Blue Startups
Blue Startups

Our Network of Mentors Make Blue Startups What It Is.

Doreen Wong

Former Investor & Venture Partner, Republic

Doreen Wong

Doreen (Dory) Wong is dedicated to supporting social entrepreneurs and their climate and sustainability solutions. For over a decade, she has helped Fortune 500 companies, governments, nonprofits, universities, incubators, accelerators, and venture capital (VC) firms with funding and scaling their climate initiatives. Doreen is currently focused on enabling ocean-based climate innovation. Doreen is an advocate for more diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities. She serves on the Board of Diversity VC (North America – U.S.) and is part of the Women in VC, Women+ in Climate Tech, and The Outdoorist Oath communities. Doreen is also a member of My Climate Journey and Hawaii Venture Capital Association.

Elyn Yao

Vice President of Marketing, Hybrid Work Solutions, HP

Elyn Yao

Marketing executive with over 25 years of experience in developing and leading teams to successfully define and implement marketing strategies that build brand, generate demand, and fuel growth. Expertise lies in global go-to-market planning, integrated marketing campaigns, marketing communications, strategic partnerships, and product marketing.

Joey Katzen

Managing Director, Hawaii Angels

Joey Katzen

Joey guides our companies with Entrepreneurship and Strategy expertise.

I am an entrepreneur and business strategist who revels in working with driven, creative people.

I am led both to existing, agile companies looking to leverage their present resources into new revenue possibilities or into adjacent spaces, and also to promising innovators who are interested in taking their early and untested concepts to market. In particular, I get excited about entering markets with high-value and high-margin innovative products.

My process is marked by speed, creativity, and short bursts of intensity. In addition to those already connected to a new project, I might involve several other entrepreneurs that specialize in other aspects to jump-start brainstorming.

My history is varied, and I find I use these experiences on a nearly daily basis to screen the “marketable” from the merely “interesting”. From my background in engineering, I revel in the possible, and how to change answers from “no” to “not that way, but how about if we do this?” From my background in communications, design, and marketing, I have insight into what will sell, and what particular audiences want to see and what they’ll pay. And from my background in law, I’m aware of the bottom line and the risks inherent in any venture (along with how to minimize them).

My efforts have been instrumental in helping to develop a high-growth national company from which I have had a successful, sizable exit, along with a number of early-stage concepts before and after roll-out. Two of the companies in which I participated in early stages have been recognized on the Inc 500 list: Vendormate (#25 in 2010) and BroadSource (#385 in 2007).

Specialties: Among my specialties, I assist in helping to distill creative ideas into viable and marketable concepts, researching and targeting audiences from initial stages to later growth, developing business plans, constructing marketing campaigns and plans, managing operations staff and product development teams, and planning for scale.

Josh Sullivan

Managing Director, alani Capital

Josh Sullivan

Josh Sullivan, Ph.D., is an American investor, serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, best-selling author and beginner surfer.

Josh is the Managing Director of alani capital, investing in visionary entrepreneurs and diverse founders in early-stage startups for angel, pre-seed and seed rounds.

Previously, Josh was the co-founder and former CEO of Modzy, the enterprise AI platform to deploy and scale production machine learning. He founded and led the worldwide AI practice at Booz Allen, as EVP and Partner. He also led large technical programs in the National Security & Intelligence business.

Josh authored best-selling AI book “Mathematical Corporation” with comment from Mark Fields, CEO Ford and Larry Bossidy, CEO Honeywell, and he is the co-author of the celebrated “Field Guide to Data Science”, now in the second edition. Early in his career, Josh co-founded a software & services startup and scaled the small business to a successful exit. Josh started his career in US Intelligence Community as an engineer.

He is a frequent conference speaker with numerous articles in the Atlantic, CNBC, WSJ, HBR, and TechCrunch. Josh is a former corporate advisory board member MIT CSAIL, Purdue University, and the University of Maryland, and former Member of Center for New American Security (CNAS) Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and National Security.

Paulette Jencks

Head of Partnerships, WRK/360

Paulette Jencks

After earning an MBA from Cornell University, Paulette Jencks has spent years growing revenue for start-ups in the parent-focused space. At Kidstir, an ecommerce children’s cooking company, she grew the subscriber base significantly in the first 6 months of launch. At Weldon, a parent coaching and wellness start-up, she created and executed the go-to-market strategy for enterprise clients uncovering the largest revenue driver of the business. Paulette is able to put all the juggled pieces of a growing business together to focus on the most important areas to drive focused growth.

Prior to working with start-ups, Paulette spent years in healthcare consulting working across big pharma, specialty pharma and insurance companies.  Her projects were focused across digital marketing, change management and strategy. Her success is contributed to the deep relationships she builds with clients to understand their needs and work together to achieve common goals.

Paulette has a passion for female entrepreneurship and enjoys being a part of Luminary and HeyMama communities to continue to support women in their careers.

Steve Markowitz

Co-founder, Beestripe and LifeDNA

Steve Markowitz

Steve Markowitz is a Honolulu-based impact investor and former public company CEO. His areas of expertise are healthtech and consumer internet. Steve co-founded and led pioneering loyalty marketer MyPoints.com, taking it public on Nasdaq (peak market cap $2.5 billion). He is an entrepreneur turned hands-on investor, serving as vice chairman of Blue Startups alumnus iFirst Medical Technologies and chairman of LifeDNA and BeeStripe, all based in Honolulu. Steve has been honored by his alma mater UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business with the coveted Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellowship, recognizing his well-received lectures in the Entrepreneurship and New Venture Finance courses. He is also a Japanese speaker and globalist who shares in Blue Startups’ vision of Hawai‘i as the ultimate East Meets West locale.

Tianna Johnson

Founder, People Culture Talent

Tianna Johnson

As a values-driven people leader, I specialize in building diverse, inclusive communities of exceptionally talented professionals. Recognizing the importance of an organization’s foundation, I have a holistic approach when it comes to architecting scalable processes and operations early; So when a team undergoes hypergrowth, everything is in place to move twice as fast. As an experienced operator across nearly all aspects of the people function, I am an ecosystem thinker. Taking into account people, culture, talent and the business as a whole, I empower stakeholders to help their future selves by evaluating trade-offs, edge cases, and what needs to be done right now, next week and over the next six months to achieve unicorn status.

With over 15+ years of experience, I launched my own consulting firm, People Culture Talent. As a collaborative thought partner and advisor to early and mid-stage founders, I help companies scale sustainably during critical stages of growth via the most valuable resource – people. My passion for people, culture, and talent stems from the joy of assembling the world’s best teams, so they can achieve their life’s best work.

At Notion, I was the first Recruiting/People hire where I led recruiting teams and programs to scale from 30 to 600+ employees. Previously, I led recruiting teams at Render, Lyft and Github.

Specialties: Talent Operations, Talent & Recruiting Strategy, IDEA Strategy, Diversity & Inclusion, People Operations, Scaling Fast Growing Teams, Culture Building, Strategic Planning, Employee Relations, Workforce Planning, Training & Development, People Programs, Talent Programs and Compensation & Benefits.

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Eric Chan

Head of Partnerships, Chargebee

Eric Chan

Business Development | Go-To-Market and Market Development Leader | Growth | SaaS | FinTech | Mobile

I am a Market Development Leader with 20+ years of experience at Global 2000 firms and startups.

As a Head of Global Partnerships, I manage an active network of over 50 ISVs, opened new revenue sources, including Channel Resellers and a robust referral network. Increased and sustain revenue contribution to over 20%. As a Head of Marketing, I have created and launched several Go-To-Market Strategies for innovative products reaching tens of millions globally. I built high performance teams and scalable operations in complex environments. By combining my product marketing and business operations expertise, I am able to consistently generate superior business results with the teams that I build and manage.

Professional Highlights:
* Knowledge of SaaS, FinTech, enterprise software, mobile/telecom and automotive
* Innovative team leader who builds high performance operations and business results
* Built and marketed products that reached tens of millions of users globally
* Nationally-recognized mobile market expert featured in CNBC, Forbes & Wireless Week
* Experienced strategist, international business and market developer

Core Competencies:
growth | go to market | product marketing | product evangelist | mobile | mobile apps | international business | COO | operations | team leader | business strategy | emerging markets | operational excellence | strategist | market development | mobile expert | strategy | ecosystem development | business development

Eric Chin

General Partner, Crosslink Capital

Eric Chin

Eric brings over 30 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur and venture capital investor. Prior to Crosslink, Eric was a General Partner at Bay Partners focusing on early stage investments, some of which include Opsource (NTT), Invensense (INVN), Mulesoft (MULE) and Dropcam (GOOG). Eric’s startup experience includes co-founding the Internet server software company WebSpective (INKT), and co-founding TelASIC Communications (MTI). In addition, his operating experience includes business development at Mainspring (IBM) and at MILCOM (Military Commercial Technologies) where he focused on finding and commercializing next generation technologies out of the military, aerospace and Defense Labs. Eric is an active surfer, sailor, programmer, chef and all around family man. He is an advisor to SaveTheWaves, and an active supporter of the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation and the Navy Seal Foundation.

Eric Darmstaedter

Part time Independent Consultant, Pacific Current

Eric Darmstaedter

Over 40 years in energy industry in US and international markets with experience in startups to multinationals. Executive positions in the technology, service, consulting, equipment, project finance and development sectors. Currently semi-retired; consultant to various companies in energy sector. Active as a private investor in Hawaii Angels, Blue Startups and Elemental Excelerator. Advisor to various startup companies since 2002.

Eric Nakagawa

Executive Director, Celo Foundation

Eric Nakagawa

Eric guides our companies with Software Development, HTML, and Mobile Applications expertise.

Nakagawa is a New York Times best selling author with his book “I Can Has Cheezburger?” appearing on the New York Times Best Sellers list in January 2009.

Nakagawa is a speaker in the online community as well as web development. He spoke at SXSW in March 2008 about the LolCats success, and was featured in the Google Authors Series.

In 2012 he co-founded simplehoney.This startup was acquired by Ripple in April 2013.

In 2014 he started Doge4water an internet fundraising where people donated in dogecoins, the project aimed to help providing water well for poor water scarce areas of kenya.Within days the fundraising was successful. Nakagawa is currently a Parse Developer Advocate of Facebook.

Eric Quon-Lee

Principal in Business Operations, Amazon Web Services

Eric Quon-Lee

Eric guides our companies with management and entrepreneurship expertise.

Experienced strategist and builder of operational processes and frameworks with a focus on optimizing for scalable growth. Specializing in new high growth business units within larger entities and pre-IPO startups.

Several years of management consulting experience in finance, strategy and operations and has worked for several leading Canadian corporations including Bombardier Aerospace, BlackBerry and RBC Financial Group.

Known as a “super connector”, Eric is highly involved in the global startup ecosystem through his connections to a number of startup accelerators, advising entrepreneurs and extensively publishing startup related articles. Eric has a MBA from the Rotman School of Management – University of Toronto.

Erin Michelson

Founder, HumanKind

Erin Michelson

Erin Michelson is a tech innovator, exponential growth strategist, and social justice advocate. Named a Forbes #Next1000 entrepreneur, she is recognized for her acumen in combining AI with ESG applications. In 2022, Erin was named an AI for Good: ESG AI Innovator by Women in AI, North America and is a Diversity in Tech Digital Transformation Award Finalist.

Erin has recently returned to her first love: writing. She is now focused on creating online tools and guides to help us be more kind to ourselves, others, and the world. As Founder of the new venture HumanKind, she is thrilled to once again be working directly with social impact organizations dedicated to global change.

As Founder of Summery, Erin was focused on optimizing cultural capital, leading a team of scientists in the quantification of individual values, such as empathy, integrity, and innovation, and the measurement of organizational cultural alignment. She spearheaded Summery’s strategic direction, business development, and client relationships. Summery clients included Salesforce, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the California Community College System.

In addition to her drive for innovation, Erin brings with her a data-driven mindset built over a 15-year career in global finance, working with boutique investment management firms, financial leaders such as Bank of America, and clients including Morgan Stanley and American Express. She was also a preferred consultant with global social impact leaders including W.K. Kellogg, Tides, and Ashoka Foundations.

Erin is an active thought leader and public speaker on technology trends that impact business, sustainability, and entrepreneurship. She is an environmental and social justice advocate, particularly for economic equality and LGBTQI issues, and has served as a Board of Director with nonprofit organizations, including the National Organization for Women (Chicago), YWCA-Brooklyn, and the Alliance for Women’s Equality.

Erin earned a BA from Mills College, an MA from the New School for Social Research in NYC, and a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been profiled in Forbes, Forbes Women, BBC Technology, Entrepreneur magazine, NASDAQ, National Geographic, Huffington Post, Fox News, and NPR.

Having traveled to 100+ countries volunteering with humanitarian organizations, Erin is the author of the Adventure Philanthropist book series and the best-seller “How to be a Digital Nomad: 50 Practical Tips, Interviews, and Personal Insights.” She continues to live as a global digital nomad.

Evan Schnidman

Co-Founder & CEO, Outrigger Group

Evan Schnidman

Evan is the co-founder and CEO of Outrigger Group, where he provides fractional Chief Data Officer, Chief Analytics Officer, and Chief AI Officer services to midsize and large companies, as well as consulting and advisory services to early and growth stage companies, and venture investors. Prior to founding Outrigger Group, Evan was the founder and CEO of Prattle (acquired in 2019), a venture-backed AI company leveraging natural language processing to analyze market-moving language. Prattle was born from Evan’s academic research at the intersection of finance, economics and AI. Evan holds a PhD in Political Economy from Harvard University, as well as a MA & BA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Fabiola Cazares

Senior Merchant Programs & Government Relations Manager, Affirm Inc. and Angel Investor/Advisor

Fabiola Cazares

Fabiola is dedicated to empowering small and diverse businesses as an investor and mentor.

Fadi Mahmoud

Former Sr. Director Innovation, Accenture

Fadi Mahmoud

Fadi has more than 30 years’ experience in the technology sector, located in Hawaii and San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He holds more than 24 U.S. approved patents (recent approved patent was in 2024) in enterprise and consumer innovative technologies which shipped in many products since early 1990s. The chances are that your bank accounts, health records, internet browsing data, applications or other data transactions has been processed or stored in technologies that Fadi architected, designed or written the code for. As an entrepreneur and innovative technologist Fadi has taken products from new revolutionary or evolutionary innovative ideas to shipped products producing revenues of more than $500Million for companies like Adaptec, Microsoft, Dell, Accenture and others. His technologies have reached and positively impacted more than 150 million direct customers and more than Billion consumers.

Recently Fadi has been working closely with Fortune 100/500 corporation on specific innovative technologies like IoT, AI, RTLS, blockchain, robotics in different industries such as supply chain, automotive, manufacturing, utilities, healthcare, hospitality and others to solve critical challenges to client’s business growth, customer satisfaction, ESG, and operational efficiencies.

In 2016 at Alcalua startup, Fadi was founder who invented new wearable technology for sports and medical sectors addressing performance augmentation through hardware, software, cloud, IoT, mobile, and AI. The device is frictionless where one can’t see, feel, and one would forget wearing it. Fadi holds the patent for this device/system.

Fadi is an avid innovator, investor and always excited to be working and helping other startups and founders, no idea is a stupid idea. He is an active mentor and advisor to many startups in Europe, MENA, Hawaii, California and other geos. With background in technology, product definition, innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy, positioning, software, hardware, embedded, web, market analysis, team’s management and creation, positive working cultures, access to the technology community and to the investment community in Silicon Valley, Europe and MENA region enables Fadi to empower startups he is advising, especially those in the early phases of pre-seed to Series-A.

Fadi graduated with Masters of science degree with honors from University of New Orleans in the department of electrical engineering focusing on polarization optics where he published papers in U.S. scientific and academic journals.(Optical Society of America, IEEE).

Fan Shen

CEO, Family office and Advisor, MilDef

Fan Shen

Fan is a seasoned business development executive in the gaming and technology space. Currently, Fan leads investment for her family office.

Previouslsy, she led gaming investment and partnership for Dapper Labs, a leading blockchain/NFT company. Before Dapper Labs, she led the business development team to source and negotiate strategic partnerships for Amazon Devices and Luna, a cloud gaming solution.

Prior to Amazon, Fan spearheaded business development and publishing efforts for League of Legends: Wild Rift at Riot Games. She negotiated the publishing and development agreement for League of Legends Wild Rift. During her time at Riot, she also established the eSports franchise system for League of Legends Chinese League (LPL). She led a team of nine to design a revenue share model, set the franchise fee, source credible investors, and build city-based system. LPL is the first eSports franchise worldwide with a city-based system. She led all the negotiations with eSports teams. The franchise project led to four new institutional investors for LPL: AsusTek, BiliBili, TopSports and FunPlus.

Fan also spent years working at Boston Consulting Group and Lehman Brothers earlier in her career.

Faruq Ahmad

Co-Founder, Palo Alto Capital

Faruq Ahmad

Faruq guides our companies with Venture Capital, Strategy, Startups, Marketing, and Investment expertise.

Faruq Ahmad is founding partner of Palo Alto Capital Advisors, a silicon-valley based firm which provides advisory services to institutional investors, venture capital firms, and selected companies. Over the years, he has been founder of a venture-backed software company, as well as a venture capitalist, and also an institutional investor in venture funds. Prior to Palo Alto Capital, Mr. Ahmad was Vice President at C.M. Capital (the Cha Group), a silicon-valley based investment firm with strong China links. The firm has invested continuously in leading venture capital funds and startup companies for over 25 years, from its headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. In addition, funds sponsored by the firm include Charter Ventures, Charter LifeSciences, Focus Ventures, and Mingly Capital.

Gavan Wilhite

Founder, Stealth

Gavan Wilhite

Gavan guides our companies with expertise and uses game technology and design principles to accelerate the world towards brighter futures. He is in Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work on VR D&D, and recently founded and sold AltspaceVR to Microsoft.

Geoff Ossias

Partner, Goodwin Procter LLP

Geoff Ossias

Geoff Ossias is a partner in the corporate and securities practice of Goodwin Procter, a leading global law firm. Geoff represents fast-growing companies in a broad range of technology-driven sectors such as healthcare, biotechnology, financial services, renewable energy, cybersecurity, marketing and sales automation and e-commerce. He routinely assists his clients in a wide variety of strategic transactions, including equity offerings, debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, exclusive license arrangements, restructurings and the resolution of complex corporate governance matters. Geoff also represents venture capital and private equity funds in connection with fund formation and investments.

Over more than 15 years, and across billions of dollars in transactions, Geoff has represented many leading technology companies in key markets, including eVisit, Coplex, Dragos, Integrate.com, Natural Partners, RealtyShares, Solera Health, Volta Industries, WebPT and many others. Earlier in his career, Geoff spent three years as senior counsel with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., and, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, co-founded MyPoints.com (Nasdaq: MYPT), a publicly traded email marketing company based in San Francisco and later acquired by United Airlines. This combination of legal and practical experience enables Geoff to help his clients position themselves more effectively for all of the major business milestones that high-growth companies experience.

Geoff is an active participant in the tech community with broad connections among PE, venture and angel investors.

Gilad Berenstein

Founder, Brook Bay Capital

Gilad Berenstein

I’m passionate about technology, entrepreneurship, travel, AI, food, human psychology, and yoga. Current & Former CEO, Board Director, Corporate Advisor, Public Speaker, Investor, CPA, and Mentor.

Greg Gaug

Senior Vice President of Investments & Analytics, Ulupono Initiative

Greg Gaug

After living and working in seven states and abroad, I have finally found a place to call home here in Hawaii and am truly grateful for the opportunity to become a better person, community member and leader in the wonderful aloha state.

Since starting at Ulupono Initiative, I have had the opportunity to work on a number of projects that will bring more local food and locally produced energy to Hawaii. I have also been able to get involved with the community by supporting local entrepreneurs and startups, as well as taking part in a lo‘i restoration.

While I am humbled to have had the responsibility of managing StubHub’s budget (generating over $1 billion in annual sales) and leading the company’s strategy for a number of years, I am most proud of running the cross-functional team that helped enable such endeavors. As a team, we were able to lead StubHub through the Great Recession, double revenue while tripling our operating margin and most importantly improve customer satisfaction in just a few years.

Greg Kelly

Business Performance Advisor, Insperity

Greg Kelly

As a Business Performance Advisor at Insperity for over 14 years, I leverage my expertise in human resources and business solutions to help small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals and enhance their performance. I am a Certified Business Performance Advisor from the University of Houston, which demonstrates my proficiency and credibility in providing comprehensive and customized workforce optimization solutions. My recommendations often include, mitigation of organizational risk, employee related cost containment, revenue generation, cultural assessment and development.

Haden Kirkpatrick

VP of Innovation and Venture Capital, State Farm

Haden Kirkpatrick

Sr. Strategy and Innovation Executive with 20+ years growing mid sized to large Enterprises into substantial market forces, maximizing their impact through disrupting crowded or semi-crowded markets. Deep experience in rallying the organization to the achievement of big hairy, audacious goals (BHAG’s) and challenging business problems. Recognized expert in launch in or transition to mass-market appeal and market disruption.
• Strategy
• General Management
• Innovation
• Go-To-Market Strategy
• New Market Entry
• Product and Service Strategy
• Product Lifecycle Management
• Marketing Strategy
• Technology
• Entrepreneurship

Hadi Labarang

Former VP of Growth, Empowered Education

Hadi Labarang

12+ years of performance marketing across multiple industries: Saas, Edtech, Health & Wellness, E-commerce, CPG

A deep passion for mentoring young female leaders to find their voice and shine through their work

World citizen: Cameroon – Saudi Arabia – France – USA

Hema Veeraragavathatham

Angel Investor and Former Computer Scientist Lead, Adobe

Hema Veeraragavathatham

• Angel Investor passionate about startups, investing in technology businesses that create a positive impact. Advisor, mentor and coach for tech startup founders and budding Angel Investors. Investing/Mentor/Advisor alongside syndicates/groups: AngelList, SandHill Angels, Pipeline Angels, Hustle Fund, Launch, Blue Startups and Alchemist
• Over a decade at Adobe as a cross-functional engineering leader, passionate about delivering exceptional customer experiences across mobile, desktop and web surfaces. An expert in defining priorities, making critical engineering decisions, collaborating in a fast-paced, agile environment, partnering cross-functionally within and across organizations. Strong computer engineering background and a key contributor to successful software launches. Experienced lead and developer of high-quality scalable full stack web applications using the latest technologies
• Passionately volunteer in community events, focus on hiring the best talent, coach team members, mentor in the Girls Who Code program

Hoala Greevy

Founder and CEO, Paubox

Hoala Greevy

Hoala Greevyis the founder and CEO of Paubox, the leading provider of HIPAA-compliant email services. Paubox’s end-to-end email encryption works on any device without requiring additional apps, plug-ins, or logins. A serial entrepreneur, Hoala also founded Pau Spam, an email-filtering software service. Paubox is based in San Francisco.

Hoala recently celebrated Paubox’s 1,000th customer by giving away 1,000 spam musubi to San Franciscans and donating funds to Project Homeless Connect. An avid kayak fisher, Hoala holds the world record for the largest caught finescale triggerfish.

Holly Liu

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, PKO Inc and Co-Founder & Managing Partner, PKO Investments

Holly Liu

Holly Liu founded the venture backed mobile gaming company, Kabam in 2006 with UC Berkeley alumni. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400MM annually, that led Kabam into the unicorn club in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning “Kingdoms of Camelot” franchise, which has grossed over $250 million in less than four years. She was also the founding mobile designer for extension Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012.

She was Chief Development Officer in charge of developing Kabam internationally through key relationships – starting with China. Among other things, she continues to develop global cultural initiatives within Kabam.

Prior to that she was Kabam’s Chief of Staff and oversaw HR, leading corporate culture and talent experience for over 1500 employees (including contractors) at Kabam globally. Holly oversaw the team responsible for recruiting and retaining top talent, and has grown the Kabam staff 500% in three years.

Holly is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. She is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, and has named in Fortune and Forbes as a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship.

Holly has been named in:
* Fortune – “10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming”
* Forbes – “12 Women in Gaming to Watch – Entrepreneurs’ Edition”
* Forbes – “10 Women Entrepreneurs to Watch from Google Ventures’ Portfolio Companies”

Holly is an experienced keynote speaker. Speaking engagements include:
* Women 2.0 San Francisco Conference Keynote – “Going Big: The Secret to Going Big, so You Don’t Have to Go Home”
* Haas UC Berkeley Asia Pacific Conference Keynote – “Define Your Moment”
* A. Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Series – UC Berkeley SkyDeck – “Finding Your Way”
* 500Startups: Weapons of Mass Distribution – “Shake, Mix, Stir, KABAM : $0 – $360MM in 4 Years
Flat”
* Casual Connect – “The Pitfalls of Passion”

Ian Kitajima

President, Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR)

Ian Kitajima

A Tech Sherpa, translator, story teller, talent agent, chaos maker, a Jedi-always-in-training. My mission: to put more into life than I take…to create value that will outlast me.

30+ years of starting and growing technology small businesses, programs, and projects with limited resources. Creating things from/with little to nothing is my specialty. My superpower is spotting and recruiting future science and tech superstars. Related Industries: Science & Technology, Research & Development, Defense, Consumer, Education, Warehouse and Retail Management Systems.

Ike DeLorenzo

Advisor & Former VP of Product, Mux

Ike DeLorenzo

Ike has 20 years experience making great software products at leading SaaS companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He held product leadership roles at Salesforce, Heroku, Twilio (where he was also GM), and Atlassian. Originally a software engineer before his career in Product, his product approach is grounded in technical understanding. Ike currently lives in Honolulu where he advises and assists several B2B and B2C startups.

Ilias Beshimov

Co-Founder, ClassHour

Ilias Beshimov

Co-Founder of ClassHour, virtual executive education where all sessions are live, interactive, and hands-on. Deepest domain expertise coupled with workshop style learning. Go from theory to practice in the same session.

Co-Founder of Celential.ai, Series A startup funded by GSR. Grew Good&Co product to 1.5M users and increased retention by 4x. Launched from scratch 2 mobile apps, both of which reached #1 spot in App Store and achieved 15M+ in downloads. Managed 7 mobile and web products with $100M+ in revenue.

Jack Huang

Product Manager + Product Advisory, Gemini Technologies

Jack Huang

Working on some things some where with some people
Experience in Product, early-stage startups, enterprise SaaS, UI/UX, workflow optimization, data management, onboarding optimization
Industries: consumer, hardware, govtech, construction, healthcare, supply chain, telecom

Jaclyn Loo

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Google

Jaclyn Loo

Experienced digital marketer passionate about brands, product strategy and entrepreneurship. I love connecting untapped consumer insights to new business opportunities, and have been praised for my endless positivity, inclusive leadership style and ability to bring teams (like Product, Engineering, Sales and Marketing) together.

Jared Furutani

Principal, Realization Capital Partners

Jared Furutani

Currently a private equity investor in later stage technology companies at Realization Capital Partners. Previously a partner at a16z, where I helped founders raise equity, debt and execute M&A. Prior to a16z spent 12 years as a technology focused M&A banker, representing VC-backed portfolio companies in sales to large strategics and private equity sponsors. Jared is a graduate of Iolani School (‘01) and earned a B.A. in accounting and information systems from the University of Washington.

Jason Cutinella

Founder & CEO, NMG Network

Jason Cutinella

Entrepreneur and expert in media, marketing, brand management, and event coordination. As CEO and founder of Nella Media Group, responsibilities include overseeing multiple businesses divisions with annual, quarterly, and bimonthly publications focused on culture and creative concepts, managing a team of editors, designers and sales and marketing professionals represented in Hawaii and the West Coast, building partnerships with national and global suppliers, and consistently looking for unique opportunities to expand the business and strengthen the brand by developing core relationships with customers.

Jason Sewell

Principal Security Software Engineer, Oracle

Jason Sewell

Jason currently serves as Co-founder/Curriculum Developer of DevLeague (http://devleague.com), a software development boot camp, and Co-founder/Solutions Architect of Sudokrew (http://sudokrew.com), a software solutions company specializing in custom software solutions in the verticals of education, energy and infrastructure. Both companies were founded with the common mission of creating jobs and opportunities here in Hawaii. Prior to co-founding both companies in mid 2013, Jason served as the Senior Programmer at Outrigger Hotels & Resorts specializing in high traffic consumer web architecture and B2B interfaces across the enterprise, and has served as a team member on various startups and projects over the last 10 years. In the past year, DevLeague has received awards in the Most Innovative Business category from both Pacific Business News and Hawaii Business magazine as well as a personal finalist nomination for the HVCA Entrepreneur of the Year.

Jay Voss

Deal Screening Committee, Hawaii Angels

Jay Voss

Jay guides our companies with financing, marketing and management expertise. He has a wide range of business and education contacts.

He has co-founded two startups — one in wholesale distribution (Hawaii Frozen Beverages) and the other in television advertising production (Mercury Media) — is currently CEO of a financial management firm and member of the Deal Screening Committee of Hawaii Angels helping evaluate startup business plans and presentations.

Jeff Bartlett

Co-Founder and President, GoBankingRates

Jeff Bartlett

Formerly known as ConsumerTrack, GOBankingRates is a leading digital media company partnered with the largest banks, lenders, credit bureaus, insurance companies and financial institutions, including most of the top 25 US Banks.

We are focused on building a billion-dollar company from the ground up. We most value our Team and are committed to consistently developing new leaders and new technology to fuel GOBankingRates’ continued success.

We are always looking for great people to join the GOBankingRates team, so please reach out if you want to be part of the special company we continue to build.

We have a world class Technology Team and yes, we are investing in AI, Machine learning and all things automation. What we care most about is our Team, our audience and our partners.

Previous to entering the Digital Media and Marketing Industry in 2001, I spent a great deal of time in Venture Capital as well as International Trade Finance.

Jeff Char

CEO, SOGO Energy

Jeff Char

Jeff guides our companies with Venture Capital, Mergers, Entrepreneurship, Mentoring, Strategy, Development, and Online Marketing expertise.

Jeffrey Char is a serial entrepreneur and investor focusing on sustainable energy systems, climate tech and agtech. He is co-founder and CEO of SOGO Energy, a distributed utility serving rural communities with affordable value-added services powered by clean energy. Jeffrey Char is also founder and CEO at J-Seed Ventures. Jeffrey Char is originally from Hawaii, but a long-term resident of Tokyo, Japan.

Specialties: energy access, financial access, renewable energy, innovation, incubation, startups, venture capital, finance, strategy, legal, M&A, and corporate governance.

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