Our diverse mentors bring deep expertise and experience to the entrepreneurs; each team is paired with one or more relevant mentors to guide them throughout the incubator cycle.
Roy Bahat
Roy is the Head of Bloomberg Beta, a venture firm investing in the future of work. He was Co-founder and Chairman of a venture-backed startup (OUYA), as well as an executive at News Corporation. He was named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business. Roy is also a lecturer teaching media at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He has served in government, non-profits, media, corporate, and startup roles.
Abigail Seldin
Abigail Seldin is the CEO of the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation. A Rhodes Scholar and Forbes Education “30 Under 30," she co-founded College Abacus in 2012 and served as its CEO until she led the successful sale of the company to ECMC Group in 2014. Until October 2016, she served as VP of Innovation & Product Development at the acquirer, where she started and led their DC-based ECMC Innovation Lab.
Melvyn Lubega
Melvyn Lubega is head of partnerships and business development at GO1. He joined fellow Rhodes Scholar Andrew Barnes in building GO1 during their studies at Oxford. Following their studies, GO1 went through Y-Combinator at which point Melvyn as head of sales built and scaled the sales function to generate +$1m in recurring revenue. Two years on, GO1 currently has teams in six countries, serving over 500,000 users. Prior to Oxford, Melvyn worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Goldman Sachs.
John Lazar
John was CEO and Chairman of Metaswitch Networks, a leading provider of communications software. He is an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor, and sits on the boards of several for-profit ventures and NGO’s. John is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and serves on the Academy’s International Committee. In 2016, he was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to engineering. John holds an MSc and DPhil from Oxford University.
Joyce Meng
Joyce is passionate about social entrepreneurship and investing. She is the co-founder and CEO of Givology, a 100% volunteer-run online giving marketplace for education connecting donors to grassroots projects worldwide. Joyce is also a Partner and Managing Director of Vernier Capital, a fundamentals-driven global long-short equity investment fund. She has been recognized as Forbes “30 under 30” in education and Wharton’s “40 under 40”. Joyce graduated from the Huntsman Program of the University of Pennsylvania, and holds an Oxford MSc in Economics for Development and an MSc Financial Economics.
Fiona Reid
Fiona is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the UCL School of Management. Previously, she was Founder Director of the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Said Business School, and has been involved in the creation of many new spinouts and social ventures arising from Higher Education. She served as Director of UKCDS, which manages £440m of public research funding to support UK government’s international development interests.
Nicholas W. Allard
Nicholas is President, Joseph Crea Dean, and Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. He is widely recognized as a thought leader in legal education, having introduced dynamic changes at Brooklyn Law School including the establishment of the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE) specializing in legal advice for entrepreneurs. Nick is also senior counsel in Dentons, the largest law firm in the world. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and served as secretary of a district Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee.
Charles Songhurst
Charles is a founding partner of Katana Capital. He also runs the Songhurst Group, which holds assets in a variety of private companies. Charles ran corporate strategy for Microsoft and focused on partnering and M&A. He was involved in the Yahoo acquisition and commercial deal, and the Skype acquisition. Before running corporate strategy, Charles was focused on the emergence of Google and the growth of the search industry. Charles received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy, and economics.
Shaan Gandhi
Shaan is an investor, entrepreneur and resident physician in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Alongside his clinical duties, he engages in early-stage biopharmaceutical and healthcare IT investments at Excel Venture Management, and leads Wellable, a mobile corporate wellness startup serving more than 45,000 members across the world. He is an MD graduate of Harvard Medical School and an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. He was a Rhodes Scholar, receiving his DPhil in medical oncology from the University of Oxford, and holds an Hon. BS in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University.
Matt Clifford
Matt Clifford MBE is cofounder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, the leading technology company builder in Europe and South East Asia. Entrepreneur First invests in ambitious individuals, pre-company, to help them build world-class deep technology startups from scratch in London and Singapore. Since 2011, Entrepreneur First has created over 120 startups worth over $1bn including Magic Pony Technology, Tractable, Pi-Top, OpenCosmos, Brolly and Cloud NC.
Melissa McCoy
Melissa is co-founder & CEO of ConnectMed, an Entrepreneur First-backed company that seeks to plug the primary healthcare gap in developing countries through telehealth and machine learning. She has worked as an engineer, consultant, and entrepreneur in Africa & Latin America for almost 5 years. Melissa holds a MSc Computer Science & MBA from the University of Oxford and a BS Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Brian Krohn
Brian is the CEO of Soundly, an NSF and NIH funded digital health company dedicated to improving sleep. A Rhodes Scholar, a Medical Device Innovation Fellow, and an EPA STAR Fellow he has a broad base of experience. His startup experience spans renewable energy, local food, medical device, and digital health. He has half a dozen patents that are equally diverse, ranging from green fuel production to neurosurgery devices, and is passionate about using Lean Startup methods to create sustainable businesses around innovative technology.
Noam Angrist
Noam is the Executive Director and co-founder of Young 1ove - an NGO to scale evidence-based health & education programs that has served 35,000 youth in Southern Africa. Noam is committed to bridging the gap between evidence on “what works” and translation into scaled intervention and policy. He has evaluated poverty-alleviation programs at the University of Botswana, J-PAL, World Bank, and White House. Noam has a B.S. in Mathematics & Economics from MIT and an MSc. in Evidence-Based Policy Evaluation from Oxford University.
Roopa Unnikrishnan
Roopa is the head of strategy at HARMAN International, with past lead positions at Pfizer, BlackRock and Citibank. She builds on almost two decades of experience in roles where she has seeded and driven change and innovation in several Fortune 500 companies. Acting as both a mentor and an active investor, Roopa has extensive experience in helping teams grow and maximize impact. She completed an MPhil. in Economic and Social History and an M.B.A. at the
University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Will Zeng
Will is a quantum computer scientist and Director of Software & Applications at Rigetti Computing, a venture backed startup building the world's first quantum computers. His work focuses on software and applications engineering for quantum technologies. Dr. Zeng completed his PhD on the mathematical structure of quantum algorithms as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford (2015), where he rowed in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, and holds a BSc in Physics from Yale University (2011).
Joe Jewell
Joe is an aerospace engineer, entrepreneur, and current research scientist for a defense contractor at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. He has received several SBIR grants for early stage technical innovation with national security applications. Previously, he co-founded a startup in the online education space, which was subsequently acquired, and was named one of Business Week's "Top 25 Best Entrepreneurs Under 25" in 2006. He received a B.S. and Ph.D. in aeronautics from Caltech, an aerospace engineering masters from the University of Michigan, and an MSc in engineering science as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.
Ed Simnett
Ed Simnett is a global consultant and executive in the technology and communications space based in Silicon Valley. He is the Operating Partner for a Frontier and Emerging Markets venture group and an analyst at GigaOM, covering communications and IoT. He has held executive roles at Microsoft and Nokia and has consulted to a number of other Global 500 technology companies. He is a regular speaker at global technology events, recently including keynote or invited talks in USA, Ethiopia, Hungary, Uganda and UK. Ed has served as the Chair of the Pacific Telecom Council Advisory Committee and is currently on a number of corporate boards. He holds a BA from Oxford and an MBA from Harvard, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar.
Glenn Leighton
Glenn has double undergraduate degrees in Law from Chiba University (Japan) and Bond University (Queensland). Since completing his Rhodes Scholarship and D.Phil in trade finance law, he has spent over 22 years in investment banking in Singapore and London. He advises major financial institutions on bond and equity financing, regulatory matters, credit ratings, liquidity and risk management. Most recently Managing Director and Head of Capital & Risk Advisory within Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets, Glenn has been an RI Mentor since inception, focusing particularly on Fintech, Biotech and Mental Health ventures. He is a seed investor in 2 U.K. startups.
Paul Kumleben
Paul is a Fellow at the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford University and Senior Counsel in the global law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. His work at Stanford is focused on social ventures (especially in emerging markets), strategic philanthropy and impact investing. In his law practice he represented companies and banks throughout North America, Europe and Africa in a variety of transactions ranging from early round financings, initial public offerings, subsequent debt and equity financings as well as general corporate transactions.
Michael O'Sullivan
Michael is a Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of Credit Suisse in their International Wealth Management (IWM) Division, based in Zurich. He is also an independent member of Ireland's National Economic Social Council. Michael has spent over 10 years in the industry as a global strategist, and has taught finance at both Princeton and Oxford Universities. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and holds an MPhil and DPhil from Oxford University.
David Ferreira
David is a senior executive in IFC’s healthcare investment team; a partner in Caerus Capital; a shareholder in and director of CRE Venture Capital; a member of the Funding Approvals Committee of Convergence; a member of the Investment Committee of VestedWorld. Previously, David was the Managing Director for Innovative Finance & Private Sector Partnerships at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; Investment Manager for Soul City Broad-Based Empowerment Company; a founding partner of Praxis Capital, a private equity business focused on the healthcare and education sectors in immediately post-Apartheid democratic South Africa; a member of the Board of ADvTECH. David was a 1986 Rhodes Scholar.
John Rudikoff
John Rudikoff is the inaugural Director of Graduate Programs at Brooklyn Law School and serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law, teaching Startup Law, Interviewing & Counseling, and Negotiations. He is a Founder of LeapStep Design, a high-impact design and engineering consultancy focused on increasing sustainability in the built environment. Prior to founding LeapStep, John was the General Counsel and Director of Business Development at MASS Design Group, a world-renowned multi-disciplinary design firm engendering equity in the built environment.
David Knezevic
David is co-founder and CTO of Akselos, an MIT spin-off founded in 2012. Akselos provides a cloud-based platform for Digital Twins of critical infrastructure, such as offshore structures, mining machinery, and turbines, enables engineers to gain deeper insights into structural integrity issues, predictive maintenance, and improved safety. David is an Australian Rhodes Scholar and holds a D.Phil. in Numerical Analysis from Oxford. Prior to Akselos, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT, and a Lecturer in Computational Science at Harvard University.
Bobak Azamian
Bobby is the Founder and CEO of Metavention, a company developing a first-in-class procedural treatment for type 2 diabetes, where he has led development of the procedure, completion of a First In Human trial, and fundraising through Series C. Previously, Bobby was a venture capitalist specializing in early stage medical device investing and company building at Versant Ventures and Third Rock Ventures. Bobby practiced medicine and holds an MD from Harvard and a DPhil from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Jared Dunnmon
Jared is a current Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computer Science at Stanford University, where he focuses on combining heterogeneous data modalities, machine learning, and human domain expertise to improve decision-making in health, energy & environment, and geopolitics. Jared has worked to bridge the gap between tech and effective deployment in many contexts including foreign policy at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, solar electrification at Offgrid Electric, cybersecurity at Center for Strategic and International Studies, emerging technology investment at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, nuclear fusion modeling at the Oxford Mathematical Institute, and nonlinear energy harvesting at Duke. Jared holds a PhD from Stanford, an MSc. in Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing and an M.B.A. from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.