Impact Summit Speakers & Judges
See our growing list of speakers and judges:
Steve Westly, Founder & Managing Partner, The Westly Group
Allison Kaiser Kelly, CEO, ICA
Erik Edwards, Partner, Cooley LLP
Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner, Spero Ventures
Sidharth Kakkar, CEO & Co-founder, Freckle Education
Miriam Rivera, Managing Director and co-founder, Ulu Ventures
Dan Kalafatas, Co-Founder & Chairman, 3Degrees
Trish Costello, Founder & CEO, Portfolia
Ariana Makau, President, Nzilani Glass Conservation
JD Schramm, Director, King Global Leadership Program & Knight-Hennessy Scholars, Stanford University
Dr. Arup Roy-Burman Co-Founder & CEO, Elemeno Health
Eric Quick, Investor and CEO, The Town Kitchen and The Town Kitchen Provisions
Josh Cohen, Managing Partner, City Light Capital
Allison Baum, General Partner, SemperVirens Venture Capital
Victoria Treyger, General Partner & Managing Director, Felicis Ventures
Meet the Speakers:
Read on for more information about speakers for the 2020 Impact Summit. (Continue to check back as speaker bios will be added as they are confirmed.)
Faz Bashi, MD
Lead Venture Investor, Portfolia FemTech Fund; Affiliate Partner, Boston Millennia
Faz Bashi is a physician, scientist, and investor in Silicon Valley focusing on innovations in Healthcare and Life Sciences for humans and animals/pets. He is currently Lead Venture Investor with Portfolia's FemTech Fund™ which focuses on emerging technologies, products and services improving women’s health and wellness throughout their lives. From fertility solutions to menopausal care and overall fitness, the fund will invest in high-potential opportunities that can be both profitable and grant women greater health and wellness. Faz is Affiliate Partner with Boston Millennia Partners (BMP) focused on healthcare, business services and information technology growth equity investments. BMP focuses on relationships that create long-term value with the goal of building enduring, large-scale businesses that result in personal fulfillment and superior financial returns.
Faz has been very active with Life Science Angels in Silicon Valley, focused on medical devices, biotech/pharma, and digital health.
Allison Baum
General Partner, SemperVirens
Allison is a General Partner at SemperVirens, a strategic, early stage fund focused on the future of work. The fund invests in workplace tech, health tech, and fintech companies looking to utilize employers as one of their distribution channels. Their core partners include Sequoia Consulting Group, PeopleTech Partners, and a leading network of Fortune 2000 CHROs. Prior to joining SemperVirens, Allison has spent more than a decade at the intersection of finance, technology, and the future of work, with experience at Goldman Sachs, an early employee at General Assembly, co-founder of Fresco Capital, a global seed fund, and an investor at Trinity Ventures. Allison has a B.A. in Economics with Honors, a minor in Film Studies, and a language citation in French from Harvard University.
Josh Cohen
Managing Partner, City Light Capital
When considering how he wanted to be remembered, Josh turned to impact investing before it had a name, combining his experience as a venture capitalist, technology company executive, and family office CIO with his values. Thus, the idea for City Light was born: partnering with experienced entrepreneurs using technology to generate significant financial returns while having a measurable social impact. Prior to founding City Light, Josh led direct investments for a Greenwich CT-based family office, worked in venture capital for a family office based in St. Louis, was a Partner in a private debt fund, and was the Director of Business Development for Mobility Electronics (NASDAQ: IGOI). He began his career as an investment banker in the technology group of Deutsche Banc Alex Brown in San Francisco.
Trish Costello
Founder & CEO, Portfolia
Trish founded Portfolia with a vision to activate the capital of women to invest in the companies we want in the world. Portfolia now has eight funds and made 36 investments in 29 top innovative companies. Trish is globally recognized for her pioneering work in preparing the next generation of general partners in venture capital. As the co-founder, long-time CEO and now CEO Emeritus of the Kauffman Fellows Program, the premier global leadership program for venture capitalists, she mentored hundreds of the world's top VCs, and was referred to as the venture capitalist's 'godmother.' She also served as Founding President of CVE Capital Corp, the holding company of a $1B+ venture capital fund of funds. Trish was on the start-up team of the Kauffman Foundation’s entrepreneurship center, led the Commercialization Sub-Committee of the National Science Foundation, and directed the Arthur Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at the globally-ranked Babson College.
Eric Edwards
Partner, Cooley LLP
Erik Edwards practices general securities and corporate law, with a focus on emerging growth companies, private financings, initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. Erik represents companies and investors in a wide variety of areas, including software, hardware, Internet of Things, edtech, cleantech, life sciences, social impact, fashion, retail, unmanned vehicles, artificial intelligence, media, fintech and other areas in technology. He works with numerous incubators both nationally and internationally and speaks regularly on various corporate governance and financing topics.
Sidharth Kakkar
CEO & Co-founder, Freckle Education
Sidharth Kakkar is an education technology entrepreneur who founded Freckle Education - a company with the mission of helping teachers reach every student at their own level, which reaches teachers in over half of public K-8 schools in America. Sidharth started Freckle after spending time with teachers in Baltimore City Public Schools, and seeing the difference that empowered teachers can make in the lives of students. By providing teachers curriculum and technology that truly empowers them to help every student, Freckle has helped students grow 2+ grade levels in a single year, and serves over 10 million students across the country. In 2019, Freckle was acquired by Renaissance learning - the leading company in the learning analytics and assessment industry. With the acquisition, Freckle will continue to serve more students than ever, in the United States and worldwide.
Dan Kalafatas
Co-Founder & Chairman, 3Degrees
In graduate school at Stanford, Dan sat in on a speech delivered by T.J. Glauthier, former Deputy Secretary and COO of the U.S. Department of Energy under the Clinton administration, that changed his life. It resonated so much, it inspired him to dedicate his business talents towards playing a part in building the renewable energy sector in the United States to address climate change. In 2007, Dan co-led the formation of 3Degrees with Steve McDougal, a spin-off of the 3 Phases Energy Services division Dan co-founded and ran from 2002 through 2007. Under Dan’s leadership as CEO (until January 2015), 3Degrees successfully entered the utility green pricing, REC and carbon offset markets and converted to a B Corp. Currently, Dan serves as the chairman of 3Degrees’ board of directors, focusing on the company’s long-term corporate strategy and strategic initiatives.
Allison Kelly
CEO, ICA
Allison Kelly is deeply committed to fighting economic inequality through innovation and out-of-the box partnerships at a community-based CDFI, ICA where she has been serving in the role of CEO since June 2019. Prior to ICA, Kelly was the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at CDC Small Business Finance, a leading U.S lender focused on supporting entrepreneurs in undertapped communities. Kelly has more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, having worked in the financial- and healthcare-service industries. Before joining CDC, Kelly spent seven years in various leadership positions at Pacific Community Ventures, a nonprofit social enterprise focused on helping small businesses thrive through affordable capital and free business coaching.
Dawn Lippert
CEO, Elemental Excelerator
Dawn Lippert is CEO of Elemental Excelerator (EEx), a non-profit startup organization formed in collaboration with Emerson Collective, the investment and philanthropic platform led by Laurene Powell Jobs. EEx has become one of the most active funders of startups solving urgent climate and environmental challenges. Each year EEx funds 15-20 companies up to $1 million each to improve systems that impact the planet and people’s lives: energy, water, agriculture, transportation, and beyond. Dawn initially started funding startups in Hawaii in 2009 and has now funded over 100 companies. In addition to leading Elemental Excelerator, Dawn is Director of Innovation and Community at Emerson Collective. Through her role at Emerson Collective, Dawn shares a place-based innovation model pioneered by Elemental Excelerator with communities around the world.
Shripriya Mahesh
Founding Partner, Spero Ventures
Shripriya Mahesh is a Founding Partner at Spero Ventures. Spero is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the things that make life worth living, specifically: well-being, work & purpose and human connection. Previously, Shripriya ran global emerging technology investing at Omidyar Network and helped launch First Look Media. Before that, Shripriya spent five years at eBay in multiple roles: VP and head of global Product Management and Strategy; VP, US Product Marketing and Platform; and VP, Corporate Strategy. She also led product at fintech startup NextCard and worked in manufacturing in India. In the midst of her tech career, Shripriya took a hiatus to study film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she made short films and a collaborative feature featuring James Franco and Jessica Chastain. Shripriya holds an MBA from Harvard; an MFA in Film from New York University; and a BA in Economics from Stella Maris College.
Ariana Makau
President, Nzilani Glass Conservation
Ariana brings over 25 years of museum and real-world experience in architectural preservation through her company Nzilani Glass Conservation – a highly specialized stained-glass conservation company that gives back to its community. Nzilani exists at the intersection of equity and (public) art – with a goal of creating a more diverse group of people who actively participate. The company works in concert with local Bay Area non-profits to provide paid internships for youth who are socially disconnected. Nzilani’s core values, “Be Safe. Have Fun. Do Excellent Work.”, also describe Ariana. Her approachable, non-judgmental style about lead safety bridges the gap between health & safety regulators and those in the stained-glass industry.
Eric Quick
Investor and CEO, The Town Kitchen and The Town Kitchen Provisions
Eric is an Autism Advocate and Organic Operations Executive with over thirty years experience in the Foodservice, retail and e-commerce channels including time with notable companies including Disney, Safeway, and Revolution Foods. He's spent the last 13 years focused on early stage purpose driven companies and helping them scale. He's currently an Investor and CEO at The Town Kitchen, PBC and Co-Founder of PocketCFO a financial insights platform that provides founders real-time cash flow visibility to help them manage their runway and make informed business decisions.
Miriam Rivera
Managing Director and co-founder, Ulu Ventures
Miriam Rivera is managing director of Ulu Ventures, a top seed stage venture fund in Silicon Valley focused on IT startups and dedicated to driving better VC returns through data and diversity. Prior to Ulu, Miriam was vice-president/general counsel at Google, which she joined in 2001 as the second attorney. Previously she worked for Ariba as counsel, after having co-founded angel and then venture backed Outcome Software.
Miriam earned AB, AM and JD/MBA degrees from Stanford; was a trustee at the university and has been honored with the Stanford Medal, awarded to fewer than 1 percent of Stanford alumni. She is also the co-founder of Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs. Miriam serves on the investment committee of Acumen Fund America, an impact investment fund serving the needs of low income Americans. She is a Kauffman Fellow and is on the Kauffman Foundation Board, dedicated to increasing opportunity through education and entrepreneurship.
Dr. Arup Roy-Burman
Co-Founder & CEO, Elemeno Health
Prior to founding Elemeno Health, Dr. Roy-Burman was Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit and Director of Transport, Access and Outreach for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. He is a long term leader in efforts to improve outcomes in the inpatient setting, with focus on interprofessional workforce engagement and standardization of best practices.
JD Schramm
Director, King Global Leadership Program & Knight-Hennessy Scholars, Stanford University
JD Schramm has served as a lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business since 2007 where he has taught a long list of communication courses. In 2019 he was named Director of the King Global Leadership Program for Stanford's Knight Hennessy Scholars. In 2020 Wiley published his first book, Communicate with Mastery. He has also held faculty appointments at Columbia and NYU in addition to consulting with firms on a wide range of communication needs. For more information see jdschramm.com
Victoria Treyger
General Partner & Managing Director, Felicis Ventures
Founded in 2006, Felicis Ventures is a venture capital firm that has backed 28 companies valued at $1B or more. Felicis invests in iconic companies reinventing core markets, as well as those creating frontier technologies. More than 80 Felicis portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen (IPO), Guardant Health (IPO), Fitbit (IPO), Shopify (IPO), Meraki (acquired by Cisco), Twitch (acquired by Amazon) and Ring (acquired by Amazon).
Steve Westly
Founder & Managing Partner, The Westly Group
Steve Westly has a unique background.He served on the faculty at Stanford’s Graduate School of business for five years. He helped take eBay public in 1998 where he served as SVP of Marketing, Business Development, M&A and International. In 2002, Mr. Westly was elected Controller and CFO of the State of California. He served on the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS which invest more than $450 billion. He founded the Westly Group in 2007, which is one of the larger smart energy and transportation venture firms in the US. The firms has had four portfolio companies go public including Tesla Motors, where he sat on the Board of Trustees for 3 years.