Our Panelists
DAN BERKOWITZ
BIO COMING SOON!
ASIM BHATIA
Director of M&A- DuPont
Asim Bhatia focuses on M&A strategy, ideation and execution. He led the Reverse Morris Trust (RMT) combination of DuPont’s Nutrition & Biosciences business with IFF, a deal that closed in Deb, 2021, in addition to leading a divestiture of a non-core business (deal signed, pending close) as well as several acquisitions (early stage).
He earlier worked with Honeywell and Eastman Chemical, in their Corporate M&A groups. Prior to this, he spent seven years in investment banking at Deutsche Bank in New York City focusing on M&A, equity capital markets, and debt capital markets origination and execution.
OPEOLA BUKOLA
Founder- Lillo Consulting
Opeola Bukola is an optimizer. The Nigerian-born founder and Principal Consultant of Lillo Consulting–a firm specializing in operations and new venture optimization–has a long history with emerging organizations, brands, and business ecosystems.
Opeola made stops at Techstars, as the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator Program Manager and at Backstage Capital, as their Philadelphia Accelerator Director and an Investment Associate in Strategic Initiatives, before settling into consulting full-time, and dedicating her energy to growing Lillo beyond her one-woman show.
When she’s not working or being quippy on Twitter (and, often, while she is), Opeola enjoys making good food, better friends, and excellent puns.
JARED CANNON
Founder // Chef- Simply Good Jars
“Working full time and studying to earn my MBA at night – eating a meal usually meant something fast, easily available, and often unhealthy."
"My fast-food choices had me feeling guilty, tired, and never satisfied. I realized that this wasn’t a challenge for just me – that there was an incredible need outside of traditional eateries for faster, healthier, food options that are actually delicious…so I took the leap.”
Chef Jared Cannon brought his concept for Simply Good Jars to life by taking a huge risk and leaving an 18-year career working for celebrated restaurants and growing fast-casual eateries. Founded in 2017 in Philly—the birthplace of America, and our hometown. But get ready, Simply Good Jars is coming soon to a town near you.
BRENDAN CAWLEY
Founder // CEO- RTZNBrands // Righteous Felon Craft Jerky
Brendan Cawley is the Founder and CEO at RTZN Brands & Righteous Felon Craft Jerky, a company that creates premium meat snack products and connects fellow small-batch producers to luxury hospitality operators through it's DSD platform. Before starting Righteous Felon in 2013, Brendan spent 6 years in Operations Finance at Sikorsky Helicopters. Brendan lives in West Chester, PA with his fiance and pitbull, with whom he recently launched a dog treat company with, called Wild Nature Pet.
JEFF CHOW
SVP Product- InVision
Jeff Chow is SVP Product at InVision creating inclusive collaborative experiences for Product Teams and stakeholders across thousands of enterprise customers and millions of users.
Prior to InVision, Jeff led Product and Product Design for the Consumer Experience group at TripAdvisor, was Product Lead for Google's Newsstand experience (now Google News) and also founded and ran several startups in the mobile, consumer and marketing spaces.
Jeff received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
STEVE COOK AND MICHAEL SOLOMONOV
Founders // Co-owners- CookNSolo
Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook have been awarded three James Beard Foundation Awards, with Mike awarded two additional Beard Awards for his work as Chef of Zahav, which includes "Outstanding Chef", 2017.
Zahav, their restaurant that put the rich melting pot of Israeli cuisine at the forefront of dining in America today, became the first Israeli and first Philadelphia restaurant to win the James Beard "Outstanding Restaurant" Award. In 2018, Zahav was recognized by Food & Wine Magazine as one of "The 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Past 40 Years". In addition to Zahav, their restaurants are Federal Donuts, Dizengoff, Abe Fisher, Goldie, and K'Far. In November of 2019, the duo opened Merkaz, and in February opened Laser Wolf, which was named a GQ Magazine "Best New Restaurant in America", 2020.
The duo have co-authored three highly acclaimed cookbooks — Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking, Federal Donuts: The (Partially) True Spectacular Story, and Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious.
JASMINE CROWE
Founder // CEO- Goodr
Jasmine Crowe is an award-winning social entrepreneur and the fonder and CEO of Goodr, a sustainable food waste management company that leverages technology to combat hunger and food waste. Under her direction, Goodr has redirected over twelve million pounds of surplus food to the millions of people that are food insecure. She has been featured on CNBC, Oprah Magazine, Inc., Forbes, Fast Co., NY Times, and named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 100 influential female founders
PAUL DAITZ
Executive Chairman- BCMS
A veteran of the global M&A market, Paul joined BCMS as its Executive Chairman in 2013.Paul spent seventeen years at Goldman, Sachs & Co., most recently as a senior member of the Global M&A Group. Based at the London office, he served as Chief Operating Officer of the Investment Banking Division in Europe and as a senior member of the M&A team.
After Goldman Sachs, Paul was Senior Managing Director at Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc., and the Head of the Telecommunications, Media, Entertainment & Technology Group for North America. He was responsible for the firm's mergers & acquisitions, financial advisory and principal investing activities across these industries.
NICK DELMONICO
Founder // CEO- Strados Labs
BIO COMING SOON!
JOHN DEVINE
Partner - Ballard Spahr
John W. Devine is an experienced transactional attorney who concentrates his practice on private merger and acquisition transactions, including private equity and venture capital financing transactions, securities offerings and commercial licensing transactions, with concentrated experience in the health care industry. John is also the Co-Practice Leader of the firm's Health Care group.
STEVE FINN
Co-founder // General Partner- Siddhi Capital
Prior to full time investing, Steven most recently founded and exited a food technology startup in the corporate catering space to a large venture-backed player in 2018. He has earned Penn/Wharton degrees in Operations (Wharton/Undergrad), Computer Science (Penn Engineering/Masters) and Entrepreneurial Management (Wharton/MBA), spent several years as a full stack software engineer at Bloomberg LP, and founded two startups. Steven has led Siddhi Capital's efforts into over 20 food investments and is focused on all stages of sourcing, evaluating, taste testing, and working with the portfolio to help create value with his understanding of technology, fundraising and strategy.
MARK FURLETTI
Partner- Ballard Spahr
Mark J. Furletti is the Co- Leader of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. He focuses on federal and state consumer lending and payments laws, including those that apply to payment cards, vehicle-secured loans, lines of credit, unsecured loans, and deposit products. He counsels providers of consumer financial services, including banks, on regulatory compliance matters and has successfully represented such providers in class action litigation and government supervisory and enforcement matters. He also regularly counsels purchasers of merchant receivables, companies that specialize in online small business lending and companies that interact with their customers electronically or that set up recurring billing arrangements with their customers.
SHONTERRA JORDAN
Counsel- Comcast
Shonterra Jordan is a Counsel at Comcast. Prior to joining Comcast, Shonterra was an attorney in the Business and Transactions Department at Ballard Spahr, where, among other things, she advised numerous startup clients. While at Ballard, Shonterra also served as the Co-Lead of the BASE (Ballard Academy for Student Entrepreneurs) Program. Shonterra remains an active member of the startup ecosystem and continues to support entrepreneurs and startup companies.
ABE KAMARCK
Founder // CEO- True Made Foods
Abraham (Abe) Kamarck is the founder and CEO of True Made Foods, who make healthy condiments by replacing added sugars with real, pureed fruits and veggies. Abe founded True Made Foods after tiring of losing battle over battle with his four kids over ketchup at the dinner table, so he decided to win the war and make a better one.
Abe started his career as a US Naval Aviator, flying the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter. He served over eight years in the Navy and earned his MBA from the London Business School while stationed in England. After the military, Abe spent another seven years living and working in emerging markets like Bulgaria, Ghana, Egypt, Qatar and China. Abe founded True Made Foods shortly after returning to the US with his family in 2015.
JAMES KEERATISAKDAWONG
Director- Silicon Valley Bank
James Keeratisakdawong leads Silicon Valley Bank’s Relationship Management teams in the Washington, DC and Philadelphia markets. In this role, he provides high growth technology companies innovative banking and credit solutions. James has spent most of his career in venture capital, most recently he was at Core Capital Partners where he focused on early stage investments in enterprise technology. Prior to Core Capital Partners, he was a Principal at the Maryland Venture Fund, a state sponsored evergreen direct investment fund and venture capital fund of funds. He began his career with Longstreet Partners, a private investment and advisory firm, where he focused on the enterprise and public sectors.
He holds a B.S. in Marketing from George Mason University and a MBA from Babson College.
MEGAN KELLY
Investor- First Round Capital
As an investor based in New York, Megan is responsible for finding and evaluating investment opportunities and supporting founders as they work through challenges both big and small. Prior to First Round, Megan worked alongside Arianna Huffington as Chief of Staff at Thrive Global. Megan began her career at JPMorgan, both as an operator and investor, first in business management partnering with the CEO of the U.S. Private Bank, and then as an investor in the Financial Institutions Group. Before kicking off her career in New York, Megan graduated from Holy Cross. Outside of work, you can find Megan under the sea exploring a different kind of ecosystem and trying to conquer her fear of sharks.
KAM KIELHORN
Principal- Tonka Bay Equity Partners
Kam joined Tonka Bay in 2015. He was previously a manager in the Ernst & Young transaction advisory practice in Minneapolis, and he began his career with the Ernst & Young audit practice in Des Moines. Kam earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in accounting from the University of Iowa. He is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive). Kam stays active spending time with his wife and two children. He also enjoys spending time on the golf course and completing home organization projects.
KIMBERLY KLAYMAN
Associate - Ballard Spahr
Kimberly W. Klayman counsels publicly traded and privately held companies on mergers, acquisitions and securities offerings, with an emphasis on emerging growth companies and venture capital funds. Kimberly also has experience representing health care companies in transactional matters, including joint ventures and licensing arrangements.
KWASI KYEI
Principal- Cigna Ventures
Kwasi Kyei is a Principal at Cigna Ventures. He focuses on late venture and early-growth investments in healthcare companies, with recent investments in Ginger, Datavant, Octave, and Cleerly Health. Priorto Cigna Ventures, he was an Associate at the Blue Venture Fund, where he helped manage investments and was a board observer for Solera Health and AbleTo Health. Kwasi has held other M&A and investing roles in the healthcare industry, including corporate development at the Advisory Board Company and investment banking at UBS. He has a BA in Economics from Davidson College and an MBA from Yale University’s School of Management.
ED LANDO
Co-founder//CEO- Goody
Edward Lando is the founder of Goody and a board member at Misfits Market, Atom Finance and several others. He is an investor in hundreds of companies around the world.
Hotels (CHH), Squarespace and Applause App Quality as well as the NYC based non-profit organization The GO Project. Liza graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University.
LIZA LANDSMAN
General Partner- NEA
Liza Landsman joined NEA in 2018, and is currently a General Partner focused on investments in the consumer, ecommerce, and fintech sectors. Prior to joining NEA, Liza was President of Jet.com where she was a founding member of the executive team and later, following Jet’s acquisition, of Walmart’s US Ecommerce leadership team. Prior to joining Jet, she was Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the Executive Committee at E*TRADE Financial, Global Head of Digital for BlackRock and held various leadership roles at both Citigroup and IBM earlier in her career. In addition to her involvement with NEA portfolio companies, Liza is an independent Board Director for ChoiceHotels (CHH), Squarespace and Applause App Quality as well as the NYC based non-profit organization The GO Project. Liza graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University.
MICHELLE LEE
Product- Protocol Labs
Michelle Lee is a people-centered software maker. Currently, she works at Protocol Labs building new protocols for the decentralized web. Previously she helped governments adopt modern text & email as cofounder and CEO of Textizen, acquired by GovDelivery. During her 15-year career, she has built people-centered software at Google, eBay, and Code for America, including the invention of Google Forms. Michelle studied Human-Computer Interaction at Stanford University. To unplug from technology, she races, coaches, and advocates for equity on bikes, and serves on the boards of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and Valley Preferred Cycling Center.
OMAR MENCIN
Senior Director of Investments- Ben Franklin Technology Partners
Omar Mencin, DBA, is an experienced venture capital and private equity investor, entrepreneur, and business accelerator founder and CEO. In his role with Ben Franklin, Omar is responsible for sourcing deals, managing due diligence, negotiating deal terms, and serving as a board observer and portfolio manager. During his tenure at Ben Franklin and in investment roles prior, he has led over 30 seed to Series A equity and convertible debt investments across the e-commerce, digital media, Ed-Tech, wearable technology, Finetch, Blockchain, and healthcare IT sectors including Practice (acquired by Instructure), Ridekleen (Acquired by COX Automotive), Snip Snap (acquired by Slyce), and Clarity Payment Systems (Acquired by TYSYS). He has also led Ben Franklin fund to fund investments in partner accelerator programs such as the UPENN based EDSI ED-Tech accelerator program, the Philadelphia Media Network (Philadelphia Inquirer) Project Liberty Incubator, and the DreamIT Ventures Accelerator.
CHRISTOPHER MOLARO
Co-founder // CEO- NeuroFlow
Chris Molaro is the CEO and co-founder of NeuroFlow, a digital health technology and analytics company promoting behavioral health access and engagement in all care settings. Chris is a former U.S. Army Captain from the US Military Academy at West Point and earned his MBA at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he also spent time as digital health consultant at Mckinsey.
Chris was also the founder of the literacy non-profit Things We Read.
BOB MOORE
Founder // CEO- Crossbeam
Bob Moore is Co-Founder and CEO of Crossbeam, a collaborative data platform that helps companies build more valuable partnerships by discovering which customers and leads they have in common.Moore previously co-founded Stitch (Acquired by Talend in 2018) and RJMetrics (acquired by Adobe by way of Magento Commerce in 2016).Moore's writing about technology, startups, and data has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and numerous other publications.
Outside of his day job, Moore has served as Board Chair of Philly Startup Leaders, improv comedy performer at Philly Improv Theater, and Trustee of the Glassboro Education Foundation.
ADAM NELSON
Partner- FirstMark Capital
Adam is a Partner at FirstMark. Prior to joining the firm, Adam spent nearly a decade in Silicon Valley, most recently as a Partner at Social Capital where he focused on early stage venture investing in enterprise SaaS and marketplaces. Before Social Capital, Adam was an early employee at Dropbox where he built and scaled Dropbox’s Partner Network and Revenue Partnerships teams. Adam started his career in investment banking and private equity at Merrill Lynch and Lindsay Goldberg, respectively. Adam holds both a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
RICK NUCCI
Founder // CEO - Guru Technologies
Rick brings twenty years of experience in creating category-leading software solutions and companies. Prior to Guru, Rick was the founder and chief technology officer of Boomi, which defined and led a new segment as the first-ever cloud integration platform-as-a-service. Boomi was acquired by Dell in 2010, where Rick went on to run the Boomi business for Dell as its general manager, helping grow the organization into the industry leader it is today. Rick frequently speaks at industry events about startups, SaaS and cloud computing. Rick holds a Bachelor of Science in Logistics, Materials, and Supply Chain Management from Penn State University.
LINDSEY O'NIELL
Head of Product-Crossbeam
As the Head of Product at Crossbeam, Lindsey drives the vision and strategy for their partner ecosystem platform. She joined Crossbeam pre-Seed as the first product hire. Previously, she was the first hire at TrendKite, a PR ROI platform acquired by Cision for $225 Million. There she contributed to product development and later product management. Lindsey is passionate about promoting the success of women in technology.
MARCEL PRATT
Partner - Ballard Spahr
Marcel S. Pratt represents clients in high-stakes litigation and investigations and serves as the Managing Partner of the firm's Philadelphia office. He is the immediate past City Solicitor of Philadelphia, where he was the City's highest-ranking lawyer and leader of its 330-member Law Department, which represented the city in all litigation, transactional, regulatory, social services, and legislative matters. In that role, Marcel acted as general counsel to the Mayor, City Council, and all city departments, commissions, and agencies and personally represented the City in highly publicized appellate and trial court matters.
BROOKE RASCOFF
Artist Manager- Q&A
BIO COMING SOON
ANNE RYAN
Vice President- Brownstein Group
As Vice President of Brand Strategy, Anne works tirelessly to unearth the consumer insights and cultural trends that will allow her clients’ brands to become unstoppable in the face of change. With more than 18 years of experience leading brands like IKEA, GIANT Grocery, DuPont, and Aramark, Anne inspires brand owners to apply bold thinking to their strategies, create brave communications that push conventional norms, and to settle for nothing less than brilliant results. .
AMEETH SANKARAN
CEO- Religion of Sports
Religion of Sports is an Emmy Award winning Media companyco-founded by Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and Gotham Chopra, built on the thesis that sports are religion. The company produces content focused on a single narrative of ‘Why Sports Matter’ to explore themes such as greatness and human potential, among others.
Since 2017, the company is has produced content across mediums, from short-form video to audio to feature films and has won multiple awards including a Sports Emmy. Ameeth is an Executive Producer of Tom vs. Time, Greatness Code, Stephen vs. the Game, Man in the Arena, and the Crushed podcast among others.
Ameeth has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Columbia Business School and has spent over 15 years as a strategy consultant and a private equity investor.
GREG SELTZER
Partner- Ballard Spahr
Gregory L. Seltzer is an experienced transactional attorney who utilizes and combines his knowledge of legal, accounting, and business principles to provide comprehensive, practical, and creative business law services. He holds an MBA, is a Certified Public Accountant (currently inactive), and previously worked as an auditor and tax consultant for Ernst & Young, LLP.
He concentrates his practice on public and private merger and acquisition transactions, including private equity and venture capital financing transactions, securities offerings, and spin-out transactions. Greg is a Practice Leader of the firm's Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Group. He represents entrepreneurs, startups and emerging companies in cutting-edge industries. He also represents venture capital firms, family office investors, and angel investors - allowing his practice to be informed by both perspectives. He co-founded and leads the firm’s widely recognized accelerator program: Ballard Academy for Student Entrepreneurs (BASE).
JEREMY SHERMAN
Director of Strategy and Growth- Snacklins
Jeremy oversees all aspects of e-commerce growth including digital advertising, channel optimization, and demand forecasting at SNACKLINS, a rapidly growing snack brand that produces a crunchy, low-calorie, plant-based crisp with the texture of a pork rind. SNACKLINS was featured on Shark Tank in 2019 and secured a deal with Mark Cuban. Jeremy also played an integral role in the SNACKLINS rebrand in late 2020.
Prior to SNACKLINS, Jeremy was a management consultant at Deloitte. He has over 6 years of experience with customer growth strategy, data analytics and visualization, and project management. Jeremy loves all things related to food, playing the piano, his rescue dog Oreo, and his adopted home of Washington D.C.
LANA SHNEYDINA
General Counsel- Sunbit
Lana Shneydina is Sunbit's first employee and founding
General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary leading all legal and regulatory compliance matters of the Company. (Sunbit is a buy-now-pay-over-time financial technology company building technology to enable financing of every day needs). Lana is a seasoned financial services
attorney with over a decade of experience in financial technology startups. Prior to Sunbit, Lana was Deputy General Counsel at Avant where she supervised and led all domestic and international regulatory aspects of business with special emphasis on new product development. Prior to Avant,
Lana built and managed the legal team at Global Analytics Holdings. She also has significant experience from her time as lead consumer finance regulatory counsel at Enova International, where she advised business on various regulatory matters and worked on developing some of the company's most innovative products. Lana enjoys mentoring law students at her alma mater, UCLA.
JASON TOFF
Director of Product Management - Facebook
Jason Toff is a Director of Product Management at Facebook,where he oversees a set of new, standalone apps as part of the New ProductExperimentation group. Previously Jason spent eight years at Google, working on products like Gmail, Chrome and YouTube, and two years at Twitter, where he was General Manager of Vine. Jason lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and three children and is an active angel investor, focused on early stage consumer products.
BRETT TOPCHE
Co-founder // Managing Director- Red&Bl
Brett co-founded Red & Blue Ventures and has more than a decade and a half of venture capital and private equity experience. He has spent much of his career primarily focusing on investments in ecommerce, digital media, mobile applications, marketing technologies and B2B software.
Prior to co-founding Red & Blue, he spent more than nine years at MentorTech Ventures. He represents Red & Blue on the Boards of AptDeco, MD Ally and Strella Biotechnology and as an observer at Burrow. He also serves on the Board of PayPerks and observes on the Board of goTenna representing MentorTech Ventures. He previously served on the Board of Wanderfly (acquired by TripAdvisor), and observed on the Boards of SeniorHomes.com (acquired by Bankrate), Curalate (acquired by Bazaarvoice) and TicketLeap (acquired by PatronManager).
MIKE VENTURA
Managing Director- RBC
Michael Ventura is a Managing Director on the Equity Capital Markets team and is the Co-Head of RBC’s SPAC coverage initiative. In addition to his SPAC coverage responsibilities, Michael helps to lead the firms Equity Capital Markets coverage of the Energy and Power & Utilities sectors. He joined RBC in New York in May 2007. Prior to joining RBC, Michael provided sales coverage to middle market institutional accounts at Bear, Stearns, & Co. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University.
JESSICA WATKINS
Associate- Ballard Spahr
Jessica Watkins is an associate in the firm's Intellectual Property Department who focuses on domestic and international trademark portfolio management, brand development and protection, and trademark and copyright litigation and enforcement. She drafts and prosecutes trademark and copyright applications, advising clients throughout the process, from clearance through registration. Jessica regularly represents clients in opposition and cancellation proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in cases alleging damage by the registration of a trademark. She has developed and executed brand development and enforcement strategies in the design patent, trademark, copyright, and anti-counterfeiting spaces.
JORDAN WEXLER
Founder // CEO- EarlyBird
Celebrity Pitch Competition Panel
WhatsNext culminates in a fun and exciting pitch competition in front of our Competition Experts. Who better to judge a competition than professional athletes who have spent their lives being fierce competitors and performing under pressure. This promises to be an amazing way to wrap up WhatsNext 2021!
Professional Football Player
Jason Kelce
Professional Basketball Player
Thaddeus Young
Professional Soccer Player
Julie Foudy
Investor- NEA
Colin Bryant
Our Special Presenters
Langhorne Slim
Musician
Chef Troy Guard
Entrepreneur, Chef, TAG Restaurant Group
Paul Green
Musician, Entrepreneur, Teacher
Betsaleel (Bets) Charmelus
Facilitator, Community Advocate, Auditory Story Teller
Son Little
Musician