implementing Quantitative Strategies.” He is also a frequent teacher in the Tepper School’s Executive Education Programs in finance.

Behnam Mohammadi

Behnam is a Ph.D. candidate at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focuses on the intersection of human-AI interaction (HAI) and its practical implications for businesses and policymakers. He explores the behavior of large language models (LLMs) through a cognitive science lens, building web applications to better understand these powerful AI systems, and training deep learning transformer models to uncover new insights. Behnam's research also examines how regulations of explainable AI (XAI) may impact consumers, as well as the differences and similarities in behavior between LLMs and humans. With a BSc in Electrical Engineering from IUST, an MSc in operations and supply chain management along with an MBA from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, where he used machine learning to improve the ROI of marketing campaigns, Behnam brings a diverse educational background and unique ability to bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI technologies and their real-world applications.

David Kuder

Dave leads Deloitte’s US Cognitive Insights & Engagement offering with a focus on sales enablement. As an insurance principal, Dave spent a majority of his 20 year career driving claims and underwriting operational effectiveness before taking on a cross-sector role driving artificial intelligence and science enabled transformation efforts. Aside from insights, his focus is on enabling intelligent automation across all functions and industries as well as on performance improvement and operating model design across all aspects of front office and back office insurance operations including: predictive analytics and strategic pricing, process automation and business rules, claims operations, sourcing and procurement, and customer experience. He speaks and writes often on these topics at numerous trade and professional organizations and in a variety of publications. Dave holds a BS in electrical engineering from Kettering University and a MBA from UNC–Chapel Hill.

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.

Kartsen 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.

Muno Ogelohwohor

Muno Ogelohwohor has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. She has extensive experience in AI and business innovation across industries like energy, automotive, tech, healthcare, and finance. Key roles include internships at Chevron in digital twins and process automation, a research assistant focusing on human-AI collaboration at UC San Diego Design Lab contributing to Ford's Co-Pilot 360, internships at Microsoft and Apple in client management and the Vision Pro project respectively, and a master’s capstone with BNY Mellon building an AI-powered earnings call analysis tool. Through CSL, she has served as a Product Strategy Manager developing multi-year strategies for companies like Philips. Currently, a Venture Capital Associate Fellow with Bosch exploring integrating new technologies into business models.  Her background spans customer discovery, product development, strategic planning, and presenting innovative, research-driven solutions aimed at optimizing processes and returns.

Rajeev Chhajer

Rajeev is a technical expert and an active contributor to the mobility industry with 20 years of experience including having worked on his own startups. Currently, Rajeev leads the Software-defined Cooperative Intelligence research domain at Honda Research Institute. His research involves thinking about technologies and systems in a smart city ecosystem from the viewpoint of the computing continuum & connectivity, embedded systems and informative data to enable convenient, accessible, sustainable, and efficient mobility solutions for the future. Rajeev is a founding member of 99P Labs jointly formed between Honda and The Ohio State University with the idea to do collaborative research and innovation with public partners, startups and Universities in the broad domains of Mobility, Energy and Data. One of his all time favorite books is “The Creative Act: A way of being” by Rick Rubin.

Emily DeJeu

Emily is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Business Management Communication at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. Her research uses mixed-methods approaches to analyze important genres of professional writing, in an effort to strengthen professional writing pedagogies by offering research-informed teaching strategies. Past projects included exploring strategies for ethical business communication, analyzing rhetorics of high-growth startup versus traditional small business entrepreneurship, and developing and testing curricula that helps students learn strategies for effective civic advocacy. Current projects involve exploring pedagogical applications of generative AI. Emily received her MA and PhD in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University.