National Institute for Mentoring Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs
National Institute for Mentoring Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs
Meet Our Team
Mariette Wharton
Founder & CEO
An exited tech founder, angel investor in 100+ startups and a global speaker. She founded Change Agent Partners in 2014 and Vidtel in 2008 with an exit in 2013 to a Fortune 50 company. She was a tech executive for 15+ years at innovators before becoming an entrepreneur. Mariette holds an M.B.A. with honors from Columbia Business School, studied at the London School of Economics and holds a B.A. from Middlebury College.
Bethel Endawoke
Board Member & VP of Development
Bethel grew up in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, studied at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa and was the Director of Engagement for Future Africa. She co-led a program with her organization Fura Innovations with NIMBLE in Africa. She holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and is a MS candidate at Carnegie Mellon University.
Jen Paulson
Board Member
Entrepreneurial thinker for decades (she created Fremont Hills Country Club summer camp as a teenager ran operations for 10 years), she was in project management at Komo Construction, and is currently in real estate at Christie's.
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Colin McGrath
CTO
With expertise in network, machine learning and blockchain technologies, Colin is founder of generative AI company Brightband and has been a senior software engineer at Netskope for several years. He has engineering experience at Ring, Nubeva, Lamden and Vidtel. He studied Computer Science at UC Irvine.
Valerie Duncker
Board Member
Valerie is a NIMBLE Board Member active in NIMBLE marketing and accounting functions. Previously, she drove marketing, communications and HR projects in a cross-functional, global context for a multi-billion dollar aerospace company, a VC-backed technology startup and has held various management & engineering services companies.
Panel Experts & Mentors
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Robin Abrams
Prior CEO of Palm Computing and VeriFone with 30+ years of experience in high-tech, including as prior Managing Director Apple Asia.
Daniil Andreev
Production Engineering Manager at Verdant Robotics, former COO of General Symbol, Automation Engineer at Yubico, a founder and CTO for Microbiota Labs and Charged Inc., Hardware Engineer at Cisco and Kindred.ai. Studied at Washington University in St. Louis and Knox College.
John Arledge
VP of Product Management at Akamai. Veteran of five startups with successful exits: OpenTV (IPO), TiVo (IPO), Danger (acquired by MSFT), Owner's Pass (acquired by partner), Nominum (acquired by Akamai). M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Clarence Chui
CEO & Co-Founder of Outward Inc., acquired in 2017 by Williams-Sonoma Inc. He was a Qualcomm SVP and is named on over 140 issued US utility patents. Clarence holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from MIT.
Joanna Strober
Founder and CEO of Midi Health, a venture-backed digital women's healthcare company. Previously, she founded early digital health pioneer Kurbo Health and has 2 decades of experience in direct private equity and venture capital investing. She holds a J.D. from UCLA and a B.A. from UPenn.
David Gilmour
CTO of Allermi, former Managing Director of Blyth Capital Partners LLC, SVP at Oracle, numerous issued patents in machine learning, natural language processing, privacy and security. From Harvard, B.S. in Engineering and Applied Physics, a M.S. in Engineering and a M.B.A. with distinction.
Julie Arnheim
Currently serving as the Director of Growth and Strategy for Pink Ribbon Good, Julie has significant expertise driving expansion for non-profits. She is also a Board Member for the JCC and holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
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David Hale
Director at TechnoServe Labs and prior CEO at Gigwalk, Entrepreneur in Residence at Lightspeed Venture Partners, B.S. in Engineering, Stanford University, M.A. in Education Administration and Policy Analysis and M.B.A. from Stanford University.
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Norman Happ
CEO of aviation company ATP, formerly CEO of EZ Texting, former SVP at Evernote, senior executive in Intuit’s Small Business Group, founder of two technology companies. He holds a B.S. from George Mason University.
Marika Holmgren
Founder and prior CEO of Do Good Events, serving the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and the Goldman Environmental Prize. She served on the Board of ForestEthics for a decade. Marika now owns Home Town Mercantile in Half Moon Bay. She holds a B.A. from Middlebury College.
Piyush Mangalick
VP, Partner Engineering at Facebook. Previously Director, Developer Platform & Partnerships at Instagram and Lead Sales Engineer and executive at Google. Co-founded multiple companies, B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Santa Clara University and M.B.A. from The Wharton School at UPenn.
Jody Shapiro
Founder and CEO of Productiv, Jody was formerly the founder and CEO of GrowthDynamix and the Global Head of Google Analytics Premium. He holds an M.B.A. from Wharton and an M.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University.
Jonathan Norris
Director at HSBC Innovation focused on tech healthcare. Managing Director of sales origination for SVB for 17 years in life science and healthcare venture capital firms. Jon holds aB.A. in business administration from the University of California, Riverside and a J.D. from Santa Clara University.
Sheira Ariel, Ph.D
Sheira has held roles at Sun Microsystems and IBM and most recently, SVB. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a M.A. in Business Research and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford Business School.
Igor Pistelak
COO and co-founder of Profit Circles, 12-year tenure at Cisco as Director of Worldwide Business Operations and Sales Operations in Europe and Emerging Markets, M.B.A. from Nottingham Trent University.
David Ratner
CEO of innovative cyber security firm HYAS. As CEO of Realm, he pivoted from open source to enterprise focus and sold to MongoDB. Prior CEO of Openwave Messaging, and COO of SEVEN, among other roles. He holds a B.A. in Math and Computer Science from Cornell University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA.
Kristin Russel
CMO of healthcare company symplr, formerly SVP of Marketing for Carrot. She was VP of Marketing at Humana’s subsidiary, Transcend Insights and CEO & co-founder of Anachron, sold to ING Bank. She holds an M.A. in public administration from Carleton University in Canada and M.B.A. in international finance from École Supérieure de Commerce de Rennes, France.
Eran Sandhaus
Managing Partner and Co-Founder, J-Impact Fund. Former Managing Director, Copia Growth Partners. Senior executive for over 20+ years in Fortune 500 companies including Qualcomm and Marvell, leading global businesses, operations and M&A focused on server communications, storage, mobile handsets and Internet-of-Things (IoT).
James Schonzeit
Design and Research Manager for Square for Restaurants. Formerly Design Director at IDEO in San Francisco, previously Design Strategist at fuseproject and a Senior Design Researcher at IA Collaborative. James holds a B.A. in Economics, Film & Media Culture from Middlebury College.
Lauren Berman
Lauren is a former NIMBLE Board Member. She delivers improv and presentation training for NIMBLE. She co-founded the Hagigah Theatre Program, co-founded the Berman Skin Institute and is a Communication Coach for Kaiser Permanente. She served on the Board of TheatreWorks, and as preschool director of the Palo Alto JCC. She holds a degree in Theatre from Sacramento State University.
Laura Torres
Laura is a former Board Member of NIMBLE and is a Mentor.
She has over 20 years of experience in product marketing, product management, strategy and communications in both B2B and B2C. Laura is a positioning consultant with Firebrick Consulting. Laura was VP and Director of Product Marketing for Eyefi, CMO Strategy Group and Peoplesoft and holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
Seymour Duncker
Expert in AI, he is the co-founder and CEO of Mindscale Labs and a Fellow at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Policy for the World Project. He is a Machine Learning Advisor for Kinders and a Board Member at MVLA Foundation. He holds an M.B.A. from University of Passau and an undergrad degree from Technical University of Munich.