Sand Hill Angels

Adam Wu is a Director of Engineering at Google with over two decades of experience at major technology companies including Meta and Microsoft. He holds a PhD in Embodied AI from Cambridge and has served as an advisor to multiple startups with successful exits. His focus areas include applications of AI and robotics in education, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Akash Pai is founder of ZERObrush, a digital health company that uses AI and 3D scanning technology to manufacture custom oral care devices. He has raised over $11 million with backing from P&G Oral Care and manufacturing partnership with HP, and previously led product organizations at Microsoft and Intuit, where he built the Advertising Exchange and Payment Data Platform respectively. Pai holds 14 patents and is currently an angel investor and board member at NuFund Venture Group.

Alan Fisher is an angel investor at Sand Hill Angels with over 200 investments across AI, e-commerce, and fintech sectors. He has experience as a serial entrepreneur and serves as a board member.

Alexandr Ikriannikov holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology specializing in power electronics, and serves as a Fellow at Analog Devices focusing on datacenter and energy applications. With nearly 20 years of experience in power electronics design and development, he has contributed to over 80 awarded U.S. patents and numerous pending patents, with particular expertise in multiphase coupled inductors and system optimization that have generated over $1 billion in cumulative revenue. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, member of the patent committee at Analog Devices, and an angel investor with Sand Hill Angels.

Amanda Huang is an investor at Sand Hill Angels focusing on AI infrastructure and applications. She brings experience as a founder and operator, having launched two technology ventures including one that went public, and has conducted field research across Southeast Asia and South America. Huang holds an MD and now applies her background in building and scaling businesses to her investment practice.

Amos Ben-Meir is an investor and board director at Sand Hill Angels. He has been involved in six startups as an early employee or founder, with four resulting in exits. Since 2012, his startup investment portfolio has encompassed more than 350 companies, and he serves as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area startup ecosystem.

Ankit Khedia is an ML Research Lead at Deccan AI focused on generative AI, diffusion models, vision-language systems, and large language models. He previously held engineering positions at Meta, Google, Amazon, and Goldman Sachs, where he built machine learning systems for search, recommendations, and real-time risk. Khedia is an angel investor in early-stage deep tech ventures with interest in AI applications across creative, healthcare, and enterprise sectors.

Anne Woo is Director in Mission Management for Commercial Payloads at Muon Space. With over 15 years of experience in engineering systems, digital transformation, and cost optimization, she has worked across program management, product strategy, and manufacturing innovation. Her background includes expertise in model-based systems engineering, cost modeling, supply chain optimization, and cross-functional team leadership across complex product development cycles.

Anuj Shah is an angel investor focused on AI and machine learning companies and an advisor to RethinkYearbooks.com and AiMon. He spent over 12 years contributing to Netflix's recommendations system and is a member of Sandhill Angels.

Atika Sanchetee is a Product Lead at Stripe focused on self-serve growth for early-stage startups. Previously, she led product teams at Meta in commerce and monetization, and began her career in investment banking at JPMorgan. She is an active angel investor and board member at Sand Hill Angels.

Baoning Fan serves as Operations Manager for the LiveStreaming Department at Wahool in the US. He is currently enrolled in the Full Stack Network Engineer Program and seeks to apply this training in a network engineering role.

Baron Cannon is an angel investor with Sand Hill Angels who focuses on technology-driven companies addressing underserved markets in regulated sectors. He brings experience from Catholic secondary education as a teacher and administrator, with background in curriculum development, educational technology, and finance operations. His investment approach emphasizes data-driven platforms and vertical software solutions that provide compliance-secure, capital-efficient alternatives to traditional industries.

Ben Lee is a board director, executive coach, and former CEO with experience leading technology sector organizations through market transformations and integrations. He has held C-level positions including overseeing Altera's separation from Intel and building globally distributed teams. Lee currently provides board advisory services, executive coaching for senior leaders, and strategic consulting focused on operational excellence and go-to-market strategy.

Bill Butler is a commercial operations executive who has held leadership roles in strategy, sales, product engineering, partnerships, and post-merger integration across startups, Fortune 100 companies, and private equity-backed organizations. His experience spans three major technology platform shifts—client/server to cloud to AI—and includes building a managed security platform that grew to over $200 million in revenue, leading early enterprise AI channel strategy, and directing commercial operations during the separation of HP into two Fortune 100 companies. He currently serves as Founder and Managing Director of Wm. & Co., where he works as an interim CRO/CCO and embedded GTM executive.

Chris Hobbs is a finance leader with over 30 years of experience across startups and large enterprises, including CFO or COO roles at five early-stage companies and M&A leadership at a $1B+ organization. He has raised more than $100 million in early-stage equity and built finance functions from inception through acquisition, with additional experience as a venture capital investor and angel investor. Hobbs currently advises seed and Series A startups on fundraising, M&A, and finance operations on a fractional basis.

Cindy Law is an investor at Sand Hill Angels focused on early-stage startups. She brings eleven years of technology investment banking experience, having advised on over $50 billion in transactions spanning M&A, equity, and debt financings. Her background includes work with leading public and private technology companies on M&A strategy, capital raising, investor relations, and financial reporting.

Craig Harding is a member of Life Science Angels and invests across all sectors through multiple syndicates including NuFund, Sand Hill Angels, Duke Capital Partners, and Salt Lake City Angels. He has background in corporate legal matters, financings, intellectual property, stock option administration, and HR.

Daniel Baker is the founder and former leader of FlightAware, a global flight tracking and aviation data platform acquired by Collins Aerospace in 2021. He holds FAA certifications as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. Baker serves on the board of directors of the National Business Aviation Association and previously served on the boards of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, and Aspen Public Radio.

Dave Strigler is a member of Sand Hill Angels with over 20 years of application development experience, including leadership roles in engineering teams across banking, semiconductors, and healthcare. He operates an independent consulting firm serving both startups and Fortune 500 companies, has founded one startup, and was among the first technical hires at five others. Strigler holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from McGill University and has completed MBA coursework at SJSU.

David Sacarelos is CEO and co-founder of Orbital Composites, which develops mobile robotic 3D printing technology for polymers, composites, and metals in aerospace and cleantech applications. He brings over 20 years of semiconductor industry experience, with background in M&A, strategy, marketing, R&D, and sales for global accounts. Sacarelos holds academic credentials in electrical engineering and business, and has served as an investor and mentor for deep tech startups in space, defense, semiconductors, and AI.

Dhwani Vyas is a business leader with experience building and scaling hardware and software system businesses. As CEO of FlatFrog Laboratories, he led a strategic repositioning of the company's product and go-to-market strategy, overseeing development of a complete technology stack and scaling commercial deployment and supply chain partnerships across Asia before the company's acquisition. He previously held general management roles at Cypress Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors, and Philips Electronics, and currently serves in operating, advisory, and board roles with hardware-software companies focused on commercial scaling.

Eduardo Smith is a Senior Advisor at KANOA with over 20 years of experience as an executive and board member. He served as CEO of Softplan from 2021 onward, following four years on the company's board, where he led growth initiatives, governance improvements, and M&A activities. Smith holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and an MBA from Stanford University, and currently advises and invests in companies focused on technological innovation and business transformation.

Elham Ghassemzadeh is an angel investor at Sand Hill Angels with extensive product leadership experience in SaaS, enterprise software, and health tech. Her background includes scaling product teams and organizations while managing customer and partner ecosystems across global markets. She holds expertise in product strategy, organizational development, and identifying strategic alternatives in competitive software markets.

Eric Klein is a Distinguished Scientist at GRAIL who previously served as Emeritus Professor and Chairman of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic and as a Fellow at Stanford University's Distinguished Careers Institute. His background includes expertise in urologic oncology, clinical trial design, cancer biomarker development including isoPSA and OncotypeDX Prostate, medical device development, and healthcare leadership. He is currently focused on advancing blood-based multicancer early detection technologies.

Francis Da Costa is founder and CTO of Meshdynamics, where he focuses on energy-constrained edge device messaging for industrial IoT applications. He is a seed-stage angel investor and author of "Rethinking the Internet of Things," which examines approaches to scaling edge IIoT systems using natural systems as models.

Frank Willemsen is president and board member of Sand Hill Angels, an active angel investment organization based in Silicon Valley with over 100 members focused on mentoring and investing in early-stage companies. He brings experience in sales, marketing, cloud infrastructure, and business development from leadership roles at Cisco Systems, KPN, Sprint, and EDS, as well as expertise in merger and acquisition strategies, financial modeling, and strategic business development. Based in Silicon Valley, Willemsen has worked across Europe and Asia and brings experience in international business operations and diverse team leadership.

Gary Kremen is the founder of Match and Spruce Power, and has co-founded or incubated Pace Avenue, CrowdFlower, GetWaterSmart, and Voter.vote. He currently serves as Chairperson and Founder of Voter.vote and holds board positions at Trust Your World.

Gaurav Arora is a Senior Software Development Manager at Workday who leads software development teams building and maintaining tools platforms for application development. His experience includes release planning, project scheduling, progress tracking against milestones, and cross-functional coordination between product management and quality assurance. He has provided mentorship on technical and non-technical matters across multiple organizations.

George Carpenter is President of TCA Venture Group Orange County and has founded and led multiple biomedical startups with combined exit values exceeding $1 billion. He has developed companies integrating clinical data assets with machine learning and clinical algorithms, and currently serves as a limited partner in venture funds focused on small molecule and diagnostic investments utilizing artificial intelligence.

Founder of Evolution VC Partners and a self-described 'Culture Tech' investor who invests his own capital in early-stage companies. A lifelong New Yorker, he spent 15 years as an investment banker, previously heading the Private Equity Group at Cowen and Co. and serving as a Principal in the Equity Private Placements Group at Banc of America Securities, having begun his career at Bear Stearns in 1992. He holds a B.S. in Business from Skidmore College.

Gurman Mudahar leads iPhone Product Operations at Apple, where he manages global manufacturing readiness, cost optimization, and integration of emerging technologies. He has background experience in product operations, data science, and finance. Mudahar also invests in early-stage companies and venture funds focused on AI, software, and emerging platforms.

Hari Ganti is a Product and Strategy Leader at Amazon Luna with over 20 years of experience in cloud infrastructure, GPU-accelerated compute, and distributed systems. At Amazon, he leads product and strategy initiatives focused on high-performance cloud infrastructure, achieving significant cost reductions and performance improvements through ML-driven scaling and edge compute optimization. His background includes roles at Dolby, Qualcomm, and work across spatial audio, 4G/5G, and satellite technologies, with a track record of scaling businesses to $100M+ in revenue.

Heike Schmitz is a staff software engineer at ePlant with a background in Computer Science and Marine Biology. She previously led testing services teams at Google, where she managed a quality assurance organization that grew to over 300 people and contributed to IPO preparations including Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work. Schmitz is a member of Sand Hill Angels and has held roles including management consultant, quality assurance engineer at Workspot Inc., and researcher at Jupiter Research Foundation supporting autonomous marine systems and carbon dioxide flux research.

Hema Veeraragavathatnam is an angel investor and technical advisor who backs technology businesses through memberships with SandHill Angels, AngelList, Blue Startups, Pipeline Angels, Hustle Fund, Launch, and Alchemist. She co-founded an AI SaaS company building personalized guidance software, where she architected the full-stack platform using Node.js, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and AWS. Previously, she spent over a decade at Adobe in engineering leadership roles, focusing on scalable software development across mobile, desktop, and web platforms.

Ilan Sarveswaran is a Data Engineer at Apple with two decades of IT industry experience. He specializes in building scalable data pipelines and applying AI/ML technologies to business problems. Sarveswaran serves as an angel investor supporting startups across multiple sectors.

Iolanda Antunes is a Product Manager focused on AI-native systems at LinkedIn, where she develops products spanning agents, memory systems, workflow automation, and creative tooling. Her work centers on translating frontier model capabilities into human-centered products with emphasis on safety, reliability, and trustworthiness. She has experience in early-stage product development, prototyping with modern AI builder tools, and defining interaction patterns between products and AI models.

Istvan Szanda is a growth-stage operator with over 15 years of experience scaling technically complex, regulated healthcare and medical device businesses. He specializes in organizational design and operating systems, focusing on decision rights, incentives, and execution cadence to transition R&D-driven innovation into scalable revenue platforms. Szanda serves as an angel investor and B2C co-chair at Sand Hill Angels, and advises founders on governance and value creation.

James Lougheed brings three decades of semiconductor and electronics industry experience, including leadership roles at MaxLinear, Exar Corporation, and Cirrus Logic. He is founder and chair of YaJa Ventures, through which he invests across deeptech, fintech, and sportstech sectors, with portfolio holdings exceeding 100 technology companies and sports franchises. Lougheed also holds positions at Silicon Catalyst, Scalare Partners, and multiple advisory boards, and holds equity stakes in Leeds United Football Club and Venezia FC.

Jane Beal is a Broker Associate at Coldwell Banker Realty with expertise in Silicon Valley real estate, including bank-owned properties, short sales, and 1031 exchanges. She brings prior experience in finance and office management, along with knowledge of property construction, flipping, and management. Beal offers cross-cultural communication skills in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, and specializes in contract negotiation and risk analysis.

Jeff Depew is an investor and board president at Sand Hill Angels who has held roles across corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, and advisory capacities. His career includes intrapreneur positions at General Electric and General Motors, where he worked on product development and launched OnStar, followed by founding and advising multiple Silicon Valley startups in sectors including MEMS sensors, battery technology, software, lighting, and medical devices. He serves as a mentor and judge for Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurship programs and holds board positions in deep technology companies.

Jinpei Li is the founder and managing partner of Valkyrie Fund, where she oversees deal sourcing, due diligence, investment decisions, portfolio management, and fund administration. She has eight years of engineering experience, including leadership of the mobile team at AT&T and development of mobile applications, along with five years in cross-border investment and M&A at boutique firms in the U.S. and Asia. Li holds CFA and CAIA certifications, a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from USC, and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Joav Bally is Group Vice President of Product Management & Engineering for Platform & Analytics at Oracle NetSuite, where he leads a global organization developing agentic and LLM-powered enterprise solutions. With over 20 years of experience as a product and engineering executive, he oversees the strategy and delivery of AI-driven capabilities including developer assistants, analytics agents, and enterprise AI connectors designed for production-scale deployment. His work focuses on translating AI innovation into platform solutions that enable customers and partners to build and customize AI-powered functionality within enterprise systems.

Joe Epstein is a CEO and serial entrepreneur with founding or leadership experience in enterprise networking, data center, and cybersecurity companies. He serves as a member investor with Sand Hill Angels and provides advisory and mentoring services. His background spans product development, strategy, IPO and M&A transactions, and business operations.

John Hall is a general partner at Newtek Ventures and a former board member at Sand Hill Angels. He has held financial leadership roles including CFO at Cadnetix, international group controller at Intel, and international controller at Syntex Pharmaceuticals.

Jonathan Wu is an advisor at Wealthing VC Club, Inc., and serves as a trustee and angel investor. He has held various management positions and maintains expertise across data analytics, startup enterprises, organizational growth, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, and financial management.

Karen Law is an investor at Infinite Community Ventures, where she manages a fund investing across sustainability, equitable empowerment, and the arts. She brings over two decades of experience spanning research, engineering, consulting, and operations across government agencies, national laboratories, nonprofits, and private companies, including roles at Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Medallia. Law holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and serves on multiple boards and advisory roles focused on community development and leadership representation.

Karl Lehenbauer is the principal architect of FlightAware's flight tracking technologies and cofounder of the company. He has spent decades designing and managing development of large, real-time applications in aerospace, energy, and oilfield sectors, and founded the first Internet service provider in the Southern United States in the 1990s. His technical contributions include work on the Tcl programming language, multiple open source projects dating to the mid-1980s, and engine monitoring systems at GE Aircraft Instruments. He currently invests through Sand Hill Angels and competes in Trans-Am TA racing, winning the 2015 Texas Region points championship in the Super Unlimited category.

Kiran Sampat is an angel investor and member of Sand Hill Angels in Silicon Valley. He invests in early-stage startups both independently and through incubators and angel groups.

Komal Kashiramka is CEO and Founder of Poshan, Inc., which operates Poshan.us and RotiTales.com. She brings over 20 years of technology experience from roles at Meta, Microsoft, and GoPuff, where she built and scaled cross-functional teams and delivered products serving millions of users globally. Earlier in her career, she developed mobile applications at Bolly Geeks by identifying market gaps and focusing on user-centered design.

Lenord Melvix is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google with over 10 years of experience in machine learning, computer vision, and geospatial data. He is an active angel investor with Sandhill Angels focusing on seed-stage enterprise software companies, and an ICF-certified career coach offering services to Google employees.

Leo Chan advises at Berkeley SkyDeck and mentors startup founders. His focus areas include product development and engineering team building.

Leung Kwok is a member of Sand Hill Angels with over 100 angel investments made through the group and Life Science Angels. Prior to angel investing, he spent 30 years in capital markets across Asia and other regions, deploying more than $3 billion across private equity, high-yield, project finance, and special situations investments.

Lewis Liu is a product leader currently at Microsoft who previously led product development for the Gemini API on Vertex AI at Google. He has founded and scaled multiple products from inception, including Gemini, PaLM, Enterprise Knowledge Graph, Document AI, and AutoML, several of which generated revenue. Liu advises startups and focuses on developer experience and product strategy in generative AI platforms.

Malathi Jivan is Vice President of Product Management at Ford Credit, where she focuses on AI and payments strategy. Previously, she held product roles at Amazon, Uber, and eBay, and holds 10 U.S. patents in areas including predictive AI, digital identity, e-commerce, and payments infrastructure. She began her career as a software development engineer.

Manjit Singh is Chief Executive Officer of DruvStar, where he has provided AI and machine learning-based cybersecurity solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises for over six years. He serves as an investor with Sand Hill Angels supporting early-stage technology companies and as a non-executive board director at PointsBet, an online sports betting company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Singh holds certifications in information systems security and information security management, as well as a certificate in strategic leadership for technology and innovation from Stanford University.

Mark Mitchell is a computer scientist and software engineer who founded CodeSourcery, a software development tools company, after leaving Stanford's Ph.D. program. Following the company's sale to Mentor Graphics, where he held roles in M&A, product management, and engineering, he became an active angel investor with investments in numerous startups and board positions across multiple companies. He currently serves as a board member at Sand Hill Angels and divides his time between computer science research and venture activities at SRI International.

Marko Gargenta is founder and CEO of PlusPlus.co, a platform for corporate knowledge sharing and collective intelligence. Previously, he created Twitter University, an internal engineering education program at Twitter following its acquisition of his company Marakana, which provided developer training in open-source technologies. He hosts The Intelligence Amplifiers podcast, featuring conversations with learning and development leaders at technology companies.

Mary Guan is a Senior Director of US Marketing and Market Development at CMR Surgical, where she leads the US launch of the company's robotic surgical platform. Previously, she held positions at Intuitive, Abbott, and Danaher, with experience in strategy, commercialization, and business development across medical devices, diagnostics, and biopharma. Her background includes product launches in interventional cardiology, interventional pulmonology, in vitro diagnostics, and soft tissue surgery, with geographic experience spanning the US, Asia Pacific, and Europe.

Michael Wang is co-founder, CEO, and CTO at MirraViz. He brings 25 years of experience in research and development, technology strategy, and manufacturing scale-up operations. His background includes leadership roles focused on cost optimization and production yields.

Minni Shahi is Vice President of Product Management at Workday. With over 20 years of experience in product management and engineering, Shahi holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Master's degree in Computer Science.

Mohammed Alzubi is the Founder and Managing Partner of Nama Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on technology startups in the GCC region, particularly Saudi Arabia. With over 25 years of experience in technology and venture capital, he previously served as Managing Director of Tharwa Capital, led the venture capital practice at Global Investment House, and held technology investment roles at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority. He holds an MBA from London Business School and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University, and is an active angel investor with Sand Hill Angels.

Naeem Raza spent nearly 25 years building Annams/Sunflower Systems, bringing rare operating depth to technology and life-sciences investing and holding technical degrees plus MBA and BA in economics, sociology.

Nick Kim is the founder of a stealth-stage company working on AI and consumer products, and advises startups on fundraising and AI adoption. He previously spent more than five years in venture capital at DIP Capital, where, as the fund's first analyst, he deployed €50M across 10 portfolio companies in four countries, including Hero, Refurbed, and Everli. His earlier career included M&A at PwC and corporate development at Princelet Partners, and he holds an MSc from the London School of Economics.

Nick Steiner is a Partner at BPM LLP and an Angel Investor at Sand Hill Angels. As a CPA, he has served mid-market technology companies with expertise in revenue recognition, accounting, auditing, SEC matters, and GAAP compliance.

Ning Sung serves as President at International Computer Technology and holds a mentor and advisor position at Alchemist Accelerator. He focuses on aligning information systems technology with client business processes and application needs.

Oriana Li Halevy is a strategic advisor and investor at Caritas Ventures with a background in corporate law, cross-border business consulting, and interpretation. She focuses on two investment tracks: frontier technology, data economy, and applied AI, alongside intellectual and ethical formation of emerging leaders. Her professional experience bridging complex ideas across cultures and disciplines informs her work as an investor, advisor, educator, and mentor.

Patrick Ryan is an attorney and angel investor who serves as fractional general counsel to early-stage founders in aerospace, fintech, health, and frontier technology sectors. Previously, he led security, privacy, and policy initiatives at Google and TikTok, taught at CU Boulder, and represented the U.S. and Google in international internet governance matters. He is licensed to practice law in California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Colorado.

Chairman of FusionOps Inc and board member of Cadence Design Systems.

Raj Kapany serves as a member and investor at Sand Hill Angels and holds board positions at Lightwave Construction Inc., IKitchens Inc., Phonehut, UC Santa Cruz, the Sikh Foundation, and CoreOptix. His background spans founding and leading companies across sales, business development, and general management, with experience in startup finance, strategic partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions.

Raj Rao is Senior Director of Enterprise Software at NVIDIA's Enterprise Computing Product Group. With over 25 years of experience, he has held core engineering, general management, and strategic business development positions across AI, deep learning, data science, graphics, cloud, and mobile industries.

Rajeev Rai is CEO and founder of QASource, a software quality assurance and development engineering services firm established 20 years ago. With over 30 years of experience in engineering and QA, he has built the company to serve startups and established enterprises across industries including AI, cloud computing, mobile applications, and e-commerce. QASource offers integrated software development and QA services designed to work alongside clients' internal teams and processes.

Reinhard Voelkel is Chair of OPTICA Corporate Engagement Council and founder of TransActum, a platform designed to assess succession and transformation readiness in industrial SMEs. With over 30 years of experience in photonics, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing, he advises boards, investors, and industrial decision-makers on technology-driven investments, acquisitions, scale-up operations, and post-merger integration. His work focuses on identifying operational and economic risks that often emerge in the gap between technical feasibility and manufacturing scalability.

Revital Padovitz is founder and product advisor at Invergency, where she coaches founders, product leaders, and technology professionals on leadership, organizational dynamics, and strategic decision-making. She spent two decades in product leadership roles at Meta, Microsoft, and startups, and has facilitated programs including "Influence Without Authority" for product leads at Fortune 500 companies and a cohort on AI navigation for Women in Product. Padovitz also invests in early-stage health and technology startups and serves on advisory boards for nonprofit communities.

Rick Lazansky is Founder and Chair of Silicon Catalyst and Chief Investment Officer at the organization. He is also an angel investor with Sand Hill Angels and serves as a mentor and board director.

Rolando Bonilla is Chief Strategy Officer at Voler Strategic Advisors. He previously held positions in San Francisco government, including service on multiple city commissions and as chair of the Finance Committee of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission overseeing a $30+ million budget, and later served as communications director for a San José Council member and chair of the San José Planning Commission. He founded a public relations firm in 2010 and holds a BA in Politics from the University of San Francisco and a JD from San Francisco Law School.

Ruban Kanapathippillai is a technology and business executive with approximately 30 years of experience. He was a founding member of two startups that achieved exits valued at $720 million and $550 million, and has spent the last 4-5 years working with enterprises on infrastructure for AI/ML at edge and cloud environments, including work with major cloud vendors, ISPs, and federal customers. He currently serves as a board advisor to multiple early-stage startups, has authored "The Accidental Entrepreneur," and maintains a mentorship practice focused on early-career professionals.

Sameer Nanda is a Venture Resident at Geek Ventures and an angel investor with thirty years of engineering leadership experience at NVIDIA and Google, where he worked on systems software, operating systems, and cloud infrastructure. He focuses his investment activities on agentic workforce automation, AI infrastructure and developer tools, and cloud-native systems. Nanda engages with founders and investors to evaluate early-stage companies and support technology development.

Sanjay Khanna is Vice President of Product Management at Extreme Networks, bringing over 30 years of experience in product management and engineering across data center, service provider, and telecom sectors. He has led multiple products through conception, development, and launch, and manages teams of product managers. His domain expertise encompasses networking technologies including SDN, NFV, virtualization, MPLS, BGP, and cloud networking architectures.

Sapna Kaupur is founder and chief executive officer of DexterityX LLC. She has held operations leadership roles at Google and multiple high-growth technology companies, with expertise in operating model design, organizational scaling, and financial strategy across SaaS, AdTech, and AI-enabled eCommerce. Her experience includes acquiring and operating a multi-brand AI-enabled eCommerce portfolio and integrating six consumer brands into a unified operating platform.

Sayed Khatwa is Director of Program Management for Geo at Google, leading the program management organization supporting the Google Maps developer ecosystem and B2B business. He previously spent nearly six years at Meta as Senior Manager of Technical Program Management for Developer Infrastructure, where he oversaw portfolios in data privacy and reliability engineering and managed technical integrations for M&A activity. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President of Operations at Ericsson, leading large-scale digital services programs and implementing a capacity-based operating model that scaled across North America and globally. Khatwa holds a bachelor's degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Alexandria University and an MBA from Concordia University.

Scott Mirer is a member of Sand Hill Angels with prior experience at Netflix. He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and an MS in Applied Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His background includes executive roles in partner programs, product management, business development, professional services, and software engineering, with expertise in partnerships, product management, and leadership development.

Scott Scheeler is an executive advisor at Nokia with experience in hardware product development and multi-national team leadership. He previously led hardware platform development at Cisco that generated over $20 billion in annual revenue while managing teams across five geographic regions, and served on multiple boards and advisory roles. His background includes expertise in enterprise technology, sustainability integration across product lifecycles, and representation on corporate sustainability initiatives.

Srini Srinivasan is CEO of nHansa, where he focuses on safety and performance in autonomous transportation systems. With over 35 years of experience across product management, engineering, and general management, he has worked in automotive, industrial automation, and aerospace sectors, with expertise spanning embedded software, data analytics, control systems, and safety certification. Previously, he founded EASI, an analytics company for wireless networks, and served as founding CEO of TimeSys, an embedded Linux firm serving automotive and aerospace markets; earlier, he co-led an engineering team at Westinghouse Electric on digital safety systems for nuclear power plants. Srinivasan holds an MBA from Wharton and engineering degrees from the University of Houston and IIT Madras.

Steve Bennet is founder and managing director of Bodega Partners and serves as board president of ScholarMatch. Over three decades, he has held CFO, investor, and board positions at more than 150 technology startups across software, internet, and mobile sectors, including companies acquired by Comcast, IBM, and CBS. He teaches entrepreneurial finance as adjunct faculty at San Jose State University, where he has developed multiple courses and served on the steering committee for the Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship, and previously lectured at UC Berkeley.

Steven Lamont is a strategy and marketing professional who has held Chief Marketing Officer positions at major companies and served as a consultant to leading firms across communications and high technology. He has worked with startups for approximately two decades in executive, advisory, and investor capacities, and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Noah Medical. He is an active angel investor with Sand Hill Angels.

Suraj Kholwadwala is a Research Engineer II at Shockwave Medical, a Johnson & Johnson MedTech company, where he works on preclinical development of medical devices. His responsibilities include designing and executing animal and cadaver studies, developing protocols, coordinating with external laboratories, analyzing data, and collaborating across R&D, regulatory, intellectual property, marketing, and human factors functions. He focuses on evaluating the clinical significance and technical feasibility of early-stage device concepts.

Tianyu Zhao is a mechanical engineer at Advanced Energy with manufacturing expertise and experience in cross-functional project management. He is a member of Sand Hill Angels.

Vicken Ekmekjian is a Managing Director at CIBC Private Wealth Management US, where he works as a portfolio manager serving ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Vyoma Gajjar is a Senior Principal AI Architect at ServiceNow, where he works on generative AI and agentic workflow deployment for enterprise customers, building Python-based tooling to translate customer workflows into evaluation requirements and deployment-readiness criteria. Previously, he led Forward Deployed Engineering at Galileo AI, focusing on generative AI evaluation and observability for enterprise deployments across RAG and agent systems, and spent nine years at IBM building and deploying AI systems in regulated environments including governance infrastructure and applied machine learning systems. His work centers on bridging the gap between AI prototypes and production systems, with expertise in agent evaluation, retrieval-quality measurement, AI observability, and deployment-readiness assessments for generative AI workflows.

Wei Liu is a Principal at Sunrise Value Investments specializing in commercial real estate investment, sales, and leasing in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley regions. He works with Chinese corporate clients and high net worth individuals on office, retail, hotel, and land transactions.

Wei Wang is the owner of AI & Infrastructure GTM Advisory at Tulip Bloom Marketing, bringing over 20 years of enterprise technology go-to-market experience across VMware, Cisco, and SAP. His background includes category creation work with major analysts, management of complex multi-persona sales cycles, and portfolio expansion from $50M to $650M in regulated product lines. Over the past 2.5 years, Wang has focused on the energy transition and data-center infrastructure as a writer and advisor, with particular expertise in the intersection of energy, AI infrastructure, and hyperscaler procurement.

Ya Tuo is founding partner and CEO of YaJa Ventures, an investment firm focused on deep tech, fintech, and sports. With over 20 years of experience across arts, hospitality, fashion, sports, and technology sectors, Tuo has invested in more than 100 technology startups and sports franchises, and holds positions as a general partner at FanClub Sports Capital and an investment partner in Leeds United Football Club and Venezia FC. Tuo has completed Stanford University's VC Unlocked Program and Food & Health certificate, speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and serves as a judge at pitch and demo days.

Attila Takacs serves as Entrepreneur In Residence at Ericsson D-15, where he identifies emerging technology trends and develops strategic frameworks and programs to address them. He has built organizations across Europe and the United States that have delivered innovative products.