ADI ABILI
Adi, originally from London, moved to the Bay to start her own VC fund Glassroots Ventures, a venture capital fund and accelerator targeting minorities in emerging economies through seed stage investment. Her background is financial with experience in Private Equity and Investment Funds. Adi also serves as Program Director at Draper University, an entrepreneurial accelerator started by Tim Draper, where she works directly with entrepreneurs on the seed stage area of their business to take it to the next level. She also manages and creates a curriculum, facilitates introductions from Entrepreneurs to VCs and brings diverse students into their ecosystem. Prior to that, Adi worked as Business Analyst for Base Ventures and Transmedia Capital, and ran the PwC Accelerator in Luxembourg. She regularly mentors startups, especially those from minority backgrounds and also serves as a judge for many events including Defy Ventures, AngelHack, Startup Chile, Startup House and Verizon, amongst many others.
MILAN KOCH
Milan Koch is the Managing Director of the AngelHack HACKcelerator, an accelerator program that transitions startups from concept stage to MVP with early traction in 12 weeks. Milan currently manages a portfolio of USD $38MM+ in total and recent stories include Airpost.io (Acquired by BOX in 2015), Appetas (Acquired by Google in 2014) and SlickLogin (Acquired by Google in 2014). Milan also designs and manages Accelerators and Innovation Initiatives for Fortune500 companies such as HP, IBM, MasterCard, CapitalOne and UBS. Aside from his engagement as Managing Partner, Milan serves as Dealflow Partner and Mentor for Startup Chile, a seed stage accelerator created by the Chilean Government as well as Advisor and Mentor to Gaza Sky Geeks, Gazas first ever Startup Accelerator. Prior to that, Milan worked as Investment Analyst for Silicon Valley based Venture Capital Funds Base Ventures and Transmedia Capital where he did Due Diligence on over 300 potential investments and participated in investment decisions in successful investments such as SnappyTV (Acquired by Twitter), Newsle (Acquired by LinkedIn) and Buffer. Before moving to SIlicon Valley, Milan Co-Founded a big-data Startup in Germany that received Investment from the European Union as part of the High-Tech Strategy for Germany. Milan holds a B.A. degree in Mutimedia Management which he obtained through international studies at
University of California, Los Angeles, San Diego State University and University of Appliend Sciences Duesseldorf.
MELISSA BOUTIN
Melissa Boutin a Kittitian by birth is a financial educator, money coach and founder of Yourmoneyworth.com a platform that provides personal finance resources for Caribbean Millennial graduates residing in the Caribbean and the United States. She created Yourmoneyworth.com to educate Caribbean Millennials to do better with their money and empower them to reach their financial goals. After graduating with $58,000 in student loans she knew that she committed to under learning as much as I could about student loans and made a plan to pay off my debt, save and invest. She helps Millennials do better with money in order to reach their financial goals by providing personal finance and debt payoff coaching.
She was motivated by Caribbean Millennials graduates who struggled with understanding student loans and had a needed help analyzing their student loan account statements, navigating the repayment process and developing plans to effectively pay off student loan debt. YourMoneyWorth.com was created to the goal of providing the tools graduates need to pay off debt, save, invest and build wealth. With a career in engineering design and consulting, she has used her professional experience to create a company that provides Caribbean Millennials graduates with personal finance information and resources empower them to pay off debt, save, invest and build wealth. She also provide consulting services to help Caribbean Financial institutions better serve their Millennial customers and position their institutions to effectively take advantage of the OECS Single Economic Space, as Lead Consultant at YMW Consulting & Project Managers.
Early-stage entrepreneurs experience the most vulnerable time of their careers and of their business. Trying to raise money post-idea, pre-traction is the “valley of death” and it’s this valley where some of the best opportunities for global impact have been laid to rest. Marketing for capital must never be the reason for a good idea to go to waste. With Aspire.Capital, we’re specifically funding grassroots innovation for social change during this dire early-stage. The last four years of my career have been focused on investment banking while I sourced and managed the portfolio of an investment bank, and ran a program for entrepreneurs on methods to effectively raise capital. Before that, I had been in early-stage social enterprise and formed a nonprofit in Haiti. Currently, I am registered with the California Department of Business Oversight to source capital for deals. Aspire.Capital is currently forming a fund to support Impact Investing.
MCKENZIE M. SLAUGTER
McKenzie is the Co-Founder & CEO of Prohaus VC, a women-led global venture collective that supports the next generation of impactful innovation founders, investors, and advisors. We invest, train, and support startups who leverage neoteric, high-growth technologies and innovative models that contribute to the well being of individuals, economies and enterprises. Industries we have a special interest in are fintech, health & wellness, media, mediatech, agriculture, smart cities, shared economy, and cultural transformation. Our 10 global hubs help facilitate the full entrepreneurial experience at seed and early stages with InnovatetheNext Foundation – our acceleration and personal development programs; Prohaus Venture Network – connecting founders to investors and advisors; and Cowork Global – offering a network of coworking and workcations.
She has a background in finance and technology, and a passion for pioneering new funding models and startup ecosystems throughout the Caribbean and worldwide. McKenzie got her start in building startup ecosystems as former COO and advisor at MD Idea Lab, a Boston-based accelerator for digital healthcare startups. She is now hub advisor for the World Bank’s Caribbean Mobile Innovation Project, mentor for the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and founding member of InnovatetheNext Foundation. McKenzie has also founded and seeded several fintech companies including Beauty & The Bull, Mindful Society, Socredly and Osusu Labs. McKenzie has been recognized as a Black Tech Titan by Black Enterprise and featured in Forbes and Bloomberg.
Prior to starting Prohaus, she specialized in brand capital for global consumer and technology brands. McKenzie led brand strategy for post M&A transactions for Thomson Reuters and for a variety of financial and retail portfolio companies for OMERS Private Equity and Bain Capital. Her experience in brand capital helped transform her career into alternative investment consulting. McKenzie has held executive roles in hedge fund due diligence and private equity real estate firms. To date, McKenzie has successfully raised $50 million for private companies. McKenzie received an M.B.A. in Finance from Hofstra University and Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from Hampton University where at the age of 18 started programming at NASA Langley as a SEMS scholar (funded by the U.S. Navy), competed in competitions and published several research papers on Aerothermodynamics and Biofiltration.
TELLY VALERIE ONU
Ms. Telojo “Telly” Valerie Onu is recognized as a leading international development & digital economist and Enterprise transformation specialist and Fintech entrepreneur and has spent over 16 years as a Strategy and Management -Consultant. Her competence includes, Enterprise Transformation, Innovation, Competitiveness, Project Management and Digital Marketing As an entrepreneur, Ms. Onu has spent a great deal of time and energy pursuing her passions in enterprise transformation and financial innovation and capacity building, She was the Women's Entrepreneurship Day St. Kitts and Nevis Ambassador for 2015, The Women Innovators Network of the Caribbean (WINC) Acceleration Programme Accredited Facilitator for the Acceleration Programme funded by the Canadian Government and implemented by InfoDev, World Bank Group under EPIC.
She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Quintessence Consulting Inc. a St Kitts and Nevis based boutique strategy consulting firm and InnovatetheNext Foundation, a Venture Accelerator of Accelerator programmes, CodeSprints and Hackathons and Global Destination Acceleration programms promoting the development of both digital and Caribbean venture ecosystems. In January 2016, InnovatetheNext was named second Microsoft BizSparks Network Programme Partner in the Caribbean. Quintessence Consulting is the Hub Coordinator for the Caribbean Climate Innovation Centre and the Caribbean Mobile Innovation Project, both funded by the Canadian Government and implemented through InfoDev, World Bank Group under the Entrepreneurship Programme for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC).
Ms. Onu is also the Co-Founder of the women led Prohaus Venture Collective (VC) a Data Driven Ecosystem supporting the development of high growth Early to Midstage Ventures focused on Innovation Impact. www.prohaus.vc Ms. Onu is also the Co-Founder of Prohaus Ventures a Financial Technology innovation lab and Holdings Company. As a serial Fintech Innovator and Entrepreneur, Ms. Onu is the Founder and CoFounder of the following early stage companies; Osusu Labs: Osusu Labs is a cloud-based API mobile payment solution that support the integration and adoption of any custom wallet and transaction programs and
Socredly– Prototype Stage Ms. Onu holds an Executive Masters in e-Governance from the Swiss University of Technology (EPFL), PgCert in International Trade Policy & Law, International E-commerce/EBusiness Analysis, Management and Consulting and an undergraduate diploma in Economics and Business Studies
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